The World on Edge by Casey Edward S.;

Author:Casey, Edward S.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2017-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 17. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates (2005), Central Park.

A park like Central Park is a highly variegated composition whose complexity is integral to its very identity—and to its allure. Its hybridity is allied with open-edged spaces, which facilitate the coexistence of its many kinds of denizens, permanent as well as passing. These edges consist in a congeries of open-ended boundaries with borders only at its outer edges. In February and March 2005, Cristo and Jeanne-Claude created a memorable event that reinforced the boundaried character of the Park in a very striking way. Over many walkways, arches were put up—some singly and in isolation, others in groups of ten or twelve—from which curtains of saffron-colored material hung like veils. The effect was that of a continuously unfolding threshold to be crossed in a spirit of informal but powerful ritual. Tens of thousands of people—not only from New York but also from around the world—came to this much-publicized event. I was present myself and was deeply moved by the masses of people walking through the arches in a show of spontaneous solidarity. It was as if visitors to the Park were trying out a new form of sociality—even in bitterly cold weather and at a time of bitter division over the invasion of Iraq. In their considerable ethnic and racial and national diversity, and despite being unknown to each other, they walked through corridors of saffron curtains together, often arm in arm.

The slender but striking structures designed by Cristo and Jeanne-Claude took the boundaried character of the park to another level, one that was explicitly communal and confraternal. The edges of the curtains through which people walked were iconic of the way that the park offers open boundaries for visitors in all seasons. The transiency of this event rendered the presence of the curtained edges all the more poignant and pronounced. They embodied the park’s inherent hospitality, a welcoming that emerges from its many open-ended spaces.

Thanks to its multifariousness, Central Park can be known in and through many parameters: historical and sociological, geomorphic and botanical. But it can also be experienced as a hugely bountiful edge-world. It manages to combine all of the major edge types I have discussed so far in this book: margins (of the lakes), thresholds (in the botanical gardens), rims (around the racing track on Round Hill), brinks (on the high rocks), borders (the sidewalks and streets on all four sides), boundaries (everywhere), and much else. Despite this sheer edge heterogeneity, to be in the park and to move around in it is to witness at every turn a remarkably coherent pattern of edges, creating a plane of consistency that renders this extraordinary space at once familiar and always surprising.

III

To exit from Central Park through one of its many open gates is to enter a massive cityscape filled with unrelenting traffic and populated by preoccupied people. From a consideration of gardens and parks we now move to cities and their streets. This is not just a transition

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