Philippe Petit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philippe Petit (born August 13, 1949) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his illegal walk between the former Twin Towers in New York City on August 7, 1974. ^[1]

He used a 450 pound cable to do so and also a custom made 26 foot long, 55 pound balancing pole. Tight-rope walker, unicyclist, magician and pantomime artist, Philippe Petit was also one of the earliest modern day street jugglers in Paris in 1968. He juggled and worked on a slack rope with regularity in Washington Square Park in New York City in the early 1970s. Petit is one of the Artists-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Other famous structures he has used for tightrope walks include that Cathedral, The Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Louisiana Superdome, and between the Palais de Chaillot and the Eiffel Tower. Petit currently lives in Woodstock, New York. A documentary film named "Man on Wire" by UK director James Marsh dealing with Petit's WTC performance won both the World Cinema Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Filmfestival 2008. The film also won awards at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C.

Contents 1 Planning the World Trade Center Walk 2 The walk between the towers 3 Consequences of the walk 4 Bibliography 5 References 6 Notes 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Planning the World Trade Center Walk

Petit first received the inspiration while he sat in his dentist's office in Paris in 1968. He came upon an article on the as-yet unbuilt towers, along with an illustration of the model. He then became obsessed with the towers, collecting articles on the towers whenever possible. Petit also traveled to New York on several occasions to have some first-hand observations. Since the towers were still under construction, Philippe and N.Y.-based photographer Jim Moore went up in a helicopter to do aerial photographs of the WTC.

The purpose of having these photographs was for Petit to make a scale model of the towers to help him figure out the rigging he needed to prepare for the upcoming wirewalk. Petit and three others made fake identification cards (claiming that they were contractors that were installing an electrified fence on the roof) in order to gain access to the towers. Prior to this, Petit sneaked into the towers several times, hiding on the roof and other areas in the unfinished towers, in order to get a sense of what type of equipment he needed.

To make it easier to sneak into the buildings, Petit thoroughly observed the clothes worn by construction workers and what kinds of tools they carried, as well as the clothing of businessmen so that he would blend in with them when he tried to enter the buildings. He also noted what time the workers arrived and left, so he could determine when he would have roof access. He once even claimed that he was with a French architecture magazine wanting to interview the workers on the roof. The Port Authority allowed Petit to conduct the interviews, but the real reason he wanted to be up on the roof was to make more observations. He was once caught by a police officer on the roof, and his hopes to do the high wire walk were dampened, but he eventually regained the confidence to proceed with it.

Petit and his crew were able to ride in a freight elevator to the 104th floor with their equipment the day before the walk, and were able to store this equipment just nineteen steps from the roof. In order to pass the cable across the void, Petit and his crew decided to use a bow and arrow. They first shot across a fishing line, and then passed larger and larger ropes across the space between the towers until they were able to pass the 450 pound steel cable across. Cavalettis (guy lines) were used to stabilize the cable and keep the swaying of the wire to a minimum. For the first time in the history of the Twin Towers, they were joined. The 'artistic crime of the century' took six years of planning, during which he learned everything he could about the buildings, taking into account such problems as the swaying of the towers because of wind and how to get the walking cable across the 140 foot gap between the towers.

[edit] The walk between the towers

Shortly after 7:15 a.m., without hesitation, Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4" 6x19 IWRC steel cable. The 24-year-old Petit made eight crossings between the still-unfinished towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan, in an event that lasted about 45 minutes. During that time, in addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salute and, while lying on the wire, dialogued with a seagull circling above his head.

Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:

I observed the tightrope 'dancer'—because you couldn't call him a 'walker'—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire....And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle....He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again....Unbelievable really....[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.^[2]

He was finally persuaded by police officers to give himself up after he was warned that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire. Petit was worried that the wind from the helicopter would knock him off the wire, so he decided it was time to give up. He was arrested once he stepped off the wire. His audacious high wire performance made headlines around the world.

When asked why he did the stunt, Petit would say “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”

[edit] Consequences of the walk

The immense news coverage and public appreciation of Petit's high wire walk resulted in all formal charges relating to his walk being dropped. The court did however "sentence" Petit to perform a show for the children of New York City, which Petit transformed into another high-wire walk, this time above the Belevedere Lake in New York's Central Park. Petit was also presented with a lifetime pass to the Twin Towers' Observation Deck by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His signature was on a steel beam close to his departure.

[edit] Bibliography

• Philippe Petit, Two towers, I walk, (New York: Reader's Digest, 1975), ASIN B00072LQRM.
• Philippe Petit, On The High Wire, Preface by Marcel Marceau, (New York: Random House, 1985). ISBN 039471573X.
• Philippe Petit, Traité du funambulisme, Preface by Paul Auster, (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997), ISBN: 2226041230, (In French).
• Petit Philippe, To Reach The Clouds My High Wire Walk Between The Twin Towers, (New York, North Point Press, 2002). ASIN B000UDX0JA.

[edit] References

• Gillespie, Angus K. Twin Towers: the Life of New York City's World Trade Center. Rutgers University Press 1999.
• Glanz, James and Eric Lipton. City in the Sky. New York: Times Book, 2003.
• Petit, Philippe. To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers. New York: North Point Press, 2002. ISBN 0-86547-651-9

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Mordicai Gerstein, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (ISBN 0-7613-1791-0). Children's book and winner of the 2004 Caldecott Award. Subsequently adapted into an animated movie of the same name.^[1]
• In 2002, two graphic novels (title?) based on people's perspective of 9-11 were released. It includes Petit crossing the WTC in volume 1 and the title of the panel was "He walked on air 110 stories".
• Paul Auster's admiration for Petit ("On the High Wire") is included in his collection of essays and stories, The Red Notebook.

[edit] External links

• "A High-Wire Master Touches Down.", New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-04-18. 
• The Daredevil in the Clouds
• Touching the Void
• Photos of the Expo 86 walk
• 1974 - Philippe Petit Walks a Tightrope Between the Twin Towers A report from Tom Kaminski of WCBS Newsradio 880 (WCBS-AM New York) Part of WCBS 880's celebration of 40 years of newsradio.
• Philippe Petit Signature visible in the 1980s