Bizarre Art Project Victim Of Bizzare Protest. Locals Reported Confused
FOR THE PAST few weeks, weird, floating art instillation ‘Nowhere island’ has been meandering its way around the coastal towns of the West. ‘Nowhere island’ features about six tonnes of rock on a barge found under a retreating glacier in the Svalbard peninsula. Over the past year, people have been invited to sign up as Nowhere citizens, drawing up laws and a constitution. Great, eh? Except no one is allowed on or near the £500,000 tax-payer-funded project as the barren utopia chugs around our coast. That is until 12 intrepid wetsuit-clad rebels launched an occupation of the island as it passed Sunny Torbay, in what they triumphantly described as a “coup d’état”. Boarding the (broad)side of the island after a half-mile swim, the swimmers hoisted the Jolly Roger, before doing a little dance and walking the plank, leaving only a plastic duck and stuffed squirrel! But what caused this brave water-borne invasion? The massive cost to the taxpayer? The environmental cost of lugging tonnes of empty rock around our coastline? No, according to one of the swimmers, Pauline Barker, “It just seemed like a fun thing to do”! Despite doing her best to convince us that the protest was totally aimless, Barker did go on to make the valid point that Nowhere Island is “designed to be an art project to get art closer to the people, and we are the people, so we decided to get as close as we possibly could.” So, hats off to those aquatic revolutionaries that risked the Seven Seas for but a bit of nautical naughtiness and to reclaim a little corner of the island that our money built!
