9/11 - Far Flung Girders

    I am sometimes very caught off guard by the broad influence of American culture in New Zealand.  Case #523: I was walking along the Otakaro riverbank when I stumbled upon what I thought at first was a hideous piece of industrial modern art.

    

    This is my least favorite kind of modern sculpture, something that looks like it could almost be a fun piece of playground equipment but is clearly covered in enough knobbly bits and rusty nails that it isn't meant to be clambered on.  Unless you buy into a BigPharma tetanus booster conspiracy. The surface has no bright paint, no interesting materials, no evocative shapes, just an industrial abstraction of a corkscrew.

    Luckily, I am a compulsive plaque reader, so I went over to study up on this bit of rusty steel getting in the way of the native plants and giving the pigeons another place perch.

The first plaque reads: 

A TRIBUTE TO FIREFIGHTERS 

This sculpture within the Firefighters Reserve stands as a silent tribute to firefighters worldwide who risk their lives daily in the pursuit of their duty.

Firefighters are always in the front line and never more so than on September 11,2001, when International terrorists hijacked four domestic American jet airliners and flew two of them, along with their passengers, into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. The two lowers imploded and collapsed, and among ine more than 2,800 dead were 343 New York firefighters. All ithat remained of the twin towers, and the lives lost within, was a mountainous pile of twisted steel and smoking rubble. 

In May 2002, five steel girders, weighing 5.5 tons were salvaged from the site of the World Trade Center and gifted to the City of Christchurch by the City of New York for use in a public artwork to honour all firefighters worldwide. The suspended component or "spear", in its red hot state, fell from the 102nd floor of World Trade Center Tower Two, piercing the subway below.

Pardon the bird shit, everybody's a critic.

The sculpture stands within a dedicated reserve opposite the Central Fire Station on the banks of the Avon River, near the historic site of the former Tautahi Pa. There were important Maori cultural and spiritual issues to be considered in placing a sculpture, mode from a site of death near this significant life-giving site. Consultation with representatives of the Rünaka of Otautahi and Tuahuriri took place to ensure that processes and procedures were enacted to appropriately acknowledge and address the cultural considerations. 

The opening of the reserve and unveiling of the sculpture on October 26 marked the beginning ot he 2002 Seventh World Firefighters Games in Christchurch.

This sculpture "Tribute to Firefighters" was created by Christchurch artist Graham Bennett. A work of stark simplicity, the composition was derived from observations of firefighting skills, notions of overhead dangers and of recovery.

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    I still think it's hideous as far as art goes.  It just also fills me with vivid images of the awkward council meetings... "um, NYC wants to send us over 5 tonnes of very iconic trash to us.  Where should we put it?"  Let alone the complexities of sticking it next to the site of the significant Maori village.