This photo cartoon, from Gawker by way of Forward Retreat, depicts an actual event. The big boat is re-enacting an artwork that was never enacted, Robert Smithson's "Floating Island," while the little boat tugs a Christo orange gate--a cheeky student project. Didn't see the actual tree-barge, just the photos, and while it looks entertaining, should it really have Smithson's name attached to it? If the artist were alive, he might well have moved on from this kind of eco-showmanship. Who the hell knows? It's a bit like August Derleth writing novels in the style of H. P. Lovecraft, tres postmodern but perhaps an empty exercise. The theme of disembodied, portable nature arguably achieved its apotheosis in the movie Silent Running, made in '71 (with a fantastic folk-modern score by Peter Schickele, that helped set the mood). Recalling (anticipating?) not-Smithson's tugboat, Bruce Dern's spaceship the Valley Forge contains the last remaining earth forests, floating in sealed domes out near Saturn. The shitty earthlings, who live on food substitutes and remarkably still seem to have an atmosphere despite the absence of plant life, order Dern to "blow the domes" with nuclear explosives.
I saw this image a while ago, and it made my day. Long live those art school brats!
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This photo cartoon, from Gawker by way of Forward Retreat, depicts an actual event. The big boat is re-enacting an artwork that was never enacted, Robert Smithson's "Floating Island," while the little boat tugs a Christo orange gate--a cheeky student project. Didn't see the actual tree-barge, just the photos, and while it looks entertaining, should it really have Smithson's name attached to it? If the artist were alive, he might well have moved on from this kind of eco-showmanship. Who the hell knows? It's a bit like August Derleth writing novels in the style of H. P. Lovecraft, tres postmodern but perhaps an empty exercise. The theme of disembodied, portable nature arguably achieved its apotheosis in the movie Silent Running, made in '71 (with a fantastic folk-modern score by Peter Schickele, that helped set the mood). Recalling (anticipating?) not-Smithson's tugboat, Bruce Dern's spaceship the Valley Forge contains the last remaining earth forests, floating in sealed domes out near Saturn. The shitty earthlings, who live on food substitutes and remarkably still seem to have an atmosphere despite the absence of plant life, order Dern to "blow the domes" with nuclear explosives.
- tom moody 10-07-2005 8:41 pm
I saw this image a while ago, and it made my day. Long live those art school brats!
- L.M. 10-08-2005 1:26 am