5. Enema Monument
A health spa in Russsia has unveiled on June, 2008, its tribute to a medical procedure it administers there routinely: the enema! “We administer enemas nearly every day,” said Alexander Kharchenko, the head of the sanatorium which specializes in treating illnesses of the digestion tract.
“So, I thought, why not use our sense of humor and give it a monument,” he said of the bronze statue that stands about 1.5 meters high. Local artist Svetlana Avakova, who designed the monument which cost around 1 million roubles ($42,000), said Botticelli’s classic painting Venus and Mars had given her the inspiration to tackle the tricky subject.
4. Monument to Radioactive Decay
What do you do when you have a barn-sized pile of nuclear waste materials that you have to store for 100 years while it loses its toxicity? In the Netherlands, the answer was to stick it inside a giant art project: specifically, this orange building called the Habog Facility, covered in physics formulas by Einstein and Planck. Every twenty years, the building will be repainted in a lighter color to symbolize the slowly decaying radiation in the waste.
The waste in the building comes from two different nuclear reactors. Under local law, it must be stored for 100 years. William Verstraeten, the artist who designed the facility, views his piece as a commentary on metaphorphosis. Open for tours, the building also contains four symbolic paintings.
3. Upside-down Monument to La Trobe
This contemporary monument to Charles La Trobe in central Melbourne was removed at the end of June 2006 and has been acquired by La Trobe University.
2. World’s Largest Booming Prairie Chicken
This massive prairie chicken is propped up in the small town of Rothsay, Minnesota. From the plaque: “Prairie chickens moved ahead of the settlers to inhabit the prairies of Minnesota. A large concentration of the protected bird can still be seen on prairie meadows of the Rothsay area. In the early spring the male prairie chicken performs his mating ritual called booming. This statue of a booming prairie chicken was designed and built by Art Fosse with assistance and funds from the community. The statue stands 13 x 18 feet and weighs 9,000 pounds. It was placed on this site and unveiled, June 15, 1976. ”
1. Monument to Rocky Balboa… in Serbia!
Big monuments can really make a town. Especially when there’s nothing else to see. The Serbian village of Zitiste knows this. Sick of getting on the tourist radar only for heavy flooding and landslides, they’ve come up with a plan to make Zitiste famous for something quite different: a giant statue of Rocky Balboa.
The Serbians of Zitiste want to get this right, and have not only asked for assistance from Philadelphia officials (experienced in such matters), but have also formed the Association of Rocky Balboa (Zitiste). There is even method behind their madness: “We wanted to create a new image of our village … We thought long and hard about what would represent our new image, and we came up with Rocky Balboa. He is a character who never gives up and even when he looks to be beaten he picks himself up and wins through.”
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