Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

It's rooftop season again, in more ways than the casual impromptu bbq with drinks and friends. The must-experience art of the season is going on right now on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it will be going, growing, morphing and inviting you to take part all the way until Halloween.

© LitLinx

The project Big Bambú, by Mike + Doug Starn, is the whole ball of art-wax: It's installation art, it's performance art, it's sculpture, and if you believe in their claim to have been afraid of heights before they conceived of it, it's even art-therapy. The work-in-progress is already open to visitors on the rooftop of the Met garden, and is currently over 30 ft. high and involves 3,000 bamboo poles and over 30 miles of nylon rope. The Starn twins and a team of 20 rock climbers are continuing to work on the piece throughout the 6-month duration of the exhibit, and at its end it will be swaying over 50 ft. high above the Met's roof and have over 5000 bamboo poles lashed together with over 50 miles of rope.

© Mike + Doug Starn, Big Bambú, Metropolitan Museum of Art 2010

The evolving architectural aspects of Big Bambú are inherently related to sister philosophical/metaphorical concepts concerning change, chaos, interconnectedness and what it means to be a living organism. In an audio interview with Metropolitan curator Anne Strauss, the Starn twins commented that:

We've always done work that was about change, and about how nothing is ever really finished. It's always going to exist in time and through time. Meanings change and objects change. This piece is representative about what it means to be alive. Not just like an animal—it could be a city, a society or a culture. Something that is always complete, but never finished.

I'm quite fascinated to see how the visitors at the Met [going into the piece]...how that's going to change and feed the piece.

We found out that it was a lot of fun. We had no idea; it was a dry, conceptual piece. But climbing in it, we feel like kids again—it's amazing. I feel that joy of life coming through on the piece, I really can't remember being happier than I am up on the roof, over Central Park.

One detail I loved listening to in the interview was that when the Starns first conceived of the piece, they considered hiring workers that were in the business of constructing huge bamboo scaffolding in Asian cities where the material is ubiquitous, and often stands in for steel. But they realized that if they did that, they would be confronted with skilled workers that were used to doing things in a very systematic and proscribed ways, and that this would clash with the notion of organic and wave-like growth that they had for the piece. "We wanted people who knew nothing about building, but weren't afraid of heights. So we thought of rock climbers," the Starns said.

One of the most beautiful aspects to Big Bambú are the lashed pathways that weave up and through the piece (and the air!), building upon itself as the exhibition continues to evolve.

Bamboo pathways inside Big Bambú, © artlobster

For a great introduction to the piece (and to see how twins really do complete one anothers' sentences), watch the interview below with Mike + Doug from the NYT:

Now, how to get to this roof? There are two ways to see the piece. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition page:

Visitors are able to experience Big Bambú from the Roof Garden level, open to everyone during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, and to walk among a forest of bamboo poles that serves as the base of the sculpture. Alternatively, visitors are able to explore the artwork on brief tours led by Museum-trained guides. On the guided tours, held during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, small groups of visitors are able to walk along the elevated interior network of pathways roughly 20 to 40 feet above the Roof Garden. Tickets are required for the guided tours, and specific guidelines apply to those interested in participating.

You can read the full guidelines here. I'm told that if you go on the guided tour, you have to sign all kinds of death and dismemberment disclaimers. And I'm totally afraid of heights. But I just might have to do this.

Big Bambú runs through October 31, 2010.