“Creating a new island in the middle of New York City doesn’t require a landfill, just a little ingenuity. For nine days in September [2005], a 48-foot tugboat towing an ‘island’ on a 30-by-90 foot barge will partially circumnavigate Manhattan on the Hudson and East rivers.” Ritual circuits, or: plate tectonics as readymade.
The landmass, an idea by Robert Smithson, will temporarily add a new island to archipelago New York: “the flat-deck barge will hold earth, shrubs, rocks and seven specimens of trees native to the region that will rise 30 to 35 feet. Smithson drew the concept for ‘Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island’ in 1970, but budget and permit issues derailed the plan’s realization, and he died in a plane crash three years later. [Could this, indeed, have been Smithson’s last, albeit suicidal, earthwork: ‘Fiery Dent in Earth’s Surface’…? ‘Artist’s Disappearance into the Planet at High-Speed’…?] The project, budgeted at around $150,000, is a collaboration of the Whitney Museum of American Art and New York-based art group Minetta Brook, and will run from September 17 to 25, after which the trees will be moved to a permanent island and replanted in Central Park.”
Surely they’ll be planted in the outline of an island…?
Next up: BLDGBLOG announces a Manmade Continent to Travel Round the World. Stay tuned…