Floating Island．一座浮島

Robert Smithson, my favorite earth artist, finally had his unfulfilled concept realized by The Whitney Museum and Minetta Brook. On action from September 17 to 25, 2005, Floating Island is a 30 x 90-foot barge landscape with earth, rocks, and native trees and shrubs, towed by a tugboat around the island of Manhattan. This concept was developed in 1970, the same year he created his best-known work, the ambitious earthwork Spiral Jetty, and the same year that I was born. Unfortunately, he died in a plane crash while surveying sites for his work Amarillo Ramp in Texas, 1973, in the middle of his glorious career.
In Smithson's concept, like a homage to Frederick Law Olmsted's design of Central Park, this project offers a displacement of the park–itself a man-made creation from its natural habitat. Nevertheless, this project challenges the role of observer, while the little island makes its trip around the island of Manhattan, it's like that the island, as a re-arranged fragment of the park, is the tourist instead of those New Yorkers standing ashore watching.

Robert Smithson，我最崇敬的地景藝術家，終於能夠讓他生前的構想之一，一座浮島，由惠特尼美術館和Minetta Brook基金會付諸執行，9/17-25在紐約哈德遜河上行動展出。
這個構想是和他最富盛名的代表作Spiral Jetty同樣在1970年產生的。這座小島，植基於他對Frederick Law Olmsted的中央公園設計之緬懷與回應，由取自於紐約當地以及中央公園的一些砂石樹木組合而成。這座縮影的中央公園分身，將以緩慢的速度在哈德遜河上繞行曼哈頓島。
而我，更覺得這件作品對於觀者的角色是一個反響。小島本身將扮演主動的觀者，看盡曼哈頓島上的繁華人事，包括岸邊圍觀的紐約客們。

*Picture from http://www.robertsmithson.com/