Last summer, I had the pleasure of spending some time at the Madagascar Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Madagascar is an art combine that specializes in building scary, awesome things (think fire, lots of fire). It’s a great place run by lovely people.
The goal at Madagascar, succinctly, is to produce dangerous art. Conventional mediums are certainly capable of evoking strong emotion, but for some the experience lacks a certain visceral thrill. Dangerous art is genuinely frightening and, more often than not, participatory. Staring at a Matisse for a few minutes isn’t quite the same as straddling a jet engine and wondering if it will hold together long enough for you to ride it. Not that I have a problem with Matisse. Matisse and I are cool.
Recently they put together a human powered carousel that looks like a barrel of laughs.
There’s a concerted effort at Madagascar to do everything, or as much as possible, manually. For example, the carousel above isn’t just a bunch of bicycles welded together. The entire mechanism, including the wheels, is custom-made by Madagascar members. This certainly isn’t the most efficient way of getting things done, and the engineer in me resists the idea a bit. However, it’s all a matter of tradeoffs. Going the long way round means taking some more time and getting a few more scrapes along the way, but often leaves you with a heap of knowledge and experience you didn’t previously possess, not to mention pride. It’s not always necessary, of course, but if you can exercise basic discretion and common sense, then you can probably figure when to take the scenic route. Engineers at large firms are used to churning out a product on an airtight schedule and budget, but what are the chances that that product is a pyrotechnical version of Simon?
It’s a murky problem – how to create an open, welcoming, interesting environment in which people like doing work and in which work actually gets done. It’s generally beneficial to keep things egalitarian, but at some point there has to be a driving force, someone making decisions and pressing ahead. A “do-ocracy” is ideal, as long as people are doing, and other people aren’t consistently objecting to what’s being done. People will rarely agree on what specifically to do about something, but when that thing is simply done by someone, there aren’t usually many complaints. So go forth and do! The results are usually good, except when they aren’t.
Check out the official Madagascar Instutute site HERE. They’re great.