Prof. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Tourist Productions Final Paper By: Blagovesta Momchedjikova BROOKLYN BRIDGE BOUND Of all that man is impelled to build in this life, nothing is in my eyes finer and more precious than a bridge. Bridges are more important than houses, holier, because more all-embracing, than places of worship. Belonging to everyone and the same for everyone, useful, built always rationally, in a place in which the greatest number of human deeds coincide, they are more enduring than other buildings and serve nothing which is secret or evil. Ivo Andric, Conversations with Goya -- Bridges, Signs.1 Oftentimes bridges occur outside of their actual, physical environment. They circulate in language ("cross the bridge when you get to it" and "don't burn your bridges"), tourism (on postcards, key-chains, mugs), and cyberspace (sites that can be virtuall y visited). Offered as gifts by economies that don't own them originally, bridges become graspable, wrappable, transportable. The bridge arrives at our homes, transcending its original geography and topology: it is a word, a grip, a keyboard away. It is t ransformed from a public, physical, exterior space to a private, metaphorical, interior one.2 The politics of containment changes: the bridge no longer contains us in its space, it is contained by us in our multiple spaces. No longer are we referents to t he bridge; the bridge is a referent to us. Here I want to propose a ride of thought that is "Brooklyn Bridge Bound," that is, it has the Brooklyn Bridge as its destination. Yet this destination knows no bounds: it binds us before we've reached it and holds us in its grip after we've left it. The Brooklyn Bridge is on the train with us when we are travelling to and away from it. This is due to the proliferation of "bridge" information and images produced by the tourist industry. We are, after all, riding the train of tourism, round trip. On the way to the Brooklyn Bridge, we, the passengers, learn the promise for the bridge, its history and myths. We look at maps and read guides. Once on the bridge, we admire the view of the bridge (its towers, its promenade), the view from the bridge (L ower Manhattan), and the view of ourselves on the bridge (shooting rolls with films and videos). On the way back, we look through our souvenirs with the image of the bridge, spanning narratives about them. The bridge is already captured, tamed, grasped. F rom a boundless creation dominating the space and us, it is now a boundable souvenir dominated by us. The poetry-in-motion on the Brooklyn Bridge bound train is made up of Oettermann's "panorama,"3 which teaches us how to see, Lefebvre's "production of space,"4 which discusses the visibility of/from the Brooklyn Bridge, BKG's "heritage"5 tourism of sites , and Stewart's "miniatures,"6 which trace the ways the bridge leaves the world of the visible and enters the world of the tangible. Oettermann's and Lefebvre's arguments will expand into lessons of seeing and producing ourselves in relationship to the vi ew; BKG's and Stewart's, into practices establishing our national and tourist awareness in relationship to that same view. Bound for the bridge: The Promise Brooklyn Bridge -- yes. . . That's quite a thing! V. Mayakovsky, Brooklyn Bridge Like all other tourist attractions, the Brooklyn Bridge comes first as a promise: it appears in narrative before it appears in sight. The narrative of the promise stages the politics of giving: someone will give, the tourist industry, and someone else wi ll receive, the tourist. What will be given though, the gift, is rather abstract: a view from a bridge. Sure enough, it is a beautiful view and this holds the premise for beautiful experiences, pictures, memories, or, in other words, for the privatization of the bridge. In the bridge narrative then, the privatization is always already promised, rehearsed, since the bridge is already in circulation outside of its physical space. The growing need to be moving around it to see it, To prevent its freezing, as with sculpture and metaphor, Finds now skeins, now strokes of the sun in a dark Crucifixion etching, until you end by crying What the man's name was who made it, The way old people care about names and are Forever seeing resemblances to people dead. William Meredith, A View of Brooklyn Bridge7 The Brooklyn Bridge, of course, doesn't own its narrative. Tourism does, by spinning history narratives of the bridge in tourist guides, catalogues, walking tours, anniversary editions, brochures, and the internet. The story of the construction of the br idge is as glorious as the concrete engineering feat. The tourist sources generously exploit two themes in that story: the man who conceived the bridge was an immigrant and he suffered an absurd death. John Roebling8 came from Germany and built the "impos sible bridge" the first bridge to span the East River. He brought his ideas of stone, steel, and suspension, "rehearsed" them in two other bridge constructions,9 persuaded the New York officials in his project, and bridged two separate in the 19th century cities, Manhattan and Brooklyn. He performed a miracle. His bridge, spanning 1,595 ft (486m), was the longest suspension bridge of its time and was immediately called "the eighth wonder." Open on May 24th, 1883,10 it combined granite with steel, and beca me a symbol of Greater New York, which was officially proclaimed in 1898. That place where the bridge runs above the highway is where I want most to be buried. Rochelle Ratner, Pirate's Song11 John Roebling, the miracle-maker, suffered an absurd death. He died in 1869, from an infection caused by an injury at the bridge's site. None of the two bridge towers had been erected yet. Legend has it, that a bridge requires a human sacrifice for its s uccessful completion, so, for the realm of the legendary, John Roebling becomes the surrogate victim.12 The bridge is referred to as "killer bridge" and the details of his death are widely advertized and accurately reported in the various tourist sources. John's son, Washington, who continued his father's project, was crippled with caisson disease in 1872, while working on the construction, leaving all its supervision to his wife, Emily.13 A total of 27 men died during the construction of the bridge and 1 2 more during the stampede six days after the bridge was open to the public.14 There are a few brave jumpers15 who succeeded in proving their courage by leaping from the bridge but also a few that failed in the undertaking. Few discovered in the Brooklyn Bridge the perfect spot for suicide. The Bridge offers a feeling of the unknown: it is suspended and thus offers a special experience of space: it connects yet is disconnected, it is above the water, it is groundless. It is an in-between place. It puts a question, or more specifically, puts the walker into question: will you ever make it to the other side? and if you do, what awaits you there? These narratives of death and immigration, mysterious and glorious at the same time, span in language before the real, physical bridge spans in front of the eyes. The narrative of the bridge is independent of the bridge and the tourist industry has turne d it into an attraction, wanting to make sure that the Brooklyn Bridge has a story to tell and that this story is told in a way that attracts attention and visitors. Sites must have stories to tell and the tourist industry either invents these stories or claims to tell them on behalf of the site. The Exotic-Heritage Bond Both bicycles and pedestrians are free to use the wooden walkway which is elevated over the traffic. You'll find a great cross section of people coming and going on this bridge . . . it's by no means just for tourists!!!" NYCtourist.com16 Today, in a museum crazed city like New York, the Brooklyn Bridge promises anti-museum and anti-tourist experiences. Unlike museums which have fixed locations, the Brooklyn Bridge offers a promenade, which is hard to find (especially from the Brooklyn si de). There are no conspicuous signs indicating its presence. After all, the bridge was not produced with the tourist in mind so the tourist should be able to find his/her own way around. Advertizing the site as a non-tourist one is, of course, deliberate. The walk-woo, promoted by the tourist industry aims at producing the Brooklyn Bridge as a site of exotic tourism: discover-yourself activity. The bigger the difficulty of finding the place, the greater the tourist's delight having found it. Having discovered the promenade, the visitor naturally claims ownership of it. The "discovered," open space unleashes the visitor's desire to possess.17 The visitor takes pictures, shoots videos, and buys souvenirs, and these are all techniques of claimi ng, privatizing the bridge. Despite walking, the visitor can also jog, bike, or roller-blade on the promenade, walk in various directions, touch everything within reach, talk in loud voices. There are no protocols, no signs with prohibitions, no curators. Both ends of the promenade are entrances and exits at the same time. The promenade is always open and always free. The tourists don't bump into other tourists but into native New Yorkers and thus drink "authenticity" of experience from the horse's mouth. There is only one exhibit: the "breathtaking" view.18 The completed work, when constructed in accordance with my designs, will not only be the greatest Bridge in existence, but it will be the great engineering work of this continent, and of the age. Its most conspicuous features, the great towers, will serve as landmarks to the adjoining cities, they will be entitled to be ranked as national monuments. As a great work of art, and as a successful specimen of advanced Bridge engineering, this structure will forever testify to the energy, enterprise and wealth of that community which shall secure its erection. Respectfully submitted, John A. Roebling19 The tourist industry cares about introducing the Brooklyn Bridge as a "heritage" attraction as well. After all, during the bridge's opening ceremonies in 1883, a sign in a Brooklyn shop-window read: "Babylon had her hanging gardens, Egypt her pyramid, At hens her Acropolis, Rome her Athenaeum; so Brooklyn has her bridge."20 Linking not only two separate cities but also past and present, the bridge settled down in a post-Civil War situation when the nation was still divided and needs its binding, its "brid ge over troubled water." In the collective imagination of America, the granite towers and the steel cables come to symbolize unification and connection, progress and expansion. In 1964, the bridge was proclaimed a National Historic Landmark: from a city-s ymbol, the bridge grew into a nation-symbol. As a site of such importance, the bridge now lays its demands: it is a face not only of the city but also of the nation and as such requires constant facial "lift-ups": special anti-graffiti wax for the towers, patrol, cleaning and renovation.21 Seen for the first time, as a weird metallic apparition under a metallic sky, out of proportion with the winged lightness of its arch, traced for the conjunction of WORLDS.... it impresses me as the shrine containing all the effort of the new civilization of AMERICA. Joseph Stela, painter22 In her discussion of heritage tourism and museums as destinations of heritage practices, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett elaborates on "national self-understanding" and "imagining the nation"23 achieved at a heritage site. True, a heritage site urges nativ es to identify themselves as a nation both for themselves and for others. However, a heritage icon, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, helps the tourist identify not only the American nation as such, but also him/herself as not belonging to that nation, as some one who is displaced: a tourist. The plaque with the nomination pinned to the Manhattan tower tells me that the Brooklyn Bridge is not my national historic landmark: I don't belong to that nation, I'm not from "here."24 Yet it justifies my travel. Binding Tips The best time and direction to walk the renovated in (1983) footpath is east from Brooklyn to Manhattan at dusk. The sun sets behind Liberty Island and, as you stroll on, downtown looms larger and larger, the sky darkens to cobalt, the lights go on, the skyline goes sparkly, and you are swallowed into the metropolis. it's a transcendental 1/2 hour. Although you'll almost certainly be fine, it's still not a good idea to walk the bridge at night, especially carrying cameras. And keep to the uptown side; the other lane is for bikes. ? source There are two tips that visitors learn on our imaginary ride to the Brooklyn Bridge: the best direction and the best time to walk the promenade. All guides recommend one direction of walking the bridge: from Brooklyn to Manhattan, which offers the best " experience" of the view, though it also encourages a one-way traffic on a two-way lane. There is a simple reason for the "suggested" direction: the view (of Lower Manhattan) should always be in front and never behind you. In order for the "never-to-be-for gotten" view to occur properly for the viewer, the viewer's body has to be then produced in a proper relationship to the view: the beautiful view always awaits the viewer. Even if one walks from Manhattan, one should walk only half way and then go back, w hich, according to one source, is "most satisfying"25: one has thus walked the length of the bridge without letting the view "stare" at one's back for a long time. The suggested Brooklyn-Manhattan direction of walking the Brooklyn Bridge promenade complet es, as we'll see later on, the myth of the traveler arriving through the city gates. The view of the Manhattan skyline at dusk, framed in the dark arches and gossamer-like cables of the great span, is a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Gerard R. Wolfe, New York: A Guide to the Metropolis26 Naturally, the second tip is: walk the bridge at sundown or at night when all the lights of Lower Manhattan and the cable lights of the bridge are on. The cable lights not only make the bridge visible even at night, they also produce it as visible: it ha s to be experienced as a mysterious presence and remembered that way. It produces us as mysterious too, it mystifies us. When the lights go off after midnight, the bridge goes to sleep for the eye. Yet, it never sleeps, as Crane puts it in his poem on the Brooklyn Bridge: "O Sleepless as the river under thee."27 It is just resting from the gaze that has been attacking it all day long. It is relaxing from being looked at, viewed, photographed, wow-ed. Bound up by the bridge: The View The Brooklyn Bridge endures as the most famous and best-loved bridge in NYC. Walk across and soak in the fantastic views of Mnahttan -- and take note of the signs along the way wchi provide information about the sites you are seeing.28 As Alan Trachtenberg writes in his famous study of the symbolism of the Bridge: "Brooklyn Bridge belongs first to the eye."29 This means not only that the bridge is beautiful and strikes our visual perception first but also that it surpasses the eye. The fact that it is measured by vision suggests that it already spreads out of vision. At the time of our first visual encounter, the bridge possesses us, not we it. Because the bridge is gigantic and so is the view from it, we are overwhelmed, saturated, pl unged in its space. We inhabit the space of the bridge: the view contains the viewer.30 No narrative can claim the bridge at this point. Viewers are speechless. The bridge speaks for itself: in vision and to vision. The view from the bridge stirs feelings of elevation. Elevation is achieved while on the bridge and looking towards the skyscrapers. The similarity between the bridge connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan and the skyscrapers connecting the earth to the sky (t hus becoming vertical bridges), is striking. The longing for the sky which occurs in every skyscraper is thus complemented by the "suggested" walking direction: as we walk towards Manhattan, we project the bridge on the skyscrapers which asprire after Hea ven: we, too, long for the sky. Yet our bodies, amidst the gigantic space of the bridge, the skyscrapers, and the view, become public, exteriorized, by what is bigger than them -- the gigantic.31 A black cat arching its back over the river was how it looked that time, that first time years ago, sailing out from under. Jack Marshall, Walking Across Brooklyn Bridge32 Beautiful and gigantic, revealing a mezmerizing space and sight, the Brooklyn Bridge was staged and continuously stages itself with the visible, the panoramic in mind. Lefebvre writes that spaces are: "made with the visible in mind: the visibility of peo ple and things, of spaces and of whatever is contained by them."33 Thus one goes to see the bridge, to see from the bridge, and be seen on the bridge. The bridge becomes a "representational space": a space that represents us rather than a space represente d by us.34 It sucks us in its open space and we exist as its referents. The bridge's promenade is a street, a passage, a corridor, a path, a stage representing the viewer as a performer who parades in front of the view, for the view, for others, and for h im/herself. Thus the promenade is not only a panorama in itself, offering a panoramic view of Lower Manhattan. It is also representational: it turns the pedestrians into walking panoramas. It is a distance that can be walked towards and a destination that can be reached - the City. City Gates The Brooklyn Bridge towers of 271ft (83m) were the tallest buildings in the city at the end of the 19th century thus setting the ground for mass skyscraper-ship.35 They offered a view of the entire city, all the way to New Jersey, and as such became obse rvation points, open windows, places to see the horizon from, as Oettermann puts it,36 for New Yorkers. Such places offer not only a view but also "teach" us to see.37 They allow for the experience of a gigantic and powerful space that claims both the sky and us. Of course, such a space teaches us not only to see, but also to be seen. In a special relationship with the panorama, we rehearse the experience of being seen. We learn to experience our bodies as public, overwhelmed, saturated, and moving throug h the space of the gigantic.38 Many nights I stood on the bridge, shaken by the underground tumult of the trains in perpetual motion ... now other (hearing) strange moanings of appeal from the boats... I felt deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new DIVINITY. Joseph Stella39 The gigantic Gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge towers bring associations with cathedrals, portals, gates, namely, places of entry. It is on these associations that the tourist industry restages the old story of the traveler arriving at the city: on th e Brooklyn-Manhattan walk, the traveler, be it a tourist or a native New Yorker, is constantly arriving at Manhattan, at the beautiful view. Passing under the Gothic arches, the traveler gets initiated,40 as if religiously, to the city of Manhattan. Not o nly is the bridge produced, in Lefebvrian sense, as an entering place, but we, too, are produced as entering subjects, who are looking for shelter and who cannot be denied hospitality.41 The blind man who stands on the bridge, gray like a boundary stone of nameless kingdoms, he is perhaps the thing, every unchanging, around which the far-off stellar hours move, and the constellations' still midpoint. For everything around him strays and struts and runs. Rainer Maria Rilke, Pont du Carrousel42 We are entering our dream city: there is no guard at the gates.43 What guards the city is the view: it stops us, it takes our breath away, it makes us ponder, it measures us against itself. Who are we? Where are we coming from? What do we want? Can we su rvive that view? Can we complete it? Are we worth it? The view puts us in place yet also welcomes us: the doors to the city are constantly open to travelers from near and far. It presents itself to the traveler not only as a panorama but also as an exhibi t: the city is museumified: it awaits exploration. By turning the city into a museum, the bridge stages it as a destination: the points of interest in this destination are referred to on the plaques surrounding the two towers. The plaques about Manhattan are around the Manhattan tower, the ones about Bro oklyn, around the Brooklyn one. If you walk half the way from Manhattan and then back, the way tourist guides propose, you never get to learn about Brooklyn or what lies there, on the other side of the bridge. The bridge itself becomes a starting point an d an end point of a tour the tourist is about to take and has to know what to expect from or has just taken and wants to review the sites he/she visited. Staged as a reference point, as a map of the cities it connects, the Brooklyn Bridge not only connect s but also claims what it maps.44 And so does the tourist, having discovered the cities, he/she wants to own them. The tourist industry, of course, lends a helping hand (again) by offering tangible bridges, tangible views: the souvenirs. Back Bound: Souvenirs One flash . . . then night -- O beauty, must you pass from me? One look and I'm reborn; my life is changed forever; Shall I see you again in all eternity? Somewhere very far from here! too late! or never! You know not who I am; I know not where you go. O you, I could have loved you. And I know you know. Charles Baudelaire, To a Woman Passing By45 Interestingly enough, no stands and souvenir stores exist on the bridge or anywhere near it. There are a few benches and a few garbage cans: the bridge is to be crossed, not to be lingered on. It is a place for moving on, for passing by. It is a symbol o f modernity and its mobility. Yet the tourist needs to capture this moving, fleeing moment and his/her experience of it, to grasp the ungraspable: he/she wants a reminder, be it a picture or a souvenir, that will help re-create that experience, remember i t. Leaving the space of the bridge, the tourist has to leave it with something from that space, something that will unravel stories afterwards. As Stewart puts it: "We do not need or desire souvenirs of events that are repeatable. Rather we need and desir e souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative."46 Again, the bridge enters the realm of narrative, or rather, re-enters it, by becoming a narrative of the souvenirs, of the mementoes. The souvenir needs narratives but narratives also need souvenirs. And this is how the bridge enters the world of the tan gible. It doesn't belong to the eye anymore, it belongs to the hand. It can be touched, held, wrapped. It is individualized, privatized.47 It has been victimized by our longing to possess. It has entered our homes. Through the souvenir, the actual experie nce of the bridge can be re-called and re-told. The narrative of the souvenir of the bridge is not about the bridge and us, it is about us and the bridge48: the bridge is now our referent, in pictures/postcards, mugs, name key-chains, puzzles, and chocola tes.49 There's no way to miss the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center when walking towards Manhattan. The pattern of the steel cables can produce some dramatic photographs. NYCtourist.com50 Pictures and postcards are the most common way of bridge imagery proliferation. They capture the view of/from the bridge thus demonstrating the human desire to frame what is virtually unframeable, in order to make it memorable. The only way to own the gi gantic, the unframeable though is to transform it into miniature representations. When we send pictures to "significant others," we do so to show what we saw, to "authenticate" not the bridge per se but our experience of the bridge.51 Through the picture- postcard, the bridge leaves the city, state, country and becomes global: it now spans something bigger than the East River -- the world. Usually, pictures are taken from the Brooklyn side or from the bridge with Lower Manhattan in the background. The brid ge, therefore, circulates together with its view (day or night one), with its promise: this view awaits you on the bridge and you can shoot pictures as beautiful or better than this one. While the picture-postcard betrays a past experience, the Brooklyn Bridge mug makes the bridge part of one's present: the routine of drinking water, coffee, tea, juice is marked by the importance of the bridge and its crossing. Every day is unique as "th at day" when you were on the bridge. Various practices of containment take place: the bridge contains and is contained: first, the mug contains the water (as substance) and the bridge (as image), second, the bridge (as image) contains the water (as substa nce), and third, I contain both the water (as substance) and the bridge (as image) since they are both parts of the mug I hold in my hand. Both water and bridge are domesticated. Water in the mug is symbolic of the bridge crossing: above rather than throu gh water52 and water drinking, of initiation "to" the bridge. It's only with the key chain though that the bridge becomes truly holdable. The key chain makes the "public" bridge touchable, available, transportable, conquerable, graspable in the "private" palm of your hand. The bridge on the key-chain, just like the key itself, opens, unlocks doors for the tourist: the doors of imagination and the doors of authentic experience. In the name key-chain, a person's name gets linked to the name of the bridge and this twinning of names makes the human name comparable to a nd substitutable with that of the bridge. A brotherhood of names occurs: person's and bridge's, provided of course that your name exists among the variety of names on key-chains. No name, no bridge-brother. Key-chains, mugs, and most of all picture-postcards represent the three-dimensional Brooklyn Bridge as one dimensional.53 The Brooklyn Bridge puzzle is no exception. The puzzle allows both kids and adults to construct the bridge thus mimicking the origin al process of construction. This puzzle-construction which takes place outside of the bridge's chronotop, sabotages the singularity of the actual bridge construction by teasing the notion that the bridge can be "produced" every minute of the day, in the p uzzle. The puzzle-souvenir introduces a bridge of many small pieces which makes the bridge both constructable and deconstructable. The dispersed pieces bring the constructor in us: we piece the bridge together until it fills up the provided one-dimensiona l plane. Chocolates are the last piece of Brooklyn Bridge souvenirs that I will examine here. Through them, the bridge is consumed, taken in, incorporated in the human body. The bridge here is meltable (in the examination of the previous souvenirs we saw the brid ge also as frameable, drinkable, carriable, constructable, in short, convertible to all sorts of undertakings) and it melts away in our hands, in our mouths. The bridge is not only with us, as a souvenir, it is in us, as a piece of food: we devour it crav ingly. It is sweet and it brings forth sweet memories. The box of Brooklyn Bridge chocolates is still full. And so is our box of memories. All of the above examined souvenirs demonstrate the desire of the tourist industry to make the Brooklyn bridge attainable, graspable, transportable, individual. Every visitor has his/her own bridge to carry home. To hold on to. To remember. To show. To t alk about. These images of the bridge make the bridge multiple and these many multiple images saturate, or as Stewart puts it, "usurp" the public space of the bridge.54 We too, owning these multiple, individual one-dimensional bridges, usurp, conquer the three-dimensional public space of the bridge. Souvenirs with the Brooklyn Bridge are also produced by the internet. They, in contrast to the mugs, puzzles, key-chains, and postcards, are free. You can download a desktop image with the Brooklyn Bridge for your screen, you can print out a special view of the bridge, you can "buy" the bridge55 by pressing the mouse button and you don't need to pay for it. Through the computer screen the bridge now enters our homes and introduces the Brooklyn Bridge surveilance: the bridge keeps an eye on us, supervises us, guards us. We too, keep an eye on it daily, by staring at the computer screen, only to make sure that the Brooklyn Bridge is still "here," that the Brooklyn Bridge still IS. We can visit the bridge, see it, and see from it through the virtual pages o f tourist companies. The bridge is offered to us from a place that doesn't have it and from givers that will never own it. Boundless: Birthdays, Poems, and Paintings The tradition of big Brooklyn Bridge celebrations was set with the opening ceremonies for the bridge in 1883,56 with music, speeches, fireworks. Since then, the bridge's birthdays are diligently expected and celebrated, sometimes with museum exhibitions, sometimes with a poetry book as a souvenir for and from the holiday. The centennial celebration, of course, was a major extravaganza, during which the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Celebration Committe worked hard to "make the centennial a part of tourism i n NYC." The centennial was viewed as an event with lots of marketing opportunities, one of them being "showing Brooklyn to the world." This inspired a Brooklyn Bridge image-boom: the stamps, medallions, umbrellas, T-shirts, posters.57 A special Brooklyn B ridge souvenir shop opened doors for the period of the celebrations and a theatre performance, re-enacted the building of the bridge for several months in two theaters and on the bridge. Walking tours and anchorage shows were organized. In an effort to se ll more than reproductions of the bridge, companies offered "real" souvenirs: a piece of the tower rock, a piece of the cable, a piece of the wooden walk. With every bridge anniversary the hopes for a longer life of the bridge are expressed. Headlines, eloquent loudspeakers of Fascist destruction scream out the bombing of another city... Madrid, Barcelona, Guernica... Chartres -- New York -- Brooklyn Bridge is by the process of mental geography a huge mass of stone, twisted girdes, and limp cable. O. Louis Guglielmi, on his Mental Geography painting58 A lot of painters and writers have explored the symbol of the Brooklyn Bridge, usually romanticizing it and thus paying their tribute to the circulation of bridges in the collective imaginary. Some of the painters who sought and proposed a new visual exp erience of the bridge are: Joseph Stella, Albert Gleizes, Max Weber, John Marin, O. Louis Guglielmi, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ellsworth Kelly. Guglielmi's painting "Mental Geogrpahy" is unusual. There is no beautiful, romantic, inspiring Brooklyn Bridge. Instead , the bridge is collapsing, the bridge is twisted in pain. In the style of a Dali-style surrealist imagery, the Brooklyn Bridge is giving way under the war.59 Connection, beauty, progress disintegrate and so does the bridge, as the symbol of all these hum an achievements. The fall of the world is the fall of the bridge as well. The Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky,60 among many other poets who wrote about the Brooklyn Bridge, composes a poem on the famous bridge during his trip to the United States in 1925. In contrast to Guglielmi's grim painting, he imagines the fall of the world with a surviving bridge. As an icon of human existence and progress, the bridge will help recreate the human species and experience: If ever the end of the world should arrive, and chaos sweep off the planet's last ridge, with the only lonely thing to survive towering over debris this bridge, then, as out of a needle-thin bone museums rebuild dinosaurs, so future's geologist from this bridge alone will remodel these days of ours. V. Maykovsky, The Brooklyn Bridge It is insane, admirable, imposing, and it makes one feel proud to be a human being when one realizes that a human brain has created and suspended in the air 50 yards from the ground, that fearful thing which bears a dozen trains filled with passengers, ten or twelve tram cars, a hundred cabs, and thousands of passengers, and all that moving together amidst the uproar of the music of the metals. Sara Bernhard, Memories of My Life61 The Brooklyn Bridge is placed, a place, and places us in New York City. Through techniques such as: promise of the view, stories of immigration and death, exotic-and-heritage references, tips of crossing the bridge, city gates, traveler, and souvenirs, t he tourist industry circulates the bridge in narrative before and after in looms up in the tourist's vision. Through the proliferation of reproductions of the bridge, the bridge gets displaced. It is a displacement crucial for the tourist, he/she needs au thentications of his/her travels and experiences and profitable for the tourist industry. Maybe the most paradoxical example showing the desire for profit is the 1872 lithograph of the Brooklyn Bridge.62 It was printed out 11 years before the bridge was f inished yet showed the bridge in full size, completed, connecting the two cities. The 1872 lithograph also shows that the Brooklyn Bridge was much awaited. It got represented before it actually occurred. Today, it is the only one of the icons in the City that is truly loved. In March of 1998, there were 3 exhibitions in the City dedic ated to or including the Brooklyn Bridge: in the Museum of the City of New York ("Bridging New York), in the Brooklyn Historic Society, and in Bobst Library at NYU. There is a huge collection of materials in the Brooklyn Collection of the Brooklyn Public Library dedicated to the bridge. The Brooklyn Museum of Art holds O'Keffee's famous painting of the bridge. This museumification of the Brooklyn Bridge is the harbinger of a Brooklyn Bridge Museum. Ivo Andric writes that bridges "point out places where a man came across an obstacle and did not turn away, but overcame it, bridged it as best as he could, according to his way of thinking, taste, and the circumstances around him . . . "63 A bridge is t hus the brave act of a brave mind. Being bridged is the state of two separate entities reaching out of themselves, overcoming themselves. With a bridge in front of us, we know that our crossing is always bound to happen: there is constantly something whic h is a bridge away from us, lying there, on the other side, and this something will remain forever less known and will forever trigger our curiosity. And we are forever bridge bound. And all our hope lies on the other side. Ivo Andric, Conversations with Goya -- Bridges, Signs64 A note of thanks to: Niels, Elena, Barbara, and Jon: the fire in your eyes inspires me. Thank you. REFERENCES: 1. Andric, Ivo. (1992). Conversations with Goya -- Bridges, Signs, trans. by C. Hawkesworth and A. Harvey. London: Univ. of Menard Press. 2. Andric, Ivo. (1977). The Bridge on the Drina, trans. by L. F. Edwards. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press. 3. Appleberg, Marilyn J. (1983). The Eighth Wonder -- The Br. Br. Sound and Light ? 4. Baudelaire, Charles. (1991). The Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen, trans. by William H. Crosby, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd. 5. Bleeker, C, J. (1965). The Key Word of Religion. Netherlands: Leiden, E.J. Brill. 6. Brooklyn Collection Archive. Brooklyn Public Library. 7. Centennial book (1983). The Great East River Bridge 1883-1983. NY: H. N. Abrams, Inc. 8. Crane, Hart. (1966). The Complete Poems, and Sel. Letters and Prose. NY: Liveright Pub. Corporation. 8. Dupre, Judith. Bridges (1997). A History of the World's Most Famous and Important Spans, NY: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. 9. East River Bridge -- Laws and Engineer's Reports: 1868-84. Brooklyn Collection Archive at the Brooklyn Public Library. 10. Encyclopedia Americana. 11. Felman, Shoshana and Laub, Dori. (1992). Testimony. NY and London: Routledge. 12. Gioseffi, Daniela ed. (1972). Brooklyn Bridge Poetry Walk -- A Souvenir Anthology NY: ? 13. Grundlehner, Philip. (1979). The Lyrical Bridge: Essays from Holderlin to Benn. NJ: Associated University Press, Inc. 14. Gordon, Rosemary. (1995). Bridges: Psychic Structures, Functions and Processes. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. 15. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (1997) Destination Museum. (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg). 12. Lefebvre, Henri (?), The Production of Social Space, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell. 13. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. (1972). Poems, trans. by Dorian Rottenberg. ?: USSR. 14. McCullough, David. (1982). The Great Bridge. NY: Simon and Schuster. 15. McKenzie, Jon. Personal conversation. 16. Oettermann, Stephan. (1997). The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, trans. by Deborah Lucas Schneider. NY: Zone Books. 17. Shapiro, Mary J. (1983). A Picture History of the Brooklyn Bridge, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. 18. Simon, Elena Pinto. Personal conversations. 19. Stewart, Susan. (1993). On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press. 20. Rilke, Rainer Maria. (1991). The Book of Images, trans. by Edward Snow. SF: North Point Press. 21. Trachtenberg, Alan. (1979). Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press. 22. Wilder, Thornton. (1927). The Bridge of San Luis Rey. ?: Grosset and Dunlap Publ. 24. Numerous guides, internet sites, exhibitions, personal interviews (January-May 1998, NYC). 1 Ivo Andric, Conversations with Goya -- Bridges, Signs, transl. by Celia Hawkesworth and Andrew Harvey, Univ. of Menard Press: London: 1992, 25-7. 2 "Whereas miniature represents closure, interiority, the domestic, and the overly cultural, the gigantic represents infinity, exteriority, the public, and the overly natural." Susan Steward, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souv enir, the Collection, (Duke University Press: Durham: 1993), 70. 3 Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, transl. by Deborah Lucas Schneider, (Zone Books, NY:1997), 11. 4 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Social Space, transl. by Donald Nicholson-Smith, (Blackwell: Oxford UK & Cambridge USA), 71. 5 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett "Destination Museum" (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg), 4-5. 6 "the miniature as contained, the gigantic as container" in Stewart's On Longing, 71. 7 Daniela Gioseffi, ed., Brooklyn Bridge Poetry Walk -- A Souvenir Anthology (June 25th, 1972). 8 John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869), was a student of Hegel, a writer, and an engineer. He first proposed the East River Bridge to the City Council of New York in 1857. (http://www.princeton.edu/~trcdc/discbook/brooklyn.html) 9 Niagara Bridge (1851) and Cincinnati Bridge (1857-1867) 10 Span: 1,595 ft (486m), towers: 271 ft (83m) high, main suspension cables: 416 inch-diameter (40 cm), 400 wire-rope stay cables that radiate diagonally from the towers; cost: $9mln. (Encyclopedia Americana). 11 Gioseffi, Brooklyn Bridge Poetry Walk. 12 See Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina, transl. from the Serbo-Croat by Lovett F. Edwards, (The Univ. of Chicago Press: 1977) 13 At the bridge's centennial celebration, the performance which reenacted the construction of the bridge, a major attention was given to Emily's role during the years of construction. 14 May 30th, 1883, a woman screamed on the promenade, causing a stampede among the 10 thousand people on bridge who tried to get off of the bridge. 12 people died during the accident. See Stanley Edgar Hyman, in "This Alluring Roadway," in the New Yorker ( give dates) 15 Steve Brodie, July 23, 1886. He got "an offer to appear at the Bowery Museum, at two hundred and fifty dollars a week and expenses, for 10 weeks." (The WPA Guide to NYC, (The New Press, NY: 1992), 315. 16 NYCtourist.com (http://www.nyctoursit.com/bridge2.html). 17 "Our space has strange effects. For one thing, it unleashes desire." Lefebvre, The Production of Social Space, 97. 18 http://www.liunet.edu/cwis/cwp/palmer/lis512/digital_libraries/marcie.html 19 "Report of J. A. Roebling to the President of the NY Bridge Company" in East River Bridge -- Laws and Engineer's Reports: 1868-84, Brooklyn Collection Archive at the Brooklyn Public Library. 20 See Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol, (The Univ. of Chicago Press: 1979). 21 The contrast with the Williamsburg Bridge is striking. Covered with graffiti and garbage, its pathway does not welcome visitors. See Niels Dachler's "A Different Bridge for a Different Tourist" Epilogue. 22 Centennial book (give publ.) 23 BKG, Destination Museum, on-line, 5-6. 24 See Shoshana Felman's discussion of Camus' "The Plague" in Testimony. (Routledge, NY: 1992) 25 "From Manhattan, you can get to the bridge across the street from City Hall Park. Don't fool yourselves, it's quite a walk from end to end. It's most satisfying to go to the middle of the bridge and then walk back. That way, you've truly walked the len gth of the bridge." (http://www.nyctoursit.com/bridge2.html) 26 Gerard R. Wolfe, New York: A Guide to the Metropolis, Walking Tours of Architecture and History, (McGrall Hill, Inc., NY: 1994), 432. 27 Hart Crane, "To Brooklyn Bridge" in The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane, (Liveright Publ. Comp., NY: 1966) 28 http://www.theinsider.com/NYC/attractions/2brookbr.html 29 Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol, 1. 30 Stewart, On Longing, 71. 31 Stewart, On Longing, 102. 32 Gioseffi, ed., Brooklyn Bridge Poetry Walk. 33 Lefebvre, The Production of Social Space, 75. 34 Marathons, demonstrations, announcements of rock tours happen on the bridge. 35 Elena Pinto Simon refers to the bridge as "the first skyscraper." 36 Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, 11. 37 Once, one could climb the towers of the bridge but they are now closed, reclaimed as backstage regions, so one can't see from them and see oneself on them. They no longer function as representational spaces. 38 "we move through the landscape, it does not move through us." Stewart, On Longing, 71. 39 Centennial book (give publ.) 40 The bridge is "thin as hair and sharp as knife" and can be crossed only by those whose faith is strong. See C.J. Bleeker, The Key Word of Religion, (Leiden, E.J. Brill, Netherlands: 1965), 19. 41 Jacques Derrida, NYU lectures on Hospitality, Fall 97. 42 Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images, trans. by Edward Snow, (North Point Press, SF: 1991) 43 Andric, The Bridge on the Drina. An imaginary Arab lives under the bridge of Drina. 44 Empirial Leather. Mapping is the outcome of discovery and demonstrates ownership, fatherhood, naming. (give exact publ., author) 45 Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen, transl. by William H. Crosby, (BOA Editions, Ltd., Brockport, NY: 1991), 177. See also Baudelaire's essay "The Painter of Modern Life." 46 Stewart, On Longing, 135. 47 Ibid., 139. 48 "What is this narrative of origins? It is a narrative of interiority and authenticity. It is not a narrative of the object, it is a narrative of the possessor," Ibid., 136. 49 My observations are based on a few stores primarily in the Times Square area. 50 http://www.nyctoursit.com/bridge2.html 51 Stewart, On Longing, 138. 52 See Rosemary Gordon, Bridges: Psychic Structures, Functions, and Processes, (Trans. Publ.: 1993), 81. 53 "The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the 3-dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body, or into the 2-dimensional representation, that which can be appropriated within the privatized view of the individual s ubject," Stewart, On Longing, 137. 54 Stewart, On Longing, 92. 55 http://www.nyctourist.com/buybridge.html and http://www.nyctourist.com/wallpaper_bridge.html 56 Guests: President Chester A. Arthur, Governor Grover Cleveland, and the mayors of Brooklyn and New York. Invitations and tickets circulated for the occasion. 57 A Brooklyn Bridge Birthday Preview, March 17th, 1983, (The Phoenix), 14-55. 58 See The Great East River Bridge 1883-1983, (H. N. Abrams, Inc, NY: 1983), centennial book. 59 See Andric, The Bridge on the Drina: a similar fate reaches the bridge he is writing about. 60 Vladimir Mayakovsky, Poems, transl. by Dorian Rottenberg, (USSR: 1972). 61 MCNY exhibit "Bridging New York." 62 The Great East River Suspension Bridge, a lithograph from 1972, by Curries and Ives, Publ. 63 Ivo Andric, Conversations with Goya -- Bridges, Signs. 64 Ibid., 24