This Epic Art Installation Legitimately Lets You Walk On Water
You can’t say that renowned artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff – better known as just ‘Christo’ – does things in halves. He and his late wife Jeanne-Claude were the ones who famously took icons like the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1985 and Berlin’s Reichstag in 1995 and wrapped them in huge swathes of fabric, transforming the landmarks into imposing pieces of public art and confusing a whole heap of tourists at the same time.
His latest large-scale project is just as eye-catching, and heaps more fun.
For The Floating Piers, Christo has installed a three-kilometre long floating yellow platform which connects the picturesque Italian village of Sulzano with two small islands in the middle of Lake Iseo. This walkway gives visitors the chance to straight up walk on water, the pier shifting slightly with the waves.
On the official website, Christo compares the physicality of the experience to “perhaps walking on the back of a whale”. Of course, countless life guards, monitors and information officers are on hand in case someone stacks it and ends up in the lake.
The 16 metre wide pier is made of 200,000 floating cubes covered in a bright yellow fabric. It’s meant to be an extension of the street, with the yellow fabric covering the pedestrian lanes in Sulzano and reaching down to the water where angular straight lines cut unique shapes into the deep lake.
‘Breathtaking’ is a pretty strong word, but I struggle to think of a more fitting one.
The project is the realisation of a concept Christo and his late wife Jeanne-Claude envisaged 46-years-ago. The Floating Piers will exist for just 16 days, from June 18 to July 3, and it’s free and accessible 24 hours of the day. After this, the work will be dismantled, its parts recycled and resold. Needless to say, seeing it is a once-in-a-lifetime sorta thing.
Lake Iseo is found 100 kilometres east of Milan and 200 kilometres west of Venice. Be warned though, the crowds are massive and some recent bad weather has forced closures of the piers.
(Lead image: Wolfgang Volz)
