My new favorite inappropriately hilarious Alaskan news story

[sholio]

Nov. 24: art installation consisting of 85 incredibly disturbing and painstakingly constructed human figures is installed on the beach at Cook Inlet, near Anchorage. Official opening is set for Dec. 5. I should note that the Alaskan ocean coast, as you might expect, is known for terrifically destructive winds, tides, etc. This is also just about the creepiest piece of art I've ever seen, omfg.

(Orion and I, watching the video of the installment of the figures, as the tides visibly cause them to wobble and tilt even while they're being put in: "Wow, that's not going to last long.")

Nov. 25, i.e. the very next day: All but 11 of them have been completely demolished.

Even 11 statues erected at the top of the bluff, high above the water, were affected. Of the four closest to the Point Woronzof Park parking lot three had pitched forward, their rebar supports bent at 30 to 40 degree angles. One’s first reaction was that they had been vandalized, but as this reporter and an Alaska Dispatch News photographer watched, the fourth, touched only by wind, slowly leaned over and joined its companions on the ground.

I am laughing so hard right now. I know I shouldn't be dying of laughter at the wreckage of an artist's hopes and dreams, especially a ~serious art project~ about depression and mental illness, but ... THE VERY NEXT DAY. They didn't make it to the exhibit opening. They didn't even make it to the end of the week! Alaskan weather does not mess around. And apparently it's an art critic.

My hopelessly inappropriate laughter is not being helped by the photo they used to illustrate the second article:

Comments

[ratcreature]

Well, it probably says something even more poignant now, that it was additionally battered and only very transient. Though really in tough weather conditions you probably ought to consult a structural engineer or such to calculate wind forces properly and then plan accordingly for statues.

Then again, even super famous artists in really high prestige projects without a convenient extreme weather excuse have similar problems. Like take the central Holocaust memorial in Berlin, made of thousands of rectangular concrete slabs you walk through that cost 25 million euro and the things started crumbling with cracks not even two years after the opening.

[cathexys]

Yes, the Berlin Holocaust memorial is a perfect analogy. Meaningful beyond its initial intent (I mean, a lot of memorials these days, esp of tragedies are meant to be ephemeral, but not THAT ephemeral...)

[ratcreature]

Unintended meaningful side effects abounded with that holocaust memorial. Like that the company who made the anti-graffiti coating was some successor to the chemical company having made zyklon B for the holocaust, and then once it was pointed out half the people involved in the project, including the main architect iirc, found the symbolism of that apt for the continuity in German industry etc. while the other half was outraged...

[cathexys]

Oh I had no idea. How utterly, evilly perfect...

Sigh.

[sholio]

Yeah, I guess if artists thought about things like strength of materials and structural testing, they'd be engineers ... (The memorial - OUCH on so many levels.)

[umadoshi]

Yeah, I guess if artists thought about things like strength of materials and structural testing, they'd be engineers ...

*wry* That reminds me of whichever bridge it was that basically collapsed as soon as it was built because the engineers hadn't accounted for...something...

*pokes around online*

Ah, I think it's this that I'm thinking of.

[rydra_wong]

I actually find the photos of the art rather moving (and unfortunately true to the experience of depression), but wow, that was not the best site choice.

I know there are some nature-art pieces where the destruction of the installation by the environment is an intended part of it, but ... this clearly wasn't one of them. Oh dear.

I hope they manage to reconstruct it somewhere more structurally-sound.

(And take lots of photos of the damage, because in its weird way, that's inadvertently powerful too.)

[sholio]

Apparently they're going to move it up the hill. I think the main reason why it creeped me out so bad is because people occasionally get trapped and drown on the mudflats in that area (it's happened a few times) and to me the figures look like they're crawling up out of the mud. Actually, when I first saw the pictures I thought it was a (questionably tasteful) memorial to the mudflats victims, rather than what it turned out to be.

But yeah, the damage is an inadvertent part of the message ...

[sheron]

I wondered if I was the only one who found it creepy...

[cathexys]

Wow, that last image makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

Like the others said, there's something perfect about the (all too early) destroyability, but of course it would have been nice yo have lasted through the opening...

[sholio]

I guess they're going to try moving it up the hill, so maybe it WILL actually last until spring this time! Or whatever's left of it ...

[rachelmanija]

That is hilarious. Hopefully the artist will find that it's all part of the metaphor of the destructive effects of depression.

[sholio]

I guess if artists thought about things like structural strength and site testing, they'd be engineers instead ...

It made me think of a story a friend told me in college, about this mountaintop near where he grew up (in southeast Alaska) that had notoriously high winds, and some weather researchers from the local university who decided to see how strong the winds were. They put up a wind gauge that went up to 120 mph.

They got a couple days of weather data before it blew away.

So they put up one that went to 150 mph.

It blew away too.

At that point they gave up.

(It may be apocryphal but it's still funny.)

[rachelmanija]

Ha ha. That reminds me of Ahmednagar, India, home of some of the worst summers on the planet. One summer I fried an egg on the sidewalk. That same summer I put the thermostat out in the sun to see just how hot it was. It went up to 120, which was its maximum, then exploded.

[brightknightie]

Without reading the article, I am jumping to the conclusion that the poor artist -- and/or the unfortunate exhibit organizer -- isn't Alaskan. :-) Or Washingtonian, or British Columbian...

As I remember it, Thanksgivings is windstorm season from north of Anchorage to south of Seattle.