Eryk,
Just to reiterate, I really did like the work. And I don't think it is just=
'clever'. I pushes a lot of my buttons, for reasons I won't go into, but p=
artly because I love pieces that present raw data.
My problem, I guess, is that I don't want you to corral me into my response=
. I know there is a lot of knee-jerk response to responses to 9/11, and I f=
eel you are trying to pre-empt some of them in a defensive way.
If I had to read it on my own terms, I think I'd feel it was saying the opp=
osite of what you are arguing: Look, here is a big list of names, and here =
is a visual format that leaves you (almost) in no doubt that these are vict=
ims of the 9/11 events. But who are these people? There is no way to know. =
As this event happened in America we can have an exhaustive list of them an=
d we can have live footage of the event happening. But we can't know who th=
ey were. Thus, it is not about individuals but about the structure within w=
hich we live.
I wouldn't think the piece has anything to do with people jumping out of th=
e buildings or about the wider issues. It has nothing to do with whether Am=
erica 'had it coming'. If there is a way into the personal stories behind t=
he piece, I can't find it for myself. They are _just names_ to me. And the =
amount of them leaves me cold: there are too many names for any one to come=
at me. And to me, therein lies the success of the piece.
Writing this has made me think about a piece I saw recently by Christian Bo=
ltanski. An installation is built in a gallery with shelves all around the =
sides. Tables with low hanging lights are in the space. The effect is very =
akin to a public library. On the shelves are telephone directories from all=
around the world, from many many countries. At first you just look at it a=
ll and think how like a reference library it is and how gloomy it is. There=
doesn't seem to be a way into a thousand telephone directories. Then you s=
tart to wonder around and look at them individually, and you start to think=
about how many variations there are on a telephone directory. Then you sta=
rt to wonder whether you know anyone in any of the directories. You think a=
bout people you know around the world and you find the country they live in=
. You pull the directory out, and try to work out how it is structured. Aft=
er a while you work it out and you dig out someone's name: a cousin, friend=
, whatever. Suddenly you realise the room is full of people doing more or l=
ess the same as you. I found the name of my uncle in South Africa. He died =
last year and I'd never seen the name of his company written down. There it=
suddenly was in front of me. Only connect.
Well, immediately following september 11th I got into an argument on anot=
her mailing list with a Canadian
who said "Well, it's no surprise, Americans had it coming." And I mean, w=
hat got me was that the people
who had died had suddenly stopped being people and started being "America=
ns Who Got What They Had
Coming." They weren't individuals. And there is a lot of hysteria- as a r=
esult of the media- with disasters.
You stop realizing what "people were killed" means after whatever number =
it was. "Five People Killed in
Bus Disaster in Texas." What's "Five People?" They aren't individuals, th=
ey're now Bus-Crash Victims.
I remember getting an instant message with the image of one of the people=
jumping out of the WTC and
just thinking, like, why would you send this to someone? People are very =
quick to abstract death when
it's seen with images, presented by the media. When the experience is pac=
kaged, we see the packaging
so much that we don't see the event. Hayakawa writes about this in "Langu=
age in Thought and Action"
where he points out that all too often humans mistake reports for experie=
nces. 9/11 is a classic example.
Maybe if you are in New York it is harder to understand this, because you=
_saw_ the event, felt the event,
smelled the event. It was experience. But for the rest of us- it was a re=
port, and the packaging of the report
and the event that report was reporting became confused. I don;t think th=
is is a new theory in new media,
and I am sure Hayakawa is not the guy who invented it, but it's the essen=
ce of any true observations made
from a post-modernist perspective. An "Un-Actual Life" is a life that is =
repackaged into a sum of images.
I think even just looking at the piece, catching one name, and saying "Jo=
seph Keller died on September
11th, 2001" as opposed to "Nearly 3000 People Died on September 11th" mak=
es us connect to the event
on a more human level. I'm not claiming to reduce all abstraction and dis=
connection from these images,
but hopefully the sort of crack in that shell can get people to really th=
inking more and more about what
happened. Because I don't think people have thought about it enough. =
I think you nailed the one thing I was afraid of - that the piece was "cl=
ever" as opposed to saying anything.
While I agree with the idea that the names are abstract- especially a hug=
e list of names- I don't know what
else to have done. Photographs? The idea was simply to look at the image =
with some kind of constant
connection to life, not abstractions, like "America Had It Coming On Acco=
unt of its Foreign Policy." And
while I'm no fan of American Foreign Policy, either- something I hope not=
to get into a debate about on
list- It's just a matter of, yeah, Muslims are allowed to die from Americ=
an Apathy, Christians are killed by
Islamic Extremists, every gets killed by everyone else if you believe in =
abstractions. And I don't think people
can kill people, they can only kill concepts. Palestinians aren't killing=
"people" when they blow up a bus,
they're killing "Jews." And when the Israeli army shoots Palestinians, it=
's all the same. If we can look at
people instead of concepts, an act like politically inspired murder becom=
es a lot more difficult.
In my original response, I referenced the fact that certain names 'lit up=
' or changed colour as the plane 'passed over them' or was it through them.=
This struck me as amazing. I wondered whether that was acceptable, whether=
it was good or bad to be privileged in that way. Whether friends or family=
would like or hate that. Whether there was any reason for that. I guess I =
could wonder whether this was a commentary on the totally arbitary way deat=
h comes to us. And in that way, we cannot be guilty or deserving.
I also wonder now whether the list is complete. Or whether it can ever be=
complete. As I suggested earlier, I wondered whether subsituting the 'genu=
ine' list of names with a totally spurious list would add to the piece. We =
are supposed to believe without question that the list is real. Why do we b=
elieve that? What it would look like if all the names were Chinese. What ou=
r response would be if the names were not familiar western names. Are the h=
ijackers names in there? And if your response to that question is: of cours=
e not, then why not?
As you can see, I don't think the piece is 'just clever' at all. I think =
it raises a whole bunch of issues. But they may not be the issues you think=
it raises, or that you want it to raise.
My view is that it isn't a memorial, it doesn't make us think about the i=
ndividuals or to think harder about the 'actual event' (whatever that is). =
My view is that it raises a whole bunch of other issues. Which is why I don=
't think the artist should set out what a work does or how it works. They s=
hould just loose it into the world for better or for worse. And then stand =
back and deal with the response :-)
Again, I think its a lovely work in its own right.
Cheers,
Ivan
I do not think you can say that, that you can impose this view on theviewer=
. Honestly, people who are dead do not >deserve< anything. Dead peopleare j=
ust dead people, there are a hell of a lot of them about. Do you reallythin=
k it is your role to create a memorial? And if you do, surely the workwill =
stand or fall as that in its own right?
Sure, it may not be my place to build a memorial. I mean who can say "Gee=
, I'm the perfect guy to make a
memorial for that slaughter!" I don't know if anyone can. If the piece ma=
kes people think about things in a less
abstracted manner, then what I did is acceptable to me. And yes, I know m=
ore than anyone about the work
standing on its own- and I present the sort of preface to it against my o=
wn sense of what art is supposed to be,
just so people don't leap into the work without realizing what it is. I h=
ate videotapes of people getting killed.
I've spent my entire life avoiding them. When you're the weird kid in hig=
h school you get plenty of weirder kids
who are trying to get you to watch "Faces of Death" when you're fifteen b=
ecause it's "cool" but it isn't. I think
there is a psychological impact, a kind of trauma, that can be induced by=
witnessing any act of execution, or the
sight- transformed through a camera lens from a human being into video fo=
otage- of a dead person. I mean hell,
I'm a vegetarian. So there's a warning so that no one looks at the piece =
and says "Hey, cool, that's clever."
I suppose maybe I should live with that, but I think a preface in this ca=
se is acceptable.
To sum up, let the work speak for itself. Do not try to protect it bybuildi=
ng a wall around it. Unless you are a commissioned state sculptor ofcourse.
Uhm, why? A commissioned state sculptor? What has that guy got over me
-e.