Plumbers nightmare: a flooded basement is a liquid art installation

A liquid installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot in Paris comes into its last few leaky weeks this month, to the dismay of many well-paid Parisian plumbers.

Acquaalta takes its name from the annual flooding of the Venetian lagoon, and to recreate the inundation, Boursier-Mougenot has plugged thousands of gallons of water into the vacuous basement space of the Palais de Tokyo museum. Darkened ceilings and other worldly projections have helped turn the installment into a ghostly trip. Anonymous figures prowl around the still water on gondolas, not unlike Pharon on the river Styx.

The damp pit is not unlike a slimier work by Richard Wilson, whose 20:50 exhibition in the Saatchi gallery in London is a massive 20-year-old vat of slump oil. Surprisingly, it produces a sleek and mesmerising mirror of the room’s architecture, and achieves a whole lot more than one might expect from 8,000 litres of dirty oil.

An eerie, psychedelic theme overtakes both viscous pits, and plays on a bit of a trend for hallucinogenic elements as a popular theme for interactive galleries. It’s reminiscent of Carsten Holler’s wacky adult-sized playground in London’s South Bank. Audiences seem keen to play in cavernous, misplaced dreamscapes,  for naturally induced trippy experiences.

We’re delighted with this trend of liquid basement pits. The next step should hopefully bounce into our next economic boom, replacing unsightly garden hot tubs with practical personal reservoirs to combat the demands of Irish Water and/or dwindling global oil resources.