How do I get to Bridgeland?

by Jodi Rose, 25 Feb 2010

Good question. I’m still trying to figure that out myself…

Bridgeland is everywhere. Any bridge can take you to Bridgeland. It’s already in existence, there is nothing to create, all we have to do is learn to find our way.

walking in bridgeland – pont neuf, paris january 2010

I’ve been discussing details for the opening event with the wonderful Lowsalt crew, who made another site visit last week and came up with a perfect site for each of the musicians, ingenious technical solutions and deeper concept synthesis of the performance in relation to the location. Now to continue the process of negotiation with council and local authorities. I’m sworn to secrecy on the details, so you’ll just have to come find out what they are on the night. Friday 23rd April, in case you’re reading this in Glasgow. Very excited to be coming in two weeks and getting onto making signs and costumes and music!

On an esoteric level, all those ideas from transmediale and my trip are swirling around in a transtemporal soup going through my mental filtering process. Something about making a transition between times is important, and the idea of perceptual time, non-linear, mythic – all the ways you can experience temporality.

I hear another take on the idea of moving through time in a talk by the ‘agent of displacement’ at NGBK whose main point is that ‘art travels through time’ and hence artists also. While the work is in process it’s alive, once it’s declared ‘finished’ and ‘you’ the artist named as ‘the author’, well then “you’re dealing with a corpse”. He talked about relational art, and seeing through to the other side of the wall, telling a story about his grandmother knocking on their dividing wall every evening to say goodnight, and his failed attempt at 8 to break through the wall, which has informed his entire art practice. Although simple and even a little banal at the time, the idea is still resonating.

What is on the other side of the wall? (or the bridge…) His piece in a Rome exhibition was to show photos of the rooms on the other side of the gallery walls, and in another Italian city, tried to convince the inhabitants of the apartment around the gallery to allow him to bring strangers in to their homes and observe the spaces as part of his artwork. One neighbour, a journalist, agreed and gave him the keys, while another elderly woman reluctantly allowed him to come into her apartment but refused to change any of her habits for his visits. So the gallery audience was brought through in small groups, kept behind velvet ropes as if in a museum, to observe this woman in her home, ironing or cooking or watching TV. He said it was a quite uncomfortable experience, as people tried to connect and say bongiorno, and excuse me, while she completely ignored them; A ‘relational artwork’ that failed to relate. He realised that any relation, even a negative one is still an interaction. I like the image of her steadfastly ironing away while all these art people traipsed through her home – of which she became the star.

Speaking of stars, it has been suggested that a fabulous red satin dress, corset and skyscraper heels form part of my bridge conductors outfit for the opening ceremony. (I’m thinking a tesla coil could be built in somewhere too – maybe on the hat?)

There’s something inherently decadent about dressing-up, it’s one of the reasons I love Glasgow so much, every time I visited for about two years the fantastic Maxwell Park crew had another dress-up party, and everyone went to such extravagant efforts to transform themselves and create a magical playground – with dancing! Becky just gave me the coolest opera and diva costume places in town, and I’m thinking that everyone needs to make or find an outfit to enter Bridgeland.

The Bruce Sterling idea of simply dressing up and inhabiting the future world in which you would like to live has taken hold here! There’s such a joyful celebratory feeling created by a whole lot of people in outrageous costumes. One of my favourite short films at transmediale was ‘permanent residents’, with a series of LA inhabitants in wonderfully bizarre outfits going about their daily life, from the laundromat to vacuuming the house, looking extreme and extraordinary. I think we can make this event spectacular and amazing, taking our wildest sartorial fantasies to the streets and celebrate crossing into Bridgeland.

700 brides for 700 bridges – pont battant, sonorama besançon 2009

So, get your sewing machines out, it’s needles at dawn! Ok, well maybe sunset.