Stairway to Nowhere

March 31, 2018 9:21 PM

The Estonian Academy of Arts continues to produce interesting site-specific installations in the nation’s remote and often extraordinary landscapes.
posted by curious nu (6 comments total)

The images are striking, but also boring after consideration. The installation is ugly, like a plastic bag on a beach, when I think about it more. I would disagree with the author's appeal at the end, and hope that artists would leave a space in nature without human comment or modification.

There is beauty without the need for the ego of the artist to be injected in the landscape.
posted by 517 at 4:49 AM on April 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Let’s not turn this into a shit flinging fest on artists please.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:52 AM on April 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

I’m fond of ramshackle aesthetics, I think it’s more visually interesting than the modern IKEA-boring visual garbage being produced the world over today, but that is a matter of personal preference and one is not more correct than the other, it’s more just how the modern visual aesthetic irritates me. Many others love it, so I try to celebrate the ramshackle crap where it can come into existence.

Humans are a part of the earth, and having just read New York 2140 and the book’s focus on human impacts on the earth and the concept of “assisted migration” I think this staircase is a really interesting “proto climate change” message to present day humans of what future humans are up against.

In that sense I don’t see ego in it at all, I see a pertinent and important message being broadcast from one group of human animals on this planet to all of us other human animals.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:04 AM on April 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm glad this exists.
posted by PMdixon at 10:45 AM on April 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

But wait. The S&R guy on creepypasta reddit always told me to never climb the stairs I find in the forest.
posted by offalark at 10:50 PM on April 1, 2018

You can also listen to the sounds of the Estonian forest through gigantic wooden megaphones, should you so wish.
posted by penguin pie at 3:05 PM on April 4, 2018