Passaic, New Jersey

Ryu Tomita

September 24, 2012

              

 In “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” Robert Smithson tours around the broken down industrial center to locate signs of past human activity. He refers to many of the objects he sees and finds interesting, monuments. He calls them monuments because at one point in time they were objects of the town that marked its development, but now they are structures to be forgotten about. For instance, the first “monument” he passes by is the bridge monument. He explains, “A rusty sign glared in the sharp atmosphere, making it hard to read. A date flashed in the sunshine…1899…No…1896. (70)” He takes numerous pictures of the bridge from different angles. As being named the grandfather of “entropy” I can see that he views the bridge to hold the elements of art because it a structure that was constructed in the past, which pertains to time, while it is occupying space in current times. The importance of the bridge may have differed from one hundred years ago to the present, but the space it occupies is the same.

               Another “monument” is one that hasn’t been created yet. It is a State Highway sign that explains that there will be a construction for a highway. This also is tied to his belief in entropic art because he highway plan signifies a future occupation of space. It is only with time that the structure will begin to take space from the small town and this ideal dwell’s Smithson to take note of it.  

                In the end of the reading Smithson explains entropy as a sandbox divided between black and white sand. As a child run around it clockwise it will begin to mix and become grey. Smithson’s portrayal of these structures of Passaic are exactly the same as the experiment. Despite being built in the beginning, he is interested in the development of the structure over time, not because of the construction process, but with the human interaction and the structures impact to the city while it stands.