ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between the thinking, moving and imagining body and the surrounding city's industrial architecture, infrastructure. It takes as its primary fieldwork site the enormous granite, steel and concrete bridges that dominate New York's East River and connect Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens, namely the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge and 59th Street Bridge. The inauguration of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 opened up people's eyes, bodies and imaginations to a new vista on the city and a whole set of new aesthetic inspirations and possibilities. The particular sonic ambience of the different bridges opens up the ear to different creative and aesthetic possibilities. The sensation of crossing water or looking down from height, sometimes generates nervousness, at other times religious fervour, jazz, poetry or peace, or imagining one is floating on air. The decision to cross the bridge is a creative act of poesis which tens of thousands of people make every single day.
