We invite you to be a part of Bridge Deconstruction, our next major deconstructive infrastructure project!

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Our Goal: To reunite The Wolfsonian-FIU's Bridge Tender House with its bridge. But its bridge is gone and we physically can’t transport it. So, what are some other ways to reunite them? …all while honoring the many diverse and intersecting ways a ubiquitous piece of invaluable infrastructure can mean so much more than the sum of its parts? What can we all learn as we (re)imagine a bridge together?

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There are three ways you can be a part of this group effort.
 

1. The Bridge

What/where/who is your bridge? What does a bridge mean to you? 

Open call for any and all proposals from the community!

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This includes (but is not limited to):

• Contributions to the public installation

• Artwork in and around the public installation or Bridge Tender House

• Programmatic proposals such as: Workshops, Lectures, Discussions, Reading Groups,
  Tours, Performances, Debates, Demonstrations, Protests, and more! 

• We are open to any and all proposals! Let’s talk!

 

2. The (Other) Bridge Tender House

Open Call to all students in FIU's CARTA Coll ege of Communication, Architecture + The Arts!

 

At it's original location on NW 27th Avenue over the Miami River, the Bridge Tender House

had a sibling house on the opposite side of the bridge. With the help of FIU students, we
will recreate that house as a group-collaged model. 

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Read the full open call here.

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3. The Stories 

We use them everyday! Share one personal bridge memory with us.

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Maybe it's a bridge you cross daily on your way to work. Or that bridge you jumped from
on a dare into a lake below when you were 12. Or maybe it's your favorite moment from a

recently-read novel. Email us a short audio clip recounting your story and we’ll use it in a
collage made to sound like a seamless (if meandering) conversation, which visitors and
passersby of the Bridge Tender House will hear throughout the run of the public installation. 

 

To record your clip just use your phone!* Email info@departmentofreflection.org with the
subject line “Bridge Stories.” All submissions will be included, in full, in an archive
compendium to be published online.

 

*An app such as Voice Memos works perfect! 

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Images: 

1. Bridge at 27th Avenue and the Miami River, 1939, Courtesy HistoryMiami.

2. Bridge Tender House at 27th Avenue, 1939, Courtesy HistoryMiami.

3. Musa Isle Seminole Indian Village, at 27th Avenue and the Miami River. Postcard part of Wolfsonian-FIU Collection.

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Bridge Deconstruction is organized by the Department of Reflection, The Wolfsonian–FIU, and The Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab and sponsored by FIU’s Extreme Events Institute and their Commons for Justice: Race, Risk, and Resilience project funded by the Mellon Foundation.

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Bridge Deconstruction is additionally supported by a WaveMaker grant from Locust Projects, Bas Fisher Invitational, and by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.