Liverpool suffers a giant insect invasion - and it's not The Beatles! A huge Steampunk Spider Princess takes her place on the city's skyline.
Yes, it is. No, this is not Photoshopped. This is in fact a massive thirty six tonne hydraulic spider scaling the side of a city block in Liverpool, England. The city is of course best known for The Beatles. However, during its time as the European City of Culture visitors to one of its main railway stations, Lime Street, could have been forgiven for thinking that the city had been invaded by a different type of insect altogether. 
Through the windows of the station as they exited they would have caught their first site of La Princesse, a huge steampunk spider and the creation of the French company La Machine. One can only hope that arachnaphobes in the locality were given good forewarning - this particular sight could well induce the occasional myocardial infarction.
Steampunk is often denoted by a cross pollination of ideas from the past - a Victorian age of steam - combined with elements of fantasy and science fiction that arose during that era. True enough, La Princesse looks as if she could easily be straight from the pages of Jules Verne or HG Wells. Representative of a technology path that could have been but, perhaps relievedly, was not taken, La Princesse is a vision of our attempts at robotics, but invented during an earlier or even alternative time. Although La Princesse was on an almost contemporary office block the Victorian veneer of most of Liverpool city center was a perfect place from which to view the awesome arachnid from afar.
La Machine, though, did not simply plonk the spider on the office block and let it be (with apologies to Lennon and McCartney). La Princesse was the centre point of a four day piece of performance art during early September 2008. Scientists, played by members of the La Machine company, removed the spider to Albert Dock - to a place of quarantine as they feared that the spider was about to lay her eggs. Interviews were given by the scientists to willingly credulous members of the press - perhaps relieved that for once they were listening to ‘lies' rather than writing them.
Its final destination, after spraying hosts of Liverpudlians with water and escorting them like some spidery Pied Piper through the streets (with huge amounts of fireworks too) was the Queensway Tunnel. Tens of thousands of people took part in this part of the performance. At the Queensway, La Princesse foraged around for a while and finally entered the tunnel, lost to the sight of its human followers, never to be seen again.
So what was a French spider doing scaling the walls of a Liverpool office block and stalking the streets like a great big giant stalky thing? The city is undergoing a transformation, due partly to its status in 2008 as European City of Culture but also because of the tenacity of its citizens. Once virtually declared a write off - closed effectively due to the decline in traffic to its ports - the city has had to pull itself up by its bootstraps and reinvent itself. Liverpudlians have always had some style when it comes to the showy and 2008 was to be no exception.
The European City of Culture programme designates one place each year to showcase not only its culture but that of the entire European Union. By many British people, Liverpool was considered an odd choice for the United Kingdom, with many prejudiced eyes giving the city a once over and rejecting the chances of success offhand. However, as La Princesse - among many other events - proved, Liverpool successfully transformed its cultural base. Although the city may not have changed the way in which many UK citizens view it, it has changed its international reputation for the better.
Concourse House, the site where it first appeared, was due to be demolished. In a fit of perfect sense, Liverpool decided that the most appropriate swansong for the rather ugly nineteen sixties office block was to have a great big spider scale its heights. A latter day beauty and the beast but with something of a difference. Which was the beauty and which the beast?
The La Princesse spectacular cost one and a half million pounds (and because it was a free event it has sadly lost several hundred thousand). Despite the loss it was an enormous popular success. It is hoped that La Princesse will return to live permanently in the city and negotiations are underway. It is, perhaps, best left to Phil Redmond, the Artistic Director of the Liverpool City of Culture company, to sum up the La Princesse experience. With some typically Scouse pragmatism, he proclaimed the event a success. At the very least it was, he said, cheaper than getting Macca (Sir Paul McCartney) in to do a show!
source:http://www.quazen.com/
