20 JUNE <strong>2010</strong> | UNITED.COM CANCUN, MEXICO OCTOPUS’S GARDEN English artist Jason deCaires Taylor’s latest installation, while still a work in progress, already boasts more visitors than any other in Latin America—provided we’re counting fi sh. Located just off the coast of Cancun—and about 20 feet below the sea—the creation consists of more than 200 statues (at a weight of three to six tons each) bolted to a coral reef. The project resembles a sort of ready-made lost civilization, a fi eld of monuments to our time slowly being covered in coral. “Many people who see it think it’s a few hundred years old,” Taylor says. “When in fact the oldest pieces were put in less than two years ago.” This confusion is, of course, part of the point. The artist purposefully picks images and items that are representative of today. A scuba diver prowling off Grenada, where Taylor has 60 sculptures, might come across a typist with hands permanently poised above a concrete keyboard, or a bicyclist frozen midpedal propped against the edge dispatches of a reef, or a table set for breakfast, complete with a bowl of stone oranges. “I’ve gone back to visit some of my older pieces and found long beards of sea sponges growing off of a fi gure’s cheek, or big fans of coral on the forehead,” says Taylor. The statues are built from a special kind of pHneutral concrete that’s more than 10 times stronger than the stuff used in parking garages, a perfect anchor for growing sea life. Taylor, who spent his childhood living in Malaysia, Spain and Portugal, seems perfectly suited to this project. The 36-year-old has worked as a diving instructor and engineer as well as sculptor. But perhaps his biggest infl uence, he says, was the graffi ti he began doing after his family settled in southern England. “Graffi ti is so uncontrolled—it’s governed by chance and opportunity,” he says. “That’s what I love about underwater work. Now I’m just providing the walls. The sponges and coral decorate them.” —MATT THOMPSON JERASH, JORDAN Channeling History “Charlton Heston was wrong,” announces Stellan Lind, a tall Stockholm native wrapped in a toga, speaking to the 500 spectators in a large hippodrome 50 minutes outside Amman, in the Roman ruins of Jerash. “The chariot race was seven times around the Circus Maximus, not nine! And the spikes on the chariot wheels in Ben-Hur? Another Hollywood invention.” With that, a trumpeter sounds the signal and a Roman legionnaire clad in full regalia enters the arena. From under a steel helmet, the centurion barks a command in Latin. Rows of soldiers emerge from another door and march toward one another, raising their shields and clutching their gladii. The soldiers advance and begin the “fi ght.” Amid the loud clashing of metal, the unmistakable sound of an imam’s call to prayer drifts across the crowd. Lind sweats in his seat high above the action, surveying the scene like Emporer Titus. He’s the unlikely founder of the largest Roman historical reenactment in the world, the Roman Army and Chariot Experience, or RACE, and de facto general to the 45 actor-legionnaires who battle bloodlessly below (shows are twice daily, Saturday through Thursday). “I’m the crazy guy who moved to Jordan to make his boyhood dream come true,” he says, mopping sweat from his brow with the fringe of his toga. As boyhood dreams go, this is a pretty eccentric one, but the result is a meticulously researched blend of history lesson and Hollywood spectacle. The soldiers amass in formation and prepare to launch their javelins as the onlookers fl inch. Soon chariots appear, harnessed to Iberian-bred steeds, and begin racing around the ring—seven times. Eventually, the RACE reaches its climax: Two gladiators emerge, dressed in rags and animal skins. One wields a trident and a net, the other a ball and chain. After a heated match, the crowd signals its disapproval for the vanquished soldier. Lind pauses and thrusts out his hand: thumb down. With that, the defeated gladiator kneels, and the winner stands above him and fi nishes him off with a splash of red dye.—MARY WINSTON NICKLIN
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