The artist, identified only by his Vimeo handle miaoniu, explains that the installation is so rigged that when anyone approaches it, the “Death By Water” section of “The Waste Land” is dunked into a tank of water, and slowly rises when the audience departs. “As time passed by the poem will dissolve and disappear finally.”

Call me simple-minded, but I love the literalism here. I only wish the video included a time-lapse segment so we could watch the wasting of “The Waste Land.”