A response to Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls

The ideal way to view them must be by driving past, at high speed, along the BQE, perhaps not in the standstill traffic or rush hour, but during the rocketing insanity that comes just before and after. If you're concentrating on avoiding collisions then maybe the waterfalls will only gnaw at the corner of your eye. Let them sneak up on you, and perhaps they'll retain some mystery, the wonder that comes from discovering something completely out of place.

Often, patient contemplation opens art up further, deepens the ideas, sharpens the questions it asks, takes the work and makes it grander. In this case, though, it invites boredom. The waterfalls are diminished by what surrounds them, and their physical structures are too much of the place. Perhaps Walter Ong would point to the power of the naming in his response--call a project New York Waterfalls and you'll invite heightened expectations. Provide cages that spit water and you'll have trouble meeting those expectations. People love waterfalls. They instill in us a sense of awe. But they do so because of their grandeur and beauty and power. When you visit a waterfall, it is the biggest, most dynamic thing in your field of vision and of sound. That's just not the case here, and it really hurts the work.


Look at that waterfall!


In an interview on the Waterfalls offical website, Elliason claimed that the project is more about community then it is about nature. But I'm not sure what a public art projec that can only be experienced from a distance, and which invites little interaction, actually says about community.

Here are two photographs I took in Medellin, Colombia, last April. This first is of a Botero sculpture called "El Pajaro" which was destroyed in 1995 in a bombing that killed 23 people and injured 200.



The next is its replacement, El Pajaro de la Paz, which sits right next to the mangled shell of its predecessor.


It's a sculpture of a bird, but I would put forward that this project is more about community then it is about nature.


Finally, here are two photographs I took yesterday, during the Circle Line boat tour of the Waterfalls.

These are my fellow boat passengers taking in Waterfall #1:




And here they are completely ignoring Waterfall #3:




That sums up their response. And, I guess it sums up mine as well.