M couldn't help but notice the bright orange people hanging onto inner tubes bobbing in Fort Point Channel this morning. Begin Fort Point and all, it is, of course, art, specifically, SOS (Safety Orange Swimmers):
S.O.S. invokes the Fort Point Channel Basin as a metaphor for the seas across which people have always traveled in search of shelter, freedom, prosperity and safety; seas in which they have often lost their lives. The Swimmers symbolize the world’s refugees and migrants, and the long history of global migration on which our city and nation are largely built.
Artists Ann Hirsh & Jeremy Angier hope to provoke discussions about the changing identity of the Channel by asking: how are we, a city in the midst of an economic boom, responding to the current global refugee crisis?
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Comments
Just to be clear
By anon
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 1:45pm
Economic migrants from northern African nations are NOT refugees.
Um, OK
By adamg
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 2:18pm
Which countries did you have in mind in particular? Because I haven't heard of a sudden influx of Tunisians or Moroccans here - and the closest I can think of is Somalia, but nobody calls that "northern" Africa, so I'm curious who you're all het up about.
Hot and bothered
By cybah
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 2:51pm
He's still all hot and bothered from the debate last night... like many on twitter are today.
Does it matter?
By SwirlyGrrl
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 3:20pm
Your garbage gets picked up either way.
two things
By anon
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 9:27pm
First, I'm not sure what kind of an "authority" you think you are, but economic refugees are a real thing.
Second, what makes you think economics are the only reason migrants leave northern Africa?
No, wait, three things, what's your deal?
Mondo lols
By Mister Jeeves
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 2:54pm
ROFL ROFL. Mondo lols. Heheheheheh.
art?
By cleveland
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 3:26pm
I would bet that not one person passing by the display would have any idea what it was supposed to mean. Perhaps the artists should simply ask the question rather than engage in this self indulgent , look at me, folderol
Yes, art
By adamg
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 3:47pm
Even if you have no idea what the things are supposed to symbolize (it's not like the meaning jumps out at you, and I only learned what they represent by looking it up online, as one does), yes, still art. Fort Point Channel has been a place for these experiments in public art for a long, long time. There's the pyramid, the floating sheep, the multi-colored strips on the bridge. These aren't even the first "people" in the channel - personally, I still miss the floppy red figures in giant hamster balls that used to roll around in the water.
You may not like it because you like your art to have a blatantly, instantly obvious point or hanging on a wall or for any of a zillion other reasons. That's fine. Not all art is for all people, may a thousand paintings of flowers bloom. Me, I like quirky, oddball things (obviously, I try very hard to hide that preference here on UHub, but it's true), so I like orange people hanging onto inner tubes floating in the channel. I just hope they don't get too cold what with fall and all.
I liked
By Matthew Miller
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 7:06pm
When there was a little living room sofa and lamp on a floating platform out there.
Let's put a Norman Rockwell on an easel
By Art Vandelay
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 11:34pm
On the bridge. That should clear up any confusion. Good lord, I hope the original anon doesn't wander into the ICA down the street.
Clemson fans
By anon
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 4:31pm
Bright orange people, otherwise known as Clemson fans were all over downtown Boston on Friday afternoon. I thought maybe some of them decided to take a swim
Not Art
By Lunchbox
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 6:12pm
.
What skin is it off your ass?
By lbb
Tue, 10/11/2016 - 8:31am
Nobody's making you get up off your comfy couch, so what is it to you if other people do something? "Stop liking what I don't like, stop doing what I don't do, WAAAAH!!!!" Don't be so childish.
Oompa Loompas
By FootPad
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 4:02pm
I'm reminded of the Oompa Loompa's swimming synchronized in the chocolate river after Augustus goes up the pipe in the Tim Burton version of the movie.
Haha
By anon
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 4:41pm
My first thought was Scuba Steve.
They related to Trump?
By Boston_res
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 4:23pm
The orange is a perfect match.
Were the Tsarnaev brothers migrants or refugees?
By O-FISH-L
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 4:30pm
Were the Tsarnaev brothers migrants or refugees, I forget? The resemblance to prison jumpsuits seems appropriate.
Your estimate please:
By Bob Leponge
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 6:44pm
Do you believe that, compared to people born here in the USA, immigrants are more likely, less likely, or about as likely to commit violent crime or acts of terrorism?
Statistics show that
By John
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 8:02pm
Statistics show that immigrates are less likely to commit crimes or terrorist acts.
But that doesn't stop certain people from whipping their followers into a frenzy of phobias.
Adorable!
By anon
Mon, 10/10/2016 - 6:35pm
Adorable!
Call the Coast Guard
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 10/11/2016 - 5:26am
It's the Dutch Navy
It actually makes me think
By maria c
Tue, 10/11/2016 - 7:46am
It actually makes me think about Hurricane Matthew and the devoted rescue operations brought forth thereby.
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