Big Bambú, Minotaur Horn Head MACRO Museum, Testaccio, Rome, 2012

Installation view, Big Bambú, Minotaur Horn Head MACRO Museum, Testaccio, Rome, Enel Contemporanea 2012

Double page spread, 740 x 520mm


The climbers that build Big Bambú are part of the art - they are the agents that help it rise and reach. In the body of the organism of BB you see all the individual voices of the crew of rock climbers making countless decisions and tying countless knots in brightly colored cord -this is where the interconnections happen and the interdependence of the thousands of randomly directed poles is felt, this is what creates the great unplanned structure, the dangling cords are the evidence. The construction may at first glance look haphazard, but don’t confuse Chaos with Chance, every pole placement and every knot tied is a string of decisions- made by several climbers, over successive time- maybe over weeks or months...and long after we are all gone- the evidence of every decision envelops the visitor. Big Bambú is simplicity and complexity in the same breath. It resonates with life, it is alive, it’s even conscious. Each Big Bambú sculpture is part of the same living organism, continually reconstructed from its own materials, persistently moving forward. This idea, for us, is about cultures, societies, relationships, me, you, and the world itself; all these are made of countless individual elements (or experiences)- all in some way interconnected to the others. Each of these has an innate active virtue and simply through their existence and progressive time they effect a change and eventually what these elements are component of is completely different from what it once was, yet still completely and undeniably the same thing.  This growth is happening all the time. "

–Mike + Doug Starn

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