Soon begins a two-month adventure in Israel. I will no longer find my days in a sunlight-deprived room seated in front of my computer in a museum, but will be outside in the blazing sun, nowhere near a computer, yet still within the confines of museum-world.

The Israel Museum

The Big Bambú has been constructed in multiple places around the globe—NYC, Tokyo, Venezia, Roma—and now Jerusalem. This will be my first time harnessing into the bamboo and tying knot after knot until, with our group of 20, we have constructed (coagulated?) the explorable chaotic frame that is The Starn Brothers vision. Unlike the towering Rome installation "You've Got Horns Like a Minotaur" at the MACRO Museum, the Israel Museum installation is likely to be lower and wider.

(Big Bambú, You've Got Horns Like A Minotaur, 2012, installation at the MACRO Museum,
Rome, dmstarn.com)

For a little grounding in the vision of the work, I pulled this off The Starn Brothers web site:

The concept of Big Bambú has nothing to do with bamboo; it is the invisible architecture of life and living things. Every person, every culture has been built with this architecture, that architecture is chaos, random interdependence of moments, actions becoming interactions, trajectories intersecting— creating growth or change. Big Bambu is the medium of life—we all maneuver our own trajectories in life through the trajectories of every other individual. We gain footholds on their activities and circumstances and use them to move through life—swimming on the chaos medium of life, chaos is a law of the universe, and we recognize it as part of life that we all flow through every day, but more than flow through, we all use chaos—all the time. Everything depends upon one another and the loads are distributed throughout, the interdependence is natural and fluid. There is not too much weight applied to any one thing.

From the installation on top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010 (dmstarn.com)

It should be noted that the Starn Brothers are said to encourage the random creation and input from the climber/installers, which means that—just like the majority of sculptural creations—there are many hands in the making and installing of a single work. I like it. It does however evoke a long-standing debate: Who are the artists? Is the artist the craftsperson or the one with the vision? Should the craftspeople get equal billing? There is oft no record of the many artisans who put their expertise into the creation of work, no names, no recognition. They are just laborers, the gasoline that makes the motor run. But here, again from the Starn Brothers web site...

The climbers that build it with us are part of the art—they are the agents that help it rise and reach. In the body of the organism of BB you see all the individual voices of the crew of rock climbers making countless decisions and tying countless knots in brightly colored cord—this is where the interconnections happen and the interdependence of the thousands of randomly directed poles is felt, this is what creates the great unplanned structure, the dangling cords are the evidence. The construction may at first glance look haphazard, but don’t confuse Chaos with Chance, every pole placement and every knot tied is a string of decisions—made by several climbers, over successive time—maybe over weeks or months...and long after we are all gone, the evidence of every decision envelops the visitor.

... recognition of the necessity and integration of the 'installers' who are also creating the work, who are making and performing as part of the piece, part of the concept, in order for the piece to be what the artists' vision is. Now, re-read the concept statement above.

From the installation on top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010 (dmstarn.com)

Me? I'm not pressed about acknowledgement of my participation or creation; I agree with their concept and happily join in in my role, and, at this point, offer no position in the credit-giving debate. I suspect, however, that after two months of 10-hour days working off the ground, grinding my hands to shreds with the other Bamboozlers, I will have deduced fairly precisely where I stand.

Or maybe not. It's not a long-standing debate for nothing.