"Visually enhance" may be rather an overstatement--visually enhance a
free-flowing river in high mountains? Or maybe imprint it with one's own
take, limiting the imaginative free play of everyone else (unless it truly
is instantly forgotten as if it had never happened).
Clear cutting, and the levelling of mountains, goes through the same
vetting, and the side with the shekels usually wins. And there are gated
communities being advertized as "riverside" in Colorado--on rivers that are
toxic to drink because of mine effluent. The more ecomomically marginal the
human community the fewer the local voices saying no. The Christos have
plenty of other things they could propose with far less potential consequences.
How about not "enhancing"--or piggybacking--on the allure of the already
wondrous and instead draping a landfill, or a favela, so as to create
beauty, and economic advantage, where few see either? Would that be too big
an imaginative leap for the happy pair, or would they be in danger of not
making as much money or as many headlines? How about draping an oil field?
Or a lifeless river? Or a battlefield? There are plenty to choose from.
Mark
At 04:18 PM 3/1/2005, you wrote:
> > So let's try this one: suppose one were to explain to the Christos that
> > plant and animal life entirely dependent on access to full sunlight and the
> > river for the few scant months in the Rockies when everything isn't encased
> > in snow will inevitably be harmed. We don't know how severely they will be
> > harmed, but there is a risk that it could be very severe indeed, perhaps
> > permanently so, at a time when all ecosystems, especially those in
> > unforgiving environments, need all the help they can get. Do you think the
> > Christos would say "Of course you're right, let's call it off?" Or would it
> > be "You're right, but think how liberating!" And how liberated would you
> > feel, as a hiker of remote landscapes?
>Mind you, Mark - whatever that phrase may mean - every Christo project goes
>through review by local and state boards, including environmental impact
>reports. When the local public gets involved -pro and con - that can be very
>lively and snuff a project or radically control it. What, I suggest, if you
>take the opposite view that the project (the way it may visually enhance the
>awareness of the river) will work to support projects and controls that
>honor the environment. We're not talking anything analogous to 'clear cut
>logging' here - au contraire.
>
>Remember, please, as you read the above, that I really liked it (tho "the
>Gates give rebirth and a public acknowledgment" is a pretty drastic
>overstatement of what I in fact said). It's a question of the admission
>cost.
>
>I have heard several people say that the gated trails the cross cutting
>patterns variously looping through the Park -
>Have rekindled the awareness of the incredible bounty of the original
>design.
>
>He who will not kill for poetry, but almost...
>
>Stephen V
>Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
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