Land Migratious

Smithson, c. 1970

Yesterday's post referenced Robert Smithson's Floating Island, recreated as the Living Barge in 2005. Smithson designed the piece just before his death in 1974 but was never able to obtain funding for it. It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that decades before Smithson conceived his idea of a movable island, Myles na gCopaleen (Flann O'Brien) had beat him to it--on a much grander scale, of course.

na gCopaleen, c. 1945

Through a system of "land migration, a system based on liquefaction and pumping," Myles proposed Ireland could, as he put it, "leave the so-called Empire in the most devastatingly literal sense." He proposed that Ireland "set up house in the middle of the mild blue Mediterranean." The Irish, thus, would become "hot Latin persons." Myles asked: "Wouldn't the British be just a little sorry?"

Imagine the places Staten Island could go.