Metaphorical Floating House Art Installation Becomes Metaphorical Sinking House Art Installation

Funny and apropos: American artist Mike Bouchet made a big special art for the Venice Biennale, an, uh, biennial art fair show festival in Venice.  Basically the Art Super Bowl.

His arty thing, called Watershed, was a full-size replica of a prefab American suburban home, towed on pontoons through the canals of Venice.  The Point was more or less that yeah this house looks and is crappy compared to all Venice’s old palazzi.  Also something about the American housing market maybe and Western Civilization probably.  But then a funny thing happened to the floating house.  It stopped floating.  Video, ATJ:  

Amazingly, then, one of the pontoons capsized, and the entire house sank to the bottom of the canal—an unintentional yet utterly perfect coda to the house’s own built-in commentary. Now, a fake generic American suburban home will add its ruins to the underwater archaeology of Venice.

My interpretation is that Americans just wanted to show the Venetians that we can build a house that crumbles and sinks into a canal just as well as they can.

Here is the video (no embedding, sorry).  Worth a watch for sure.

Source: SustainableCitiesCollective.