Terrorism as a spectator sport
Sep. 18th, 2006 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marevIt was pointed out in one of my classes last week that the world trade center attack was staged for an audience. It was good media. An event organized to hold people's visual attention. In contrast the attack on the pentagon, which would have crippled the United States military had it been more successful, received very little media attention and barely registers on the contemporary cultural landscape.
Since starting at OCAD I've heard no end about the events of September 11th. Any class that touches on contemporary issues has mentioned it. Movies, books, artworks have been based around it, students have produced works epitomizing the suffering of the victims. Poems have been read in class about it. Personally I'm sick of the whole thing. The only instance of these events worked into a piece of art that I truly appreciate is Truce by the Dresden Dolls. None the less there are motifs that creep themselves into my own ideas for work.
The first thing I thought of right after it happened, in the stunned surreality of the day, was the Tarot card for The Tower. There is something psychological about height, and by extension, towers. In Florence or Siena around the time of the renaissance there was an edict that no one could build towers past a certain height. This was to prevent the wealthy form wasting resources in a "my tower is bigger than your tower" competition. It's this symbolic psychological aspect of an image of power being attacked and taken down that has everybody up in arms as much as the quotient of human suffering that was involved, after all, many times the number of people who died at Ground Zero (a numerological way of addressing the sudden lack of towers) die all the time, in other places, more quietly, and most likely on the ground without the advantage of height to give their end such media importance and mythic connotations.
I think at this point it's pretty inescapable that something related to the idea of height and towers and perhaps, falling will end up permeating my art. If nothing else I had been obsessed with the imagery of skyscrapers from living in an urban environment since far before the attack in New York happened. Only I think I will opt out of the media race and claim instead that my work is referring to The Two Towers by Tolkien. Or the paintings of Babel by Bruegel the Elder.
Since starting at OCAD I've heard no end about the events of September 11th. Any class that touches on contemporary issues has mentioned it. Movies, books, artworks have been based around it, students have produced works epitomizing the suffering of the victims. Poems have been read in class about it. Personally I'm sick of the whole thing. The only instance of these events worked into a piece of art that I truly appreciate is Truce by the Dresden Dolls. None the less there are motifs that creep themselves into my own ideas for work.
The first thing I thought of right after it happened, in the stunned surreality of the day, was the Tarot card for The Tower. There is something psychological about height, and by extension, towers. In Florence or Siena around the time of the renaissance there was an edict that no one could build towers past a certain height. This was to prevent the wealthy form wasting resources in a "my tower is bigger than your tower" competition. It's this symbolic psychological aspect of an image of power being attacked and taken down that has everybody up in arms as much as the quotient of human suffering that was involved, after all, many times the number of people who died at Ground Zero (a numerological way of addressing the sudden lack of towers) die all the time, in other places, more quietly, and most likely on the ground without the advantage of height to give their end such media importance and mythic connotations.
I think at this point it's pretty inescapable that something related to the idea of height and towers and perhaps, falling will end up permeating my art. If nothing else I had been obsessed with the imagery of skyscrapers from living in an urban environment since far before the attack in New York happened. Only I think I will opt out of the media race and claim instead that my work is referring to The Two Towers by Tolkien. Or the paintings of Babel by Bruegel the Elder.
