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North Africa … Casablanca … Mohammed V Airport … central departure lobby. A
tiled wall over 90 feet high featuring decorative elements on which
spotlights have been trained in places. Drops of water trickle along
transparent wires strung in front of this wall. At first glance this gives
the impression of jets of water descending at right angles to the floor, but
that would clearly be impossible.
At the centre of the lobby a golden cone is suspended from the ceiling, its pointed end hovering some 12 feet above the ground. I cannot imagine what the patron or creator of the object must have had in mind, but I can just see the whole thing crashing down on top of an unsuspecting passer-by, piercing the top of the skull and penetrating the head, which can only explode due to the cone's increasing girth, then continuing its macabre journey through the weak tissue below which will strain around the tip, forcing the legs to assume a most awkward position. The effect becomes all the more grotesque as the tip of the cone penetrates the floor. Out of respect for human life I shall refrain from going into further detail. This would herald the birth of a new monument, although it remains to be seen whether the tiled floor would permit it. Would the tiles be up to the impact, and how about the cone itself, would it be good enough to come to a standstill at a jaunty angle rather than toppling sideways? I briefly positioned myself underneath the cone, wondering whether there was a button somewhere which would enable the above sequence of events to be activated. Looking up, I saw that the ceiling acts as a clock face at the heart of which the golden cone still lacks any discernible function as it just dangles there rather than turning with the hands. Once I had come this far, I could no longer suppress the thought that instead of bearings, the hollow axles of the clock hands, which at some point or other have to encircle the suspension structure, contained round cutters of the type found in the device used by plumbers to cut copper piping, which with every hourly revolution penetrated a little bit deeper into the suspension axle until the latter had been weakened to the point of no longer being able to cope with the weight of its charge. To which I would add that the contraption has been arranged in such a way as to create the illusion of being solid, so that even those who wonder about the use of such a structure - in so far as they do not interpret it as a contribution to the exact reproduction of time - have no cause for concern. After which I rushed upstairs to take a picture. All of which leaves the burning question whether this is a covert form of monumental sadism or rather and more generally, an installation anchored in the powerful philosophical reflection that man is a frail and vulnerable creature, bolstered by the acquired insight that whereas in the old days it was only natural disasters, today it's also man's own actions which represent a significant factor in the actual outcome of providence. |