Kimberley Chandler

Two comparative forms of ascensional structure, the Eiffel Tower and the Ferris wheel, were presented to the public at the Paris Exposition, 1889 and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893. These structures invited the performance of the ascent: a condition of bodily transformation made possible by the combined idealism and technical advances in engineering. The methods by which the anticipated and anticipating public were mobilised within these performative spaces raises the question of how the unprecedented experience of the ascent was communicated and negotiated by design.

This dissertation presents an historical interpretation of a spatial mechanism integral to the ascent: the compartment. As a mobile subdivision of space, it demonstrated an intimate relation to the performance of both these structures, and yet appears to have been overlooked within the histories of the ‘events’ it occupied. Thus the focus is on the design and experiential content of both the elevators within the Eiffel Tower and cabins of the Ferris wheel as the unsettling space for this modern performance, the complexity of response to which encourages a discussion of the ‘modern subjectivity’ in this period.

In contradistinction to Roland Barthes’ notion of ‘transported immobility’, this dissertation proposes an alternative: that of ‘transfixed immobility’, a condition of immobility predicated on amazement, awe or terror rather than indifference. Such interpretation has more explicit implications for the mobilised body, one that appears to have been actively transformed by the design and techniques of these new methods of mechanised travel.