i was on the governor’s island ferry, going to the figment art show, and looking at the eliasson waterfalls. (taking either this ferry or the staten island ferry is an excellent way to see how the falls fit into the landscape/cityscape. i prefer the governor’s island ferry, which will end you up on governor’s island–you should see it–rather than on the staten island railroad facing a man who decides to fondle himself in front of you. i suppose you might prefer the staten island ferry if that works for you.)
anyway, eliasson. i thought back to the jean-claude and christo installation in central park (we are meant to, press has all pointed to the success of the gates as one reason for the elisson installation). it’s no secret i thought the gates was lousy public art–like giant croquet hoops, only in that awful construction-hazard orange–but i want to be impressed by nyc waterfalls. i was not, really. sure they are structurally impressive, if that works for you, but they are also piddly compared to the nyc skyline. as natural wonders? the falls are too thin to be impressive. good try, but not quite. i don’t dislike them; i am only unimpressed.
so i thought for a while about what is missing in these kinds of public art installations (excluding things like playing the building which works really well. there are lines every day to play it, and it exposes the lovely interior of an otherwise closed building.) i think the problem is this: the artists are thinking that physical scale will make their projects beautiful or effective, but the physical scale of new york would diminidh the most massive installations. why not think, instead of scale, of pervasiveness. new york is widely varied in population and in architecture, why not find a way to use either the very game population to create art? something involving layers of performance (it might be too difficult to engineer one performance with full collaboration, so maybe several performances that aggregate over the course of a month or a summer?
but then, i like performance.
