Remembering the B-Thing in Light of White Flag Brooklyn Bridge Confession

Now comes the New York Times, with word that it was German artists who removed American flags from the Brooklyn Bridge and replaced them with hand-women white ones.

But the artists, Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke, say the flags — with hand-stitched stars and stripes, all white — had nothing to do with terrorism. In a series of phone interviews, they explained that they only wanted to celebrate “the beauty of public space” and the great American bridge whose German-born engineer, John Roebling, died in 1869 on July 22, the day the white flags appeared.

That this lame commemoration lacks verve and complexity is annoying to me.

When the caper was first reported, it gave me chills. Not because of any possible 1:1 connection to domestic terrorism or Tea Party fringe violence, but because it was summer, and a New York landmark, and seemed to have depth.

In short, I was scared because it felt like an art project, one that had similarities to The B-Thing by Gelatin (now called “gelitin”). First reported on August 18, 2001 (“Balcony Scene (Or Unseen) Atop the World; Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities“. Here’s the project description:

In the spring of 2000, Gelatin and 14 other artists shared free studio space on the 91st floor, where the group’s artmaking appeared to consist of building a clubhouse out of cardboard boxes.

But Ali Janka, a member of Gelatin reached by phone in Vienna, said that the blindered view afforded by the narrow windows had inspired them to find a way to step outside. ”After you have a certain idea, you can’t go back,” he said, ”because everything else seems very weak compared to it.”

Mr. Janka was happy to talk about the project, at least at first. After weeks of planning, he said, one night Gelatin — he, Florian Reither, Tobias Urban and Wolfgang Gantner — waited in the studio until dawn. At the appointed moment, the four, wearing harnesses, unscrewed the aluminum moldings that hold the window in place and used two large suction cups to remove the glass (air pressure adds about 300 pounds to the effort). As warm air streamed past, they outfitted the window with a cantilevered box, big enough for only one person at a time.

”The amazing thing that happens when you take out a window,” Mr. Janka said, ”is that the whole city comes into the building.”

Gelitin is a group of genius. They play with ferocious efficiency.

The affair of the balcony ended, if indeed it ever began, with the appearance in July of a slender book of curious title, obtainable in very few places, one of them being an art gallery in a frosted storefront on Broadway near Franklin Street.

Called ”The B-Thing” and produced by four Vienna-based artists known collectively as Gelatin, the book is demure to the point of being oblique. What little explanation it contains appears to have been scribbled in ballpoint. Among the photos and schematic drawings, there are doodles of tarantulas with human heads.

In short, the book belies the extravagance of the feat it seems to document: the covert installation, and brief use, of a balcony on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center, 1,100 feet above the earth. Eight photographs — some grainy, all taken from a great distance — depict one tower’s vast eastern facade, marred by a tiny molelike growth: a lone figure dressed in a white jacket, standing in a lectern-size box.

My copy of "The B-Thing" by Gelitin
My copy of “The B-Thing” by Gelitin

I crave art. This simplistic birthday celebration of the Germans meets no criteria. Extradite!


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