Olafur Eliasson Waterfall, originally uploaded by dietrich

Richard Fleming asks about the apparent blogosphere waterfall blackout:

I’m at a loss to explain the astonishing lack of coverage of Olafur Eliasson’s massive public art project in New York Harbor. One would think that at the very least the blogosphere would have something to say about the four towering waterfalls, conveniently positioned for maximum visibility off the south-eastern tip of manhattan, since this is exactly the sort of big, crowd-pleasing, innocuous and offensive-to-no-one-(except-hard-core-curmudgeons) sort of “art event” that usually brings in the bloggers in droves. Perhaps I need to improve my googling skills, but I haven’t heard a word.

I think Richard answered his own question: Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls, while interesting, are no match for New York City.
The essence of the problem lies in the work’s context. Eliasson’s “The Weather Project” (below, near) at the Tate Modern or his more intimate work (below, far) at PS1 all force the viewer to interact with natural forces. In both examples, you are intimately aware of the body in space and body’s scale and the scale of the installation and the space (positive or negative) created by the work.Additionally, Eliasson’s work generally doesn’t hide the apparatus and infrastructure which create the work; thus allowing for reading the work on two levels, a physical manifestation of of the structuralist signifier/signified dialectic.


The Waterfalls failure is that, while massive in scale, there is no challenge or redefinition of the body in space. The Waterfalls do not challenge your scale nor do they compare at all to the scale of New York City. Not to mention Eliasson’s dialectic is completely destabilized by the massive amount of infrastructure required to create the flowing water. They are wonderful to look at, but as installations they lack the power of Eliasson’s prior work because they lack context with the human body in space.
I’m opening comments: what do you think about Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls?