Kris Salmanis installed an upside down tree that swung back and forth in the Latvian Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
Carnivalesque and thrilling on first view, the work entitled North by Northwest, eventually becomes macabre, offering only mechanical doom.
Jana Winderen’ installation Dive – staged this August in New York City’s normally congested Park Avenue Tunnel – also had an initial amusement park feel.The multi-layered recordings of marine animals from rivers, lakes and oceans from around the world creates a trance-like sound-scape that is intensely thought-provoking.
Indeed it occurred to me in both venues that, no matter how hard we try to wipe everything out, life on our planet just keeps hanging in.