The most unusual part of this whole experience is the realization that there are things in this world still indescribable and yet oddly understandable.  There are no longer any limits to what art can show us.

In the thirteenth solo artists exhibition on the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden the famous duo Doug and Mike Starn have teamed up with the legendary Metropolitan Museum of Art to create, yet again, another piece of art that cannot be categorized, as usual.  It is a mix of performance, sculpture, and architecture.

Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, consisting of 5,000 interlocking 30 and 40 foot‐long fresh‐cut bamboo poles lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope, will continue to be constructed throughout the duration of the exhibit and will in the end take the form of a monumental cresting wave.  The first phase of the structure measuring about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 30 feet high was completed by opening day, April 27.

Big Bambú is on view at the Met from April 27–October 31, 2010 (weather permitting)

The artists and rock climbers are continuing to build up the eastern portion of the sculpture to an elevation of 50 feet.  An internal footpath artery system grows along with the structure, facilitating its progress.  The artists and a team of rock climbers will build it throughout it’s eight month life span.

Yet for all the talk of schedules and structure the piece is rooted in the rather timeless phenomenon of change and evolution.  It defies categorization as an art form because it suggests itself as a vast complex life form.  The artists’ fascination with organic systems has produced something that seemingly stands on it’s own and grows by itself.  This kind of ever changing presence looks like a sculpture and can be experienced like a performance.

Maybe what Big Bambú is trying to show us, as Nietzsche put it, is that the irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.