April 21, 2008
Ship Sinks On The Lower Don
On the West bank of the Lower Don River, just South of Queen Street at the Eastern Street bridge, a shrunken cruise ship sits beneath a behemoth buoy. Is it waiting to be rescued, or for you to come aboard and join the party? Who knows.
Advertised via fancy insert in The Globe and Mail's Saturday edition a few weeks ago, the 25-foot-long cruise ship is an installation by Québécois art collective BGL and was presented by No. 9, a non-profit environmental/art agency founded by Andrew Davies, who helped develop the Evergreen Brick Works. For two hours on Earth Day (Tuesday, 3:30–5:30 p.m.), No. 9 is hosting environmental walking tours of the area to reconnect Torontonians with the history and ecology of the Don.
Torontoist read the press release wrong and thought it was going to be a sunken ship, which would have been a lot more interesting. We wonder if the 50-person crowd that assembled yesterday at the project's launch misread the release as well, as the mood was one of general bewilderment. The launch was 20% art and 80% advertisement for WATERFRONToronto's Lower Don Lands revitalization project, which would explain the City-funded water fountains and portapotties that seemed to outnumber the audience. When one visitor asked BGL to explain the meaning behind the piece, the artists—dressed as a trio of hipster ship captains—declined and gave the old "that's for you to decide" line.
While the artists and organizers had a great opportunity to comment on the ecological fragility of the downtown's main waterway, the project fell kind of flat. On the upside, the installation sets a precedent for the Don to become a cultural destination in Toronto, rather than simply a cesspool. The site is worth a visit for the duck watching and warm spring sun alone.
Check out more photos of BGL's shrunken ship by Torontoist's Miles Storey behind the cut.
Photos by Miles Storey
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Wait, I'm confused. What do the disembodied unicycle riders have to do with the ecology of the Don?
That's for you to decide, Amanda.
The big life preserver, I get. The little ship, not so much. The legs on a stick are just creepy.
Still, I'm all for anything that brings people to this lonely stretch of bicycle highway. Nothing draws people together like puzzling over art.
I understand it perfectly. Admiral Giambrone had hired the ship to provide transit on the Don (Steve Munro's Swan Boats deemed not expensive enough) but the unicyclists, being tall by virtue of standing on the wheel, got chopped off at the waist by the Eastern bridge.
Noo!! this is my secret bike path. It's the only one that's not full of baby carriages and slow-moving sightseers blocking the path riding or walking side by side. People that do ride here actually seem to like to get a workout. It's the up-side to having to go on the Baview extension to get to it.
And shouldn't the blue-pantsed unicycle rider have the suspiciously-phallic peg-thing sticking out instead of the pink pantsed unicycle?
You know what I'm getting at.
I personally think it's a step up from the rotting detritus and the foul smelling algae that plagues the Lower Don.
I can't really describe how happy those hipster captains in a giant lifesaver make me.
The life-ring is great fun, but that ship needs to sink on an hourly schedule, so that people can gather around and watch it like Old Faithful.
Very French (i.e. la crappé!)