London Bridge “Art-iz-Us” Artistic Happening on 29 May 1998 (which led to multiple nominations for the Turner Prize). Here are your emails.
6th December 2007
This posting relates to an artistic happening that took place on London Bridge on 29 May 1998. There is a previous posting with an article from Antiques and Art Independent telling the story of the Happening here.
On the day a large number of commuters walking over the bridge donned cardboard ears bearing the words Art-iz-Us and were nominated for the Turner Prize. An important part of the preparation for the event was the setting up of a dedicated web site: www.londonbridge.29may.com. In 1998 this was a very novel approach - as, indeed, were the multiple Turner Prize nominations.
The web site advertised the coming artistic happening and commuters walking over the bridge every morning were advised where to log on by means of posters. In 1998 most computers were in offices and many people did not have one at home. Almost by definition, most of the 2000 + hits on the site came from offices in the City of London.
The web site generated an extensive and heady email correspondence which I downloaded to my hard disk just before the web site ceased to exist. In those days the word “gigabyte” for most of us was beyond contemplation and it was necessary to download files from the computer at regular intervals onto other media to create working memory. The chosen State-of-the-then-Art device was called Syquest and anyone who has had any experience of Syquest will know how awful the technology was and how hit and miss any back-up on Syquest proved to be. By the same token it was necessary to keep web files as light as possible so that they could be downloaded in a reasonably short space of time. For this reason there are two correspondence files. The first covers the build-up to the Happening when we (me and the people walking over London Bridge) were all getting very excited and the second begins a couple of days after the great moment when we were coming down from a high.
The tenth anniversary of the Happening will be next May. In anticipation I am going to put together a file of ephemera, pictures and press cuttings which will be posted here in due course. Who knows? Perhaps there will be a re-union.
First correspondence file:www.londonbridge.29may.com - Correspondence File to end May 1998
Second correspondence file:www.londonbridge.29may.com - Correspondence File June to September 1998
There is a BBC report of the happening published on its web site later the same day here (with two further broadcast links within the article)