Newsgrist - Pre-Fall Issue: 911 Inbox; Memorial Fever
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Newsgrist
where spin is art
{bi-weekly news digest}
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Pre-Fall Issue (Sept. 8, 2002)
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[Note: watch for the first Fall Issue later this week]
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CONTENTS:
- *911 Inbox* Selected messages received by NEWSgrist, Sept. 11, 2001
- *Memorial Fever* Editorial
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*911 Inbox*
NEWSgrist's Inbox, September 11, 2001:
http://newsgrist.net/911_Inbox.html
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*Memorial Fever*
Editorial
The memorialization of 911 actually began on September 11 2001.
There was no appreciable elapse of time between the event itself,
its disclosure and its memorialization. The logical sequence of
events and emotions has been lost without our even knowing; the
phenomenon we call '911' is continually happening, everywhere
and all at once. We have yet to acknowledge or manage the speed
with which these and other events unfold before our eyes. Until
we do, we are potential victims of real time.
For those who live in New York, the media's endless repetition of
images and commentary butts up against 'actual experience.' It is
not simply mindlessness or the exploitative nature of the commentary
that rubs; the proximity in time to the events being commented upon
helps keep us tethered to that initial moment of 'unreality.' New
Yorkers, compelled to compare their own memories with the official
broadcast versions, are condemned to continuously re-experience that
moment. Ubiquitous, government-sanctioned public ritual, along with
prime time televised mourning, seal off any opportunity for real
release, as organized catharsis becomes a constant one can't seem
to shake.
The rest of the nation, obsessed, gripped by "memorial fever," is
unable to let go of the unreal moment it was never able to fully
absorb. How can one memorialize something that has not even begun
to slip into the past?
It seems necessary to keep pointing out that 911 has never stopped
happening: consider the complicated, drawn-out compensation of
victims, the continued physical, emotional and financial
devastation at ground zero, the temporarily reinstated no-fly zone
and scrambling fighter jets. We seem, incredibly, to be
memorializing the present–and maybe even the future.
Are we on the verge of organizing memorials for events that might
happen? Events that in our current state of national paranoia and
fatalism, we feel are bound to happen? Following the same logic for
pre-emptive strikes, one may well consider pre-emptive memorials.
New Yorkers have no choice it seems, but to swallow memorial excess.
Having survived the daily salvo of reminders for one full year, they
must now brave a new crop: the pile of dirt and rubble festooned with
flags passing itself off as 'public art'; the magazine covers
sporting new 'WTC' fonts, and special issues with (yet again) 'newly
disclosed' but ever-familiar photo essays; the re-airing of 'never-
seen-before' video clips taken from inside the burning towers; the
sudden proliferation of 911 exhibitions at every art institution in
the country and locally, and reconstituted makeshift shows of
heartfelt drawings by public school children, or snap shots taken by
the man on the street. The sprouting of prayer vigils, ceremonial boat
rides, candlelight walks, talk radio, sing-alongs, concerts,
commemorative t-shirts, and more… they once had their place. But
it's all happened before, and it keeps happening, like a recurring
bad dream.
All the while in the background, there is a constant drumbeat, the call
and compulsion to war… Is that what underlies this memorial fever, or
do we imagine it exists separately, in a parallel universe? Perhaps we
are duping ourselves. Perhaps this isn't the same bad dream but a
prelude to the next one. "War fever" is the next big thing, something
that would finally provide a release from this mass mourning. It would
induce just enough fear, a dizzying sense of unreality and the promise
of spectacle, driving us from one moment of collective excess and into
the next.
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Newsgrist - where spin is art
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Newsgrist - Pre-Fall Issue: 911 Inbox; Memorial Fever
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