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Floating Piers Project on Italian lake closes

Artist Christo's orange floating walkway on a northern Italian lake will close Sunday after attracting over a million visitors, twice as many as expected.

Published: 3 July 2016 17:16 CEST
Floating Piers Project on Italian lake closes
Christo's creation attracted an average of 100,000 people a day, and up to 120,000 at weekends. Photo: AFP

The three-kilometre (1.9-mile) undulating path made of 200,000 floating cubes has proved a major hit with the public since it opened on Lake Iseo in June.

Covered in bright orange fabric, the pier stands in stark contrast with the dark water as it links the small islands of Monte Isola and San Paolo to the shore.

“People come from everywhere to walk to nowhere. Not to shop, not to meet friends, they just walk, to nowhere,” said the Bulgarian-born American artist, who once wrapped Berlin's parliament in fabric.

Visitors from around the world have flocked to try “The Floating Piers,” many of them going barefoot to get an idea of what it feels like to walk on water.

Local officials said Christo's creation attracted an average of 100,000 people a day, and up to 120,000 at weekends.

Shuttle buses from nearby carparks and trains from the closest big town, Brescia, were often suspended in order to keep the crowds manageable.

The installation, made of completely recyclable plastic, cost €15 million ($16.7 million) to create but has been free to the public.

Last month an Italian consumer group said the huge cost of cleaning up after the visitors and ensuring their safety raised questions about whether it should have been allowed.

While Christo had promised a 24-hour sensory experience, the local authorities at one stage closed the exhibit at night in order to allow for cleaning.

There were dozens of medical interventions each day, including some that required hospital treatment.

A medical post had to be set up to handle those overcome by the crowds or merely from waiting their turn in the heat.

But it could be the weather that spoils its final day on Sunday, when rain is forecast. Wet weather has already caused the temporary closure of the orange bridge on several occasions.

“Given the anticipated numbers this weekend, visitors should be prepared for wait times and the possibility of not making it on the piers due to capacity,” the organisers warned on Facebook.

Christo first rose to fame along with his late wife Jeanne-Claude for their eye-catching wrapping-up of famous landmarks like the Pont Neuf across the Seine in Paris in 1985.

A similar project at Berlin's Reichstag 10 years later took almost a quarter of a century of bureaucratic wrangling to get off the ground.

 

ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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