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Or, perhaps it is the other way around. Anyway, it certainly seems possible when studying the magnificent sea vessels (more like floating, living, art installations) created by Swoon, an artist based out of my very own New York City. Best known for her work as a street artist, she worked with graffiti-like wheat-paste prints and paper cutouts that appear along building and relatively flat surfaces in the five boroughs. It’s difficult to remember the things of fairytales when working 50 hour weeks in a corporate office, so I was quite pleased to discover this project.
Most recently she’s joined a group of “boat punks” which I’m guessing is a sort of menagerie of artist, musician, tattooed, organic, vegan, creators, thinkers, and adventurers. The boats are beautiful, they remind me of the crooked home in James and the Giant Peach, in a rabbit hole, broke-down carnival, sort of way. And, the big idea is that these Floating Cities (they are being called) are going to float from Slovenia to Venice, putting on small productions and creating and adding to the things along the way. While this is not the first time they’ve gone on such a mission (they completed voyages on the Hudson and Mississippi), this is the most ambitious. Here is an excerpt from the “about” section of the website, since I do not think I could put it better myself.
Photo courtesy of Tod Seelie
“The vessels are imagined as a hybrid between boats and bits of land broken off and headed out to sea. Watching them approach the shore is like seeing a floating city in the distance, as improbable as Venice itself. To the real life crew, the boats are a place of refuge – both a home and a way of moving through the world. To those who encounter the boats for the first time, they are a reminder that anything that can be imagined can be built.”
I encourage you to visit the website yourself, look at the photos, read the rest of their mission, and fantasize what it must be like to join their voyage, or even sit in on one of their curious productions amongst the already existing mystique of Venice. Sigh.
