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Tuesday, May 22, 2012
September 11, 2006

Your Turn: Grasping The Ephemeral

Wtcoutline

(click to expand)

And it was at this time, in the days immediately after September 11, that we discovered ephemeral art. Until then we had no idea what street art was. But the attacks of September 11th had made us hyper-aware of our surroundings. We began exploring Lower Manhattan like never before. We were now seeing the city in a completely different way, with new eyes and a new heart. Everything, and everyone, around us was now suddenly important. And it was in these days immediately after September 11th that we began noticing street art everywhere we went. On every block, and on every corner. Stickers, posters, stencils, tags, graffiti. I took pictures of everything I saw in the days after September 11th. People were putting up lots of different things. Some of it extremely political. Some of extremely emotional and sad.

But a lot of it made you smile.

– Marc/Wooster Collective.  September 11, 2006

September 11th is a holiday in Catalunya akin to a regional/political (desire for-) independence day.  Besides the street fairs, the Catalan flag suddenly appears in apartment windows, and occasionally drapes whole apartment buildings.  In a strange coincidence, I was walking in the town of Girona with my nephew who started taking photo after photo of the street art.  Although he was only vaguely familiar with it, I told him he really should take a look at the Wooster Collective.

Then yesterday afternoon, a BAGreader posted a link to this image.  Marc, one of two originators of woostercollective, featured this photo as part of his recollection of 9/11.  Along with the image, he describes how the attacks served as the genesis for this unique and invaluable site.  Now five years old, woostercollective has been as intrinsic to the documentation of street art as it has been to the on-line appreciation and embrace of lower Manhattan.

I invite you to read this whole entry, as well as check out the WTC Outline Project, which inspired the image (as long as their servers are holding up).  Morever, I invite you reaction to the image as a literal memorial, an expression of catharsis as well as an act of memory.

(hat tip: DP)

(image: WTC Outline Project via woostercollective)

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  • http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez

    And it was at this time, in the days immediately after September 11, that we discovered ephemeral art.
    What??? I just detest when people have experiences and say “we.” No, friend, that is not when “we” discovered street art. My lord. As if nothing, for anyone anywhere, existed BEFORE SEPTEMBER ELEVEN. Is 9/11 also when this guy realized he could pee standing up? What a glorious day, without which we would still be home in our felt boxes, wishing we knew what it was to live life. Sorry, BAG, personally I am sick to death of getting obligatorily mopey and dew-eyed over this. I lived there, I have very personal memories of it, and how everyone was after, what it felt like, what me and my gf did to deal, and I’m just not gonna sticker it up online like a puta for the camera anymore. 9/11, more and more, just means a great ole time for our fascist government because without it, they would not be able to justify a damn thing they want to do naturally.

  • ummabdulla

    I’m glad you said that… I feel uncomfortable commenting on this, because I wasn’t there, I didn’t know anyone who died there, etc.
    But when I read “Until then we had no idea what street art was”, I also thought that was pretty strange for someone who was living in New York City.

  • http://profile.typekey.com/bgrothus/ bg

    It is incredible what it takes for someone to open their eyes. But eyes were opened. NYC was not fooled by W.
    How long will it take for the rest of the country to wake up and get it? What you said, Nezua-Limon!!

  • http://www.sumption.org Dan Sumption

    Erm, Neuza-Limón, in what way is it offensive for somebody speaking for an artist’s collective to refer to them as “we”?
    Read the article (it’s linked in the original post). The first sentence reads ‘Sara and I are often asked the question – “So, when did the Wooster Collective begin? How did it start?”‘
    What was he supposed to reply? “Fuck Sara, in the days immediately after September 11 *I* discovered ephemeral art.”
    Sheesh.

  • ummabdulla

    I understand that he’s not really saying that there was no street art in NY before 9/11; that’s just how it sounded when I first read it. I think I was also reacting to something else I had read not long before seeing this post, where the author had mentioned something else as if it didn’t exist before 9/11.

  • http://areyoudressed.blogspot.com momly

    A little OT, but related to the topic at hand….
    Jon Stewart said in an offhand sorta way that the “festering wound in his soul was just under the surface” and as he said it the studio audience seemed to murmur assent. I would presume that for many New Yorkers, the same is true; there is a wound that hasn’t even begun to heal five years out.
    I know I am still profoundly moved by that day and I lived in Ohio at the time. If I feel like that, how must those who were there feel? I would really like to know.

  • Stacia

    Nezua, I believe the “we” was referring to Mark and Sara, the authors of the collective.
    His point is that after 9/11 people in his neighborhood were outside a lot, interacting in a way they hadn’t before the attacks. And while he was outside walking his neighborhood, he and Sara discovered street art.
    I am honestly confused as to what’s so offensive about it.

  • http://www.dock.net/fuming_mucker/ Darryl Pearce

    …what struck my emotional chord with this picture actually was a memory: when I saw my son’s shadow for the first time, I KNEW he was real…
    And that made me reflect on the “memory hole” everyone’s trying to struggle to do something about. I’ll never KNOW the towers were ever there because I never saw them eyewitness; and my faith in their existence is shaken by the far-afield adventuring of the current administration.
    In my alternate, imagined timeline: we’ve rebuilt the towers with the same dedication and devotion that we’ve rebuilt the Pentagon. Guess it shows where our priorities lie…

  • The BAG

    It’s interesting how the responses to this photo (so far) and, to a significant extent, the reaction to the Vanity Fair shot of the pregnant woman in the foreground of the smoking tower, primarily evoked evoked criticism or skepticism about the author’s credibility and/or intentions.  Could this possibly be a way to avoiding having to deal with the actual image, along with its attendent dynamics?
    Perhaps the attack was so traumatic (as was speculated on the “pregnant” thread) that we are not yet able to objectify the event, or fully get beyond the trauma???
    About halfway through the “pregnant” thread, Pooleside says: I’ll look at the photo and let the motives fall where they may.”  A few comments later, PT Tate says: “I think it is a fantastic picture. This was taken just before the terror really hit and we all were rewired.”  Both comments (and others) seem to be commenting on the dissonance in the thread, while trying to re-focus on the image. 
    Like PT said about the “pregnant” image, I think this photo is fascinating.  I’m not going to delve too far, but just the practical questions are curious to consider.  For example, has the bend in the acetate reduced the size of the existing structures outlined on the right?  Or, have some of them been rebuilt?  Or, did the person who drew the outline actually (subconsciously) redraw one or more of those buildings at a new scale? Or, is the alignment somehow playing tricks on us? 
    Also, are there any editorial element to this photo?  (The comments take the publisher of Wooster Collective to task (perhaps, because of the clip I selected), but what do you have to say about the motives or intentions of true author, “the hand?”  (Or, does the hand even belong to the author?) 
    The readership has shown a tremendous ability to read and interpret maps.  Isn’t this also a map (if a more psycho-graphic one)? 
    If you’ve been following this site for some time, you’ll remember my old tag line: “Getting Between The Point And The View.” I appreciate that the image I posted (Khalid in quotes) was hardly accessible, and the shot of Bush kissing the “9/11 victim” covers perhaps tired territory, and was primarily used to make a political point.  However, unless this image evokes some overarching aversion (which it very well might), I find it has quite a lot to offer.

  • http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez

    I misunderstood the “We,” thank you.
    And my reaction, well…. I guess I really resent what’s been done with the day ever since it happened. It fills me with bile. And little games and tv specials and blogs make me ill because I do think it was different on the island, where you smelled it, where people had tears in their eyes all day, and silent, where you couldn’t leave the bridges were locked down, where thousands of haunting xeroxed faces were taped up and where you stopped collecting your mail because of the anthrax in the local post offices and you couldn’t even sleep because you were worried about planes crashing, and lost touch with reality, and I guess I will prostitute my memory of it after all, and I just get really angry because I know in my belly that despite all the hurt that was done to so many that day and since that day in the name of this madness, the men in power don’t give a shit in any way that matters to you and me, and yet they mock the memory with their fake ceremonies, and we don’t learn ANYTHING IMPORTANT from it, not how to live, or how not to live, or about our appetites or our complicity in the drive for more fuel, we all just go about living our lives as if something like that can happen and be lied about and then used to further the agenda of base men who only want to milk us for money and votes. It points to some scary conclusions about our race, and I probably am squirming away from this, because what can you really say about it anymore, and so it often seems to happen that I can’t comment on anything here lately because it all just overwhelms me and I end up flippin’. Sorry. I should have just let people do their thing.

  • Cactus

    Probably the closest thing to 9/11 that we on the left coast have experienced was the Northridge earthquake. Buildings I passed every day were thrown off their foundations. There’s nothing to skew your vision like crooked buildings that are still standing. Of course, they, too, are gone now. Some businesses I frequented could not survive the damage and are gone, including my corner market. I slept in my clothes for almost six months, expecting another quake at any day. There is still hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think of an earthquake: I put a pitcher away on top of a cupboard and think ‘I wonder if it will be there tomorrow.’
    But there is one glaring difference between our earthquake and the WTC towers (other than the number of deaths). We are not reminded every day of 17 January 1994. W HAS declared war on Mother Nature, but he doesn’t use Northridge as the excuse.
    The constant and incessant repetition of 9/11 by the BCF to justify an illegal war serves to obfuscate the true meaning of 9/11 and the healing therefrom. They have not only hijacked the images to make war, they have stopped the mourning and healing process by conflating it with a very unpopular war ~ and with more deaths. So many things have gone wrong within this country since 9/11 that we are all on a constant whirlwind of catastrophes such that we can barely absorb one when we are hit with another one. It’s a battered citizen syndrome. When asked to respond to one photographic image, we kind of spill out in all directions. What we think/feel about 9/11 and its art has already been muddied by the loss of NOLA and bloodied by the sands of Iraq.
    Someone said (I think on yesterday’s post) that almost ANY president would have accomplished the healing process better that W. Even Nixon or Reagan. Having hated both of these ex-presidents, I have to agree. W is completely deficient of any empathetic feelings; perhaps because he has none of his own. For whatever reason, he is incapable of leading us out of this quagmire and into a place of healing.
    The Bag said: “However, unless this image evokes some overarching aversion (which it very well might), I find it has quite a lot to offer.” I found the image interesting but I could not connect to it because I was not affected by 9/11 in the way that people who live in NYC, or have lived there, were. The WTC Online Project seems to be a bit quixotic and I’m not sure what the intent is or will be; to post all the images online? I wonder if the site selected for the project is similar to the one from the VF portfolio by Thomas Hoepker (#10, the bicycles):
    http://www.vanityfair.com/features/photoessay/slideshows/060821fephsl?slide=10&playing=false&loops=4
    NB: I wrote this before I read N-L X-Jonez’ post. WOW! I don’t know what to say here except that you made me FEEL what all NYCer’s went through. Thank you. I’d like to give you an online hug. Your anger really comes through, and I think that is what has been evident in rtbag’s recent posts also. I wonder if what you are describing is the ’sentimentalization’ of 9/11, which is just another way of trivializing it.
    Okay, I’ll stop now.

  • http://www.keirneuringer.blogspot.com Keir

    That Wooster Collective has some great video stuff. However…
    Sorry if this seems insensitive, but I have trouble relating to the nostalgia over ‘life before 9/11′, especially when—crime though the violence of that day was—a monument to corporate power is held up to symbolize it. My anger or sadness or whatever is derived from consideration of what Americans have been willing to sacrifice (civil liberties, human dignity, memory, the lives of a growing number of people on the other side of the world in addition to young Americans sent to protect white collar economic interests and political hegemony, etc) in the hopes of returning to the ignorance of 9/10.
    As an artist I just would never take this photograph. I think if it’s meant to reflect “what we lost” it is weak. I never lost those skyscrapers because I never had them (and I’m from New York, as it happens). If this photo represents the sentiments of (most?) New Yorkers, then they would do well to get over themselves and imagine for half a second what it must feel like to live in Kabul or Baghdad or Beirut or Gaza right about now…
    …Boom. There goes another. Boom. There goes another. Traumatized yet? Boom. There goes another.

  • nj progressive

    I’m curious to hear more about the trip to Catalunya. I traveled there in April, and spent most of the time in Barcelona and Sant Cugat. Will you be doing a post about it? Or have I missed it?

  • readytoblowagasket

    I was grateful for the laugh that Dan Sumption provided, and at the same time I understood Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez’s rage and how it got misdirected. Thanks to you both!
    As the regular readers of The BAG know, I currently live in NY and was here on 9/11. As the fifth anniversary approached, I felt dread turn to rage within myself. The night of September 10, I was so angry I wanted to smash something (I kept eyeing my living room windows), and that’s not a normal impulse of mine. (I didn’t break anything, btw, but I did write to a dear friend and tell him about it.)
    So what am I so pissed off about? For starters, the gathering of George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, and Michael Bloomberg to commemorate 9/11/06 feels like they stopped by to take a huge public dump on New York City (especially Bush and Pataki because they so openly despise it). Then when I heard the reading of the names of the dead on the radio I had to shut it off because it sounds rehearsed now. I’m not saying that people don’t have genuine grief about 9/11, but I think the public display of those emotions has been corrupted beyond rescue. So I’m certainly angry about the exploitation of 9/11 by politicians to win popularity or by corporations for boosting their ratings or earnings (did you all know that CNN.com ran CNN’s *entire broadcast coverage* of 9/11/01 on 9/11/06?). In typical American fashion, the leaders of politics and industry in this country have made the date a Hallmark event.
    But beyond the local focus, because of the Iraq War, because of Abu Ghraib, because of Guantanamo and torture and deaths of countless humans at the hands of Americans, whenever I learn about or experience *any* hint of commercialization or exploitation of 9/11, I go ballistic anymore. For example, when I saw the picture of the pregnant woman, as The BAG mentioned upthread, and learned Vanity Fair was using it in a piece about what happened to the uber-wealthy who lived in Tribeca on 9/11, I wanted to spit. Why doesn’t Vanity Fair do a piece about the illegal immigrants who delivered lunch by bicycle to the uber-wealthy and who were affected by 9/11? (Answer: Because VF sucks.) Or when I saw TIME cropping a beautiful Louie Psihoyos (whose work I know) photo to sell their pompous blatherings, I wanted to shout. Why didn’t TIME use a photo of Ground Zero as it looks today? (Answer: Because it’s ugly.) THIS image, however, the WTC Outline Project, delights me. The Wooster Collective delights me.
    Why do I love this image? Because I have a hopelessly terrible sense of direction. When I moved here, I never had any idea which way to go whenever I came up out of the subway (full disclosure: I still don’t). I used to look for either the Twin Towers or the Empire State Building as references for south and north respectively. I was getting around in the city pretty well using this method (I never went farther north than Macy’s), and then one day the towers were no longer there. The pyramids in Egypt are still standing, but the Twin Towers are gone. Looking at the space in the sky where they used to be used to make me sad for all the people who lost their lives. This image doesn’t make me feel sad, however, just wistful for the ugly architectural monstrosities themselves.
    New Yorkers who live here and love it are fiercely loyal to it, and wear its ills and warts like a badge. New Yorkers fiercely hated the Twin Towers. Now they fiercely miss them because they were taken away from us without our permission. Now we can’t complain about them and they are even imbued with heavy meaning. Now the site is a tourist attraction, and we hate tourists. We New Yorkers are a complicated and confusing people. That’s why we live here, because no place else will have us.
    Five years on, my reaction to 9/11 has to do with my broader upset at the corruption of it and of this country *in the name of it.* I see 9/11 as a culminating event with a history leading up to it (the Twin Towers were bombed once before, after all), a history Americans know nothing about. Instead, because that moment for understanding was hijacked by the assholes in power, I am forced to focus on the horrific history after 9/11, a period of time I can’t believe I am living through and one that fills me with rage after five long years of it and counting.
    So personally, I can deal much better with art about 9/11 than with PR stunts about it.
    Last weekend I went to see the Dada show at MOMA, a movement of artists in the 1920s who were outraged and enraged by war, politics, and government of the time. Amazing to see the similarities to today’s world, and quite possibly it’s art that’s easier to deal with than the art of our own time.
    http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2006/Dada.html

  • Mike Ryan

    I’m not terribly fond of the image, because it seems a little too reminiscent of one that came out on the cover of the Village Voice. See that image here. (Credit: Andre Souroujon) — Complete Voice 9/11 coverage past and present.
    As I recall, the Village Voice image was on the cover of the Voice the week after the attack, so I have to assume that it came before the Wooster Collective image. (And don’t tell me that the Wooster Collective just happened to ‘miss’ the Voice.)
    Although I disagree about the image — I think it’s a bit too obvious really — I agree w/ much of readytoblowagasket’s comments.

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