film: MAN ON WIRE – A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT STREET ART

In 1974, Philippe Petit along with an unlikely team of helpers, infiltrated both of the World Trade Towers, use a bow-and-arrow to string a steel cable between the two towers, and then perform what was essentially a slow, careful ballet as he walked back and forth between the buildings a total eight times. He was half a kilometer above the street below and had no safety line. The police, waiting anxiously on the buildings, arrested him immediately.

The documentary Man on Wire is the story of Philippe Petit and this famous work of art. The pace of the film is that of bank heist or terrorism flick – the suspense rises as the characters plan and plot their mission. And Petit, a Frenchman with a penchant for dramatic storytelling, makes for a fantastic narrator as he recounts the act with along with interviews from his friends and assistants.

The documentary work is fantastic, but it’s also the best way to experience the tremendously inspiring work art that Petit created. Some might just call it a stunt, others might call it performance art, but to me the most apt term to describe what Petit did is street art. Street art is free for all the passing public, it changes and reinterprets the built environment without asking permission, and it is illegal. Petit’s performance is all of those things. Clandestinely infiltrating the buildings and walking that wire against all laws, artfully re-interpreting the ways humans can interact with a cityscape surging sky-ward beyond all boundaries previously experienced in urban life. If the human form itself were ever eclipsed by human's ability to create structures and technologies so much larger than life, then maybe what is so exciting about Petit’s work is that he stole the spotlight back from amazing feats of structural engineering and pointing it back on humans themselves. Whereas these buildings had been the epitome of human’s highest ability, Petit relegated them to be merely a stage for his performance. The documentary is great. What Philippe Petit did in 1974 is the most beautiful piece of street art I have ever seen. Check this film out.

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