Recommendations for the Bridge project

The Olawski bridge shall be a cultural site for one day in June 2015

There will be celebrated altogether 40 bridges as part of the preparations

for next year when Wroclaw shall be European Capital of Culture.

1. Description of the bridge

allow the participants to describe a bridge in such a way that a blind person can imagine the bridge
create altogether a bridge which does not collapse (all stand together, say a word, and then pass it on to the next, but what is so different when you have to span a river or a valley), and relate this to the myth of Manolis, the bridge builder in the Balkans. Note this myth is about an engineer who never succeed to build a bridge. It collapses all the time. Then he receives the advise if he is to build a bridge which shall hold, he needs to sacrifice one woman by using her as part of the cement to hold the pillars. The engineer instructs all his workers not to say anything to their women who come usually around 11.00 to the site with food. Of course, everyone warns their women but not the engineer. So his wife is the first one to come and therefore she is sacrificed. The bridge finally holds. It is a myth told in many parts of the Balkans and relates very much to the ARTA bridge in Epirus, a region in Greece with Ioannina the main city.
describe what difference it would make to meet someone on the bridge with two alternatives: a deliberate appointment / rendez-vous or by coincidence
what visions of life on the other side can be anticipated and what alters as you approach ever more so the final destination
entry of death into life, or a growing awareness of the precarious nature of life which leaves as well a leaf quiver in the wind, but not a bridge which seems to stand unmoved by the wind (Marques: hundred years of lonelineness)
stepping outside the city and into nature: crossing the bridge (since Parmenides: das Seiende and the fragmented self – no unity of perception)
what other incidence aside from the Kundera story can be imagined and narrated?

crossing over and reporting back what is on the other side
mapping the bridge from one end to the other
what does it take to break it down or what load can it take
the analogy to the arched back or for that matter any back
some do not dare to go onto the bridge, others stop midway and turn around and others cross over if only never to return even though a bridge is usually a two way passage in time and in reality

2. In reference to the Parmenides describe experiences of transformations

Given the example of Parmenides, it would be wise to structure the experiences made by anyone when crossing over the Olawski Bridge and upon reaching the other side having dipped into another world.

What would the 'key of fate' which could trigger such a transformation or alteration in the 'unity of perception'?

What follows out of such a 'le vecu' (lived through experience) in terms of the main memory track for life, so that even when looking back twenty years later or more, that experience can still be remembered because of having stepped out of the system (Sigmund Freud's 'memory track)

What could be some guidance on how to use (appreciate) the bridge, best done by expressing this not as a rule which someone must obey, but which would be most appropriate for a person to think about when walking over this enchanted bridge. It could be a gentle reminder like a touch on the shoulder now it is time to leave the experiences of the city behind. There is this example of Janusz Korczak who as director of the orphanage had to make sure the boys do not fight and some peace prevails but there was one who got always in a fight, so he ordered him to go down the longer corridor to the office of the director, but while the boy was walking in front of him, he could hear him sob, and Janusz did not know should he touch his shoulder to comfort him or keep a distance to preserve his authority as director. And then he said something significant: if especially a child cries you never know if it is a pain of the present or because the child senses thousand years of persecution and injustices? That then can refer to the method of interpretation in psychoanalysis, and which Adorno calls 'Deuten': pointing the finger directly at the key source of the problem.

Following philosophical questions can be handled and resolved within this bridge experience:

are modern problems related to perception and reality when we are not sure how to unify our senses?
It should be recalled that since Plato until Hegel both the senses and therefore as well poetry was denied by these philosophers as if they cannot be 'sources of truth'!
Note: One PhD student writing his interpretation of Parmenides for Weizsächer ('Unity of Nature') departed from the problematic 'self' as having been fragmented, and which in turn prevents this stepping out into the open nature to be again a natural self, uninhibited and definitely trusting the sources (not to be confused with 'instincts').
This stepping out of oneself and into something else makes possible quite another experience. It is based on a positive 'self forgetting', or in not being self centred, the reaching out to others can become first an imaginary possibility, and if answered by the other, then more than a dream a reality.
That is why it would be wise to pick up while crossing the bridge some of these enchanted wishes for they can give direction. It was Aristotles who stated that the imagination is a prerequisite to know your wishes – proheisis! Wishing humanity well may be the greatest of all gifts especially in times like these.

3. Poems as letters to the past, present and future

Matching to the little houses the children have made already as part of the preparation. Here may be reminded of the novel called 'Letters to the Past' with a Chinese poet and a Chinese philosopher speculating about how China will look like 1000 years from now. To find out, they build a time machine and then the poet climbs in to be ejected into the future. Before departure, he promises to leave regularly a letter underneath a stone on a bridge so that his friend will be informed what has changed, what has not.

Likewise it might be one idea to leave little notes, poems, underneath these houses so that people when passing by can retrieve and read them before putting them again under the little house, so that others coming after them will be able to read this.

Mapping the site:

how many houses at which location
safety of these houses
can notes be written in different languages to imitate the many voices the bridge has heard
would it make sense to develop a pattern of sounds, images etc. as if birds ready to take off
would there be a reference to one another so that the little notes can be taken to communicate with each other?
If all notes are on a computer programme, then they can be traced or mapped in their correspondence to one another
would it be wise to make it into a puzzle the outcome of which would be displayed at the end of the bridge

A final question: can a banner be put up with quotes from the workshop?

Hatto Fischer

Athens / Berlin May 2015

For further information: www.poieinkaiprattein.org

^ Top

« Part C: Olawski Bridge | Poetic responses »

Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Navigation

Recommendations for the Bridge project