KAMIEL KLAASSE | NL Architects for NEW CONCORDIA ISLAND Contest /// Unpublished drawings and images of the shipwreck available after registration \\\

"Prices for certain building materials are skyrocketing. Copper and Bronze become so valuable that they now trigger specific criminal behavior. So-called ‘copper thieves’ risk their lives in a hunt for electricity cables, lightning rods, water spouts or railway conduits.
Especially Art in Public Space has proofed an easy target. Large sculptures were blatantly lifted from their bases to be melted back into raw material. In 2005 a 2000kg Henry Moore Sculpture was stolen near London. It might now be a door handle or a window profile…
Recently 7 bronzes were snatched from the garden of the Singer Museum in Laren among which a cast of Rodin’s Le Penseur. The robbers were caught in the middle of cutting up the sculpture into smaller pieces that would fit in the oven. Their lack of anatomic knowledge turned The Thinker into a horrific version of the Venus de Milo. Virtual Mutilation: looking at the sculpture actually hurts… a bizarre form of phantom pain.
Restoration took two years; an incredible effort, stunning recovery. But in a way the disfigured sculpture was even more compelling: a painful effigy of monumental stupidity….
The Concordia could perhaps be understood in a similar way. Could it turn us into Thinker?
Decommissioned ships are now sometimes used to spark marine life: sunken vessels turn into artificial reef. Could the Concordia form a fertile ground for a new biotope?
Will it be possible to imagine new functionality or new meaning for this monumental wreck? Can new life emerge from this tragedy?"

Kamiel Klaasse

www.icsplat.org

image: Rodin Penseur Wrecked