I have followed the blogs and news stories and have read about Smithson’s ideas about entropy, the natural system of decay, of systems running down. And I am not the only one who is now asking the question, is saving the Spiral Jetty what Smithson would have wanted? His ideas evolved around the thesis that all systems eventually run down, they waste more energy that is useful in sustaining them, and they decay. Should we then interrupt this premise to save, preserve or restore the Spiral Jetty for our own interests? If the intention of the work was to decay back into nature, which it is, shouldn’t we just leave it alone? Shouldn’t we let nature take its own course?
No we shouldn’t. I believe there are a few simple facts that are being overlooked in regards to Smithson’s intentions for the jetty. The first is that he secured a 20-year lease on that outcropping of land. Had he intended the jetty to dissolve into the lake in a much shorter time, there would have been no reason to prolong the experiment. Besides, the thick coating of salt crystals that line both the inside and outside perimeters of the jetty is, I believe, certainly enough cement to hold it together for many decades to come. Second, the conditions and site, the non-site, was already in his head; he produced this in a 16mm color documentary film (shown in a gallery) combining footage of the actual jetty and films taken in a natural history museum, that linked the two togeher – both “sites” were carefully chosen and interdependant on one another. Thirdly, language, which Smithson viewed very much as sculpture allowed him to construct the jetty in his mind and in actuality, using the building blocks of words, to define, clarify, and probe his relationship to the environment. Language also helped him define his sculptural process and working methadology.
The jetty’s force and energy contained in a spinning counter motion may have been Smithson’s way of reversing the pull of entropy, in some heroic tipping of the balance in favor of life and longevity. Erosion is normal, hundreds even thousands of years; Smithson understood this and used the materials at his disposal, natural materials, pushed up from the Earth – not created by Man. The Spiral Jetty is not a closed system, it was never meant to be shut down; its magnetic draw and beauty will turn forever and ever for the good. An oil rig was never Smithson’s idea of a sculpture.
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