O n the morning of March 19, 2000, Florian Reither learned what it felt like to scrape the sky. He’d just stepped out of the 91st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center through a hollowed-out window. Now, as Sunday’s dawn cracked, Reither — dressed in a brilliant-white leather jacket and matching jeans — stood on a makeshift wooden balcony. It protruded a few feet toward the horizon. Looking down was OK, but gazing up made him nauseous. So he stared straight ahead, locking eyes with the pink sunrise. “It was fantastic. It was just a really sexy feeling.”

This vertiginous performance wasn’t the act of a brazen stuntman, crazed trespasser, or suicidal employee. It was the work of the Austrian art collective Gelitin, which consists of Florian Reither, Ali Janka, Wolfgang Gantne

See Full Page