OCTOBER 25 Consult the Oracle of the Bridge Answers to your most Perplexing Questions!! Satisfaction Guaranteed!!! WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE PUBLIC PARTICIPATORY PERFORMANCE Thousands of people pass over the Williamsburg bridge everyday. Millions of thoughts are thought on the bridge. Countless emotions are experienced on the bridge, and numberless fleeting interactions occur there. Few if any of these travelers realize that they have been WATCHED, FOLLOWED, IDENTIFIED. More than a passive pathway on which people come and go, the bridge is a consciousness, a MYSTICAL PRESENCE that, although unrecognized by most, comprehends all that passes through its body. This presence is THE ORACLE On Friday, October 25, 2002, the Oracle will manifest on the East side of the Williamsburg Bridge, on the bicycle and pedestrian path, above the Brooklyn river bank. THE ORACLE INVITES SEEKERS OF ALL AGES Videographers and facilitators will be in attendance at the designated spot. Bring a tangible or intangible offering (Warning:offerings of food are welcome and may be consumed by fellow participants). The Oracle will be accessible all day, sunrise to sunset. This may be the only such opportunity in your lifetime. ATTENTION: ENLIGHTENMENT MAY ENSUE Facilitated by Right to the City, in the interest of profit-free exchange and fearless inhabitation of public places.

 

The Bridge Oracle Project by Liz Heard

"People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal or constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth."
-Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life.

The idea of Bridge Oracle, a public participatory performance, was initiated by two things: the pleasures of traveling the Williamsburg Bridge, which I do regularly as a bicycle commuter, the possibilities evoked by Marxist- urbanist Henri LeFebvre's manifesto, "The Right to the City," and the political philosophy of the Situationalists.
The pleasures of the bridge have to do with occupying open space; that is, with moving above the East River (alone or in the company of fellow travellers), suspending oneself between two distinct sections of New York City, and negotiating aerial encounters with weather— being atmospheric in habit, if you like, as a bird or a skyscraper.

The possibilities LeFebvre envisions in "The Right to the City" relate to these pleasures. LeFebvre argues that all those who people the city have a right to fully, freely inhabit it. He imagines the city as an "ouevre" or a "complex thought" -  an entity infinitely more creative, flexible, and satisfying than the capitalist city-as-profit-machine. To my mind, to inhabit the city fully depends on the freedom to enjoy reflective and pleasurable pastimes in all urban spaces, including streets, bridges, subways, sidewalks, parks, as well as residential, commercial, and governmental buildings. It involves the right to satisfying work and work conditions. It includes the right to a variety of causal encounters and (non-monetary) exchange between citizens, the right to make art happen anywhere and everywhere.

The Bridge Oracle was conceived as a three-fold performance:
1) The day on the bridge, October 25, 2002, is a public, live, and participatory event – a happening if you will. I see it as an intervention in the general use of the bridge [transport of bodies, commuting, both allowing and restricting access to the "prime" real estate of Manhattan (for those who work in but cannot afford to live in Manhattan) ] and employing the bridge for other purposes having to do with: fun, meditation, change in point of view, listening to inner voices, allowing the eye/ ear/ feet to relax into expansive space, and the generative possibilities of suspension.
2) a video resulting from documentation of a day- long inhabitation of the bridge, accidental events of the day, and the "ritual" (consulting the oracle)
3) a webpage with documentation of the bridge event, that is, Bridge Oracle, as well as history of the Williamsburg Bridge and NYC, a perspective on various oracular practices, the Bridge Oracle video, the principles behind the performance(s), related texts on urban theory and the Situationalists, the question of disassembly and re-assembly of the city according to desire and political realities, projecting new practices to counteract wide-spread fear tactics of the US corporate-government, and… and…and…

The Bridge Oracle collaborators are: Felipe Ribeiro (Brazil), Pablo Costa (Brazil), Marsha Gall (Argentina), Tianna Kennedy (US) , and Liz Heard (US).

Info about the Williamsburg Bridge