Correspondences
The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, Brooklyn, NY
1989
Materials & Dimensions:
Shade cloth, China silk, brick, concrete, stainless steel cable, theatrical lights, ground cloves
Total dimensions: 55 feet high x 25 feet wide x 82 feet long
White silk cone: 41 feet high x 5 ½ feet top diameter
White brick cone: 4 ½ feet high x 6 feet base diameter
Black shade cloth cone: 38 ½ feet high x 8 feet top diameter
Red brick cone: 7 ½ feet high x 8 feet base diameter
The site was a bay in the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage that featured two round apertures, one six feet in diameter, and one ten feet in diameter, in its barrel vault ceiling. These are now sealed although they were skylights in the original design. The bays in the Anchorage were originally intended for use as a farmers’ market, but this never took place.
I suspended a descending cone from each vault aperture—one of white silk and the other of black shade cloth—by a cable/pulley/anchor spool system. Each was in line, aperture to aperture, with its corresponding brick cone, which rose from the floor to meet it. The floor cones contained large theatrical lights focused upward through the fabric cones to provide the only light in the room (Note: The documentation requirements make the spaces seem lighter than they were.). Also within the cones were large quantities of ground cloves, which were also strewn around the edges of the bay space. This scented the space.