This Fiery Ladder Climbs half A Kilometer Into The night time Sky

Cai Guo-Qiang is a chinese language artist based totally in the big apple. considered one of his mediums is gunpowder, one among his native united states’s most excellent and historical innovations. And this is his newest sculpture, the five hundred-meter Sky Ladder, which lived its transient two-and-a-half of-minute existence at Huiyu Island Harbour, Quanzhou, Fujian, closing month.

The Sky Ladder is an actual rope ladder hoisted into the sky by helium balloon. The ladder used to be covered in gunpowder, and, when lit, resulted in the fiery spectacle you see here. Qiang describes his gunpowder works—which he commenced experimenting with in 1985—as “unpredictable attractiveness.” And unpredictable is right. that is his fourth attempt to get the one-third-of-a-mile-lengthy art work launched and glowing. earlier attempts integrated a piece on the L.A. Museum of recent artwork.

Qiang’s earlier work comprises the equally epic challenge to increase the nice Wall of China by way of 10,000 Meters: mission for Extraterrestrials No. 10 (1993), a 6-mile gunpowder path that ran from the western end of China’s nice Wall, and off into the Gobi desert. Qiang lit it at nightfall, and the fuse burned throughout the wasteland for around 15 minutes, like a scene from a surreal street Runner cartoon.