Photography by Daniel New (Alphonse Leonardi).
The Bridge: Motion-Sculpture for the Masses
Commentary: Enzo Franchetti. Photography: Alphonse Leonardi.
Originally published in Jargon, summer 2001.
IN 2001 WE JARGONISTS RENOUNCE ART TO DO WITH AESTHETIC SENSATIONS DERIVING FROM THE PHYSICAL BODY.WE JARGONISTS IMBUE SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS IN RIVETS,PULLEYS AND IRON CLADDING, AND SALUTE THE PHYSICAL TRANSCENDENTALISM OF THE WESTGATE BRIDGE, MOTION SCULPTURE FOR THE MASSES.
With its buoyant lines and curves snaking into the heat-hazed horizon; with its vectors of speed, then recipes of disaster, converging effortlessly into gated throughways; with its twisted screams, contortions and bends, tectonic plates grinding and stressing with humidity (and humanity: the screams of 35 dead – workers killed in initial construction, then mid-section collapse – who gave for this art); with its ribbed underbelly recalling the skeletal structure of some bizarre, alien creature, archaeological find of the 25th century; with its slither of metalskin urgently making its way toward autogeddon, at the speed of 80 km… With all this we have The Bridge, art in motion.
Unschooled types state that The Bridge and other great works of industrial art are against nature, but we say, think again: they enhancenature. The Westgate is made for aesthetic appreciation of the loftiest order. Its full, considered design sings rhythm
and repetition from lamp post to signage to emergency stopping bay. Plays of light at sunset glint with gunmetal grey; superenhanced colours tinge the sky, horizon (and even street-level politics) with new palettes.
The Bridge is preoccupied art with singular purpose: to subordinate human scale, to serenade with the power and majesty of electrical motors, pulleys – petrol combustion equations. With the fine tuning of engines magnified by huge volumes traversing
tarmac, there is music, poetry, rhythm. Stand beneath and listen: there is life, encased in metal. In the newborn phase of the 21st century, we witness the dying gasps of the penultimate stage of human evolution: this is posthuman intelligence, armoured,
body-enhanced, supermodified.
But before the final solution – disassociation from the body altogether; existence as pure matter, pure mind – we must salute and cherish these monuments to our armoured selves, as we do the bone-fashioned club from our Cro-Magnon ancestry. For it is on The Bridge’s grand stage where new dramas are played out, far more interesting to the true aesthete than any human drama. The Bridge is seductive and erotic, as only technology can be, because it fulfils our dreams, modifies our desire into the lap of the gods.
Until we are superhuman. The Bridge lifts us, carries us aloft on the shoulders of ingenuity – engineering marvels, and the wings of misery – the 35 dead.
The equation, then, is this: ‘sacrifice’ times ‘technology’ equals ‘progress’.
Equals The Bridge.