Elevators

"Elevator" by Mike Baur is a public sculpture commission awarded by the Lincoln Park Community Art Initiative in 2005, with sponsorship from General Iron. General Iron has a large scrap-iron processing facility less than one block away from the site of this piece at the corner of Marcey and Clifton, between the swank of the Lincoln Park stretch of Clybourn St. shopping district and the stank of the North River industrial corridor (no river walks here, folks). There is a steady stream of trucks, both semi- and stake-side, in and out of the scrap facility, bringing a strange and eclectic procession of objects, all bound for a giant shredder. The various metal objects, from cyclone fences and bedsprings to old cars and I-beams, are lifted onto conveyor belts and moved around the facility by big yellow crane-arms that resemble the arm on the sculpture. However, the dynamic power of the working machinery inside the yard is far more interesting than the stagnant stuff called art sitting on a low, shimmied pedestal on the corner. The energy inside the iron facility is both destructive and creative, breaking down once manufactured objects into a reconfigurable substance, which will in its turn be made into something useful, like, say cyclone fences and bedsprings, new cars and I-beams...Somehow, standing there witnessing part of that cycle of steel I came to imagine how a 1960 viewer of Jean Tinguely's "Homage to New York," the metamatic sculpture that self-destructed in front of the MOMA, must have felt. Awed and critical: Awed at the enormity, the audacity, the expectable spectacle; Critical of the flaws--flaws in the actual process/performance of the thing you are witnessing, and, more importantly, the flaws in the beings who created the system that kills itself. The longer I stood there, the more the scene became a strangely unreal, digitally animated, post-apocalyptic scene from Pixar's Wall-E. But the people in the trucks and cranes were not. They were alive, now, today, Chicagoans at work. Finally, I walked back over to "Elevator." Now I see it for what it is: a prediction. It's one artist's formal play with metal and concrete parts resembling machinery, yes, but it's also a prediction that someday, the strong yellow crane arms will all seize up and rust. The energy that runs the cycle of steel today will cease its machinations, kill itself, and by its very existence, commemorate its own death...
I wondered where the people in the trucks and cranes will be.