intervention statement: laredo 004
AMARIE BERGMAN
laredo 004 unifies two objects balanced on separate girders of a restored stationary crane. This temporary unity could be called ‘nearly fluctuating equivalences.’
Earlier explorations with self-contained objects of balance echo the circular poise of laredo 001 combined with laredo 002’s momentarily stable twins. Here, there are geometric similarities alongside contrasting differences.
The crane on the newly revamped Jetty Road in Bunbury / Western Australia, was selected for the site of laredo 004. This 3-ton Arrol Gantry Electric Crane is the last piece of equipment surviving from the operational days of the Bunbury Timber Jetty. Welded to bogies which once ran along the jetty’s rail tracks, the crane’s skeletal base frame has only two riveted steel ‘walls.’ This framework supports the swivelling superstructure - control cab, counterweight, and crane – that was designed to manoeuvre the loading of ships from box cars.
The different heights of the ‘walls’ allow two slender white beams to be placed on opposite sides. In this intervention, they calmly lie on riveted small platforms in asymmetry.
Each beam is made with a small wooden block that supports the weight of its length of painted particleboard. These beams, probably made by Ikea, were found on a street in Elwood/ Melbourne; yet it is likely they were offloaded from a ship with a crane at a seaport.
laredo 004’s conditional setting was unique and also brief: less than an hour. Time logically continues so it is reasonable to say everything at the site (including the crane, temperature, light, and tide), as well as the two components, were changed during – and since – those few moments of coherent integration.
Comments:
laredo 004 honours Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on the same day as this intervention.
“Peace is … unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.”
https://earthcharter.org/tribute-to-mikhail-gorbachev-1931-2022/
Much appreciation, as always, to Paul MacGillivary for his strategic advice and encouragement.
laredo 004
Crane Jetty / Bunbury, Western Australia
30 August 2022
https://www.amariebergman.com/gallery/images-laredo-004
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