In times like these, we must ask and answer such questions.
From mid-September through early October, Fireflies flickered up and down Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway with hundreds of colorful, emoji-like lanterns bouncing on arched wires attached to dozens of pedicabs.
In this case, both destination and journey were one and the same. Fun.
Fireflies (Source)
Fireflies celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Parkway and, yes, it was fun to see as a pedestrian. And it was even more fun being out in the Autumn air in a ready-for Halloween pedicab.
The artist, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, is known around the world for his creative pyrotechnics. He is probably most famous for his work as Director of Visual and Special Effects at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Summer Olympics, Beijing 2008 (Source)
Cai’s “explosive art connects earth to sky and humanity to spirit,” promised a 2016 Netflix film, Sky Ladder. And his Fireflies wasn’t designed with pyrotechnics, like his Fallen Blossoms, a memorial display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2009. But the Parkway, which was designed as a conscious giving of the city over to the newfangled automobile, offers a once-in-a-century opportunity to ask a questions about space, speed and urban life.
Should the car have even been invited into the city? Was the Parkway an obsequious welcome of the internal combustion engine into a fragile 17th century urban space? Are we prepared to admit this regrettable mistake and its irretrievable outcome? Or are we still in denial?
Some historical soul searching is in order.
Isn’t that what big anniversaries are for?
But we wouldn’t know it from Fireflies; it doesn’t consider any big questions. To me, it looks like Cai Guo-Qiang and the Association for Public Art, the organization that commissioned the project, both took a pass and went straight to celebration.
Fun for the sake of fun in a city that long ago lost a good piece of its soul to the automobile.
Fallen Blossoms (Source)
Now, it wouldn’t be so egregious, this purposeful avoiding of the big question, if the artist always specialized in the frivolous. But Cai actually likes difficult questions.
For instance, in a few days he’ll be participating in a doozy as part of an anniversary (certainly not a celebration) at the University of Chicago. The occasion? A two-day program entitled “Nuclear Reactions—1942: A Historic Breakthrough, an Uncertain Future.”
December 2nd is the 75th anniversary of the world’s first self-sustaining controlled chain reaction.
In this case, the appropriate, profoundly thought provoking, definitely un-fun public art response will be Cai’s “Massive Mushroom Cloud Over Chicago.”
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