Big Bambú #8
Naoshima Museum, Setouchi Triennial
Teshima, Japan 2013

A beautiful path through the bamboo forest leads to a Bambú walkway tied directly to the living stalks and winds its way 200 feet up through the forest, higher and higher, until ultimately breaking through the surface of the canopy of bamboo leaves. A large fishing boat, 70 feet long and made entirely of Bambú, floats on the canopy sea of bamboo over 60 feet high. The visitor approaches the boat on the elevated path as if swimming through the canopy and climbs aboard. The view out from the boat shows the waves of bamboo leaves flowing in the breeze with the inland Seto Sea and a neighboring island in the distance. Bamboo leaves break over the bow and bamboo flows across the deck, tips of the long poles that are the fabric of the boat are splashes and fishing poles.
Entering the cabin of the boat, the visitor descends below deck into the hull to see the chaotic interdependent structure creating the being of the boat interconnected with the sea. A catwalk through the hull leads the visitor to the bow andthe observation bubble which was thought up in a dream actually.*

The artwork encompasses the entire forest, The structure is created from several hundred living poles in the rhizomatic root system (new poles sprout daily, encroaching the elevated pathway) and about 2,000 poles harvested from other forests on the island and from Kyushu.

*thank you Steve Zissou

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