This recent sadness off the coast of Brazil has me thinking about aviation disasters. The worst accident in aviation history was in 1977, at the Tenerife airport on the Canary Islands. KLM 4805 collided with Pan Am 1736 in the fog, killing 583. A series of accidents and miscommunication. In 2007 a monument went up at Tenerife:
Quoted from the monument website:
The monument for the victims of Tenerife is a sculpture which is a spiral staircase, and a spiral staircase which is a sculpture. The spiral theme is a symbol of infinity.
The sculpture will not be immediately recognized as such, and yet neither is it in practical terms a staircase. There is no banister, and the ‘steps’ are not intended to be used. The 18-metre-high sculpture is not what it seems, which is emphasized by the 12-metre-high fence that has been placed around it. The transparent fence encloses and protects the sculpture.
Rudi van de Wint once said: people either like or dislike a monument, but a monument is about so much more. The ritual significance of the location is of prime importance. Monuments are often places of yearning; they are projections of impotence, of the brokenness of the human spirit and of the universal drama.
A monument which encapsulates a yearning for reconciliation or acceptance can never be too sober, because the real drama cannot be expressed in art. Art can only provide a subtle hint.
For a moment, the sculpture appears to move endlessly upwards, but the spiraling movement of the steps has been abruptly interrupted. It can be seen as having an open ending, but also as a never-ending motion. It appears to be an unfinished form, cut off suddenly, like the victims’ lives. But the staircase, high up on the mountain, also makes minimal contact with the sky above, with the infinite star-spangled heavens which it appears to touch ever so briefly.
I finished Blake Butler’s lovely strange EVER and I’m currently reading Shane Jones’s strange lovely Light Boxes. I will talk about them more once I get my head out of the sky.
