A new installation by the artist Christo, “The Floating Piers,” consists of temporary bridges spanning Italy’s Lake Iseo. The Floating Piers is a walkway stretching three kilometers that connects two islands in Lake Iseo to each other and to the mainland. 

The project, Christo said, “is all this” — the piers, the lake, the mountains, “with the sun, the rain, the wind, it’s part of the physicality of the project, you have to live it.” For sixteen days – June 18 through July 3, 2016 – The Floating Piers tries to reframe a familiar landscape. Lake Iseo is located in Italy’s Lombardy region, 100 kilometers east of Milan and 200 kilometers west of Venice. First conceived 46 years ago, the floating piers project has been funded through the sale of Christo’s original drawings and collages (15 million euro project). It is Christo’s first large scale outdoor project since Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized The Gates in New York City in 2005 and since his collaborator and wife Jeanne-Claude passed away in 2009. 

Assembled from 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes and covered with 100,000 square meters of shimmering dahlia-yellow fabric on the piers, the saffron-colored walkway rises just above the surface. “Those who experience The Floating Piers will feel like they are walking on water – or perhaps the back of a whale,” said Christo. “The light and water will transform the bright yellow fabric to shades of red and gold throughout the sixteen days.” The outdoor installation has been created to undulate with the movement of waves. “Each project is like a slice of our lives,” Christo said, “and part of something that I will never forget.” 

From Saturday the 18th to July 3, the project will be open and free to the public 24 hours a day. “Like all of our projects, The Floating Piers is absolutely free and accessible 24 hours a day, weather permitting,” said Christo. “There are no tickets, no openings, no reservations and no owners. The Floating Piers are an extension of the street and belong to everyone.” After the 16-day exhibition, the walkway will be dismantled and all components will be removed, industrially recycled and resold. “The important part of this project is the temporary part, the nomadic quality.”

Photo: ©2016 Christo

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Czech artist Jakub Geltner has been installing sculptures of surveillance cameras into public spaces since 2011.

His first installation was in the centre of Prague amid the urban architecture. Since then, his sculptures have been in a waterfront, a former elementary school, and in other popular public sites such as facades of a church, basilica or palace. Geltner tends to draw attention to the excessive presence of technological equipment and surveillance devices in our culture and society. His work seems to be a criticism of such a modern invasion. 

With his recent Nest Project, the Prague-based artist has installed a dozen security cameras on the seaside. Presented for the 2015 edition of Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark, this latest work shows originality with a grouping of technological systems placed within nature, attached to ocean rocks rather than on contemporary buildings or in an architectural environment. 

In this sculpture, Geltner confronts two opposite worlds – a natural landscape led by solitude and well-being, and a world ruled by surveillance and supervision, where cameras intrude into people’s privacy. For a few years now, Geltner has intervened in public places and galleries, bringing his own interpretation of artificially-affected environments.

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