Reflection / Projection
Artists Respond to Crisis
This moment we’re in, this 2020 thing — is it a powder keg or a watershed? Will we explode, or will we transform?
Reflecting on the terror and trauma of September 11, 2001, it is clear that artists rose to the occasion and also struggled to convey the scope of horror and to find perspective amid the onslaught of emotion. In the 19 years since, the art of the post-9/11 world has filtered the input and fallout of that moment in more sophisticated, strategic ways. But in those first days, months and years, the wound was raw and the work was raw.
What can we expect from the work that comes from the Thing That Is 2020? When we look back on it 10 or 20 years from now, what will we see? What will be the art that comes from it, and will that art retain its power? What will we take away?
As we often must, let’s look backward in order to think forward.
In the first days, months and years after 9/11, art came thick and fast. There was grief to process, and horror. Fear, anger, loss. So much came. We had the jingoistic (Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”), the solemn (Anne Nelson’s “The Guys”), the inspiring (Bruce Springsteen, “The Rising”), and the fiercely critical (Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”).
Art that responds to a moment serves very specific and very vital purposes. It heals, it interrogates, it envisions a new future. Not all of it will still feel relevant or powerful 10 or 20 years later.
Let’s look at three pieces that were direct reactions to 9/11 that still stand today as immediate.
Poem: “To the Words” by WS Merwin
Merwin wrote this poem on September 17, 2001 and it appeared in The New Yorker on October 8 of that year. In it, Merwin draws on the full strength of his incantatory rhythms and elemental imagery to ask for language for the unsayable. He begins:
When it happens you are not there
oh you beyond numbers
beyond recollection
passed on from breath to breath
given again
from day to day from age
to age
charged with knowledge
knowing nothing
Merwin begs for some human scale to place on this seemingly boundless tragedy. If it can be given words, it can be given scope. If it can be given words, it can become more than terror and rage.
He finishes:
you that were
formed to begin with
you that were cried out
you that were spoken
to begin with
to say what could not be said
ancient precious
and helpless ones
say it
Performance Art. Flag Piece by Rania Lee Khalil
Performance and video artist Rania Lee Khalil created Flag Piece in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It was one of the first Arab-American performance pieces presented after the events of September 11 and its power lies in its seeming simplicity that carries incredible texture and depth.
It’s silent and only 6 minutes long. Khalil’s description of the piece is, “Performer pulls a sweater over her head creating a makeshift veil, miming an unfolding a relationship between an Arab woman and an American flag.”
Rania Lee Khalil in Flag Piece. Photo from her website.
The piece was inspired after a shopkeeper gave Khalil a small American flag (they were ubiquitous in the weeks after 9/11). Khalil responded to the complexity and discomfort of that moment with this piece. See photos from it here.
Simple and complicated, straightforward and obfuscated. It stands today why? Because America still has not rectified its relationship with its Arab siblings at home and abroad. Instead, it has spawned more wars and retreated further into a white nationalist spider hole of fear and hate.
Song. “Satisfied” by J-Live
Rock and country stars grabbed immediate headlines for musical reactions to 9/11, and contemporary composers later pulled in the laurels. Hip-hop artists, however, never received wide or full acclaim for their commentary. Among the many artists who provided almost immediate response was J-Live. The New York rapper included “Satsified” on his 2002 release, All of the Above.
Black hip-hop artists provided a far more textured response to 9/11 than Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen or all those flag-waving country artists. Rappers immediately grasped the dark homeland implications of America’s reaction — racial profiling, police brutality, increased armed forces recruiting among underserved communities.
They also saw a system that had never worked for them now making a new and even more ominous swing toward more people of color while ignoring any learning opportunities that could have come from how such a horrible event could have been predicated.
J-Live raps:
I know a older guy that lost twelve close peeps on 9-1-1
While you kicking up punchlines and puns
Man fuck that shit, this is serious biz
By the time Bush is done, you won't know what time it is
If it's war time or jail time, time for promises
And time to figure out where the enemy is
He continues:
But now it's all about NYPD caps
And Pentagon bumper stickers
But yo, you still a n****
It ain't right them cops and them firemen died
The shit is real tragic, but it damn sure ain't magic
It won't make the brutality disappear
It won't pull equality from behind your ear
Why is this still relevant? Well, we all live in 2020.
Differing scales of relevance.
There is so much more. Pieces like Eric Fischl’s sculpture Tumbling Woman, Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Amiri Baraka’s poem “Somebody Blew Up America” and Jacqulyn Buglisi dance piece Table of Silence, performed every year on Sept. 11, are prime examples of immense power packed in response. These pieces are not alone in their healing, criticism and communal power.
If we look at the long-game artistic response to 9/11, we see art that, as always, reflects and vanguards its society. What did that look like? Well, there were a lot of orange jumpsuits. A lot of sleeper cell terrorist movies.
In commercial theatre and film, we saw a trend toward remakes and larger-than-life heroes. The Marvel Universe film franchise, the Harry Potter film franchise, the Lord of the Rings film franchise. We sought clear heroes and clear villains. We sought catastrophic events that (unlike Japan’s cultural reactions to atomic horror) needed to happen somewhere far from home. In Middle Earth or Narnia or space.
In all art, we saw fragmentation that mirrored the fragmentation of post-9/11 America and global society. American politicians continue to consider art somehow both irrelevant and threatening. Left and right grew farther apart and more entrenched.
Ultimately, all post 9/11 art is relevant because America has not changed for the better. It has changed, certainly. It has grown more isolated, more reactive and violent (here and across the globe). Its inequalities have increased.
Indeed, the world has largely not changed for the better. Reactionary, nationalist, racist groups gain power across the world, and COVID-19 has only brought poverty, racism and healthcare accessibility into starker light. Across the world, opinions are favored over facts. And the war on terror? Pretty sure we lost that the minute we started it.
The art is relevant because it reminds us of this.
Art did not fail us. But did we fail art?
As we continue to create art from this moment, let’s look to the future not only of the art but of our nation and the world.
In the days after 9/11, we imagined a newer, gentler, more just America and world. Then we sabotaged it. Will we come out of this stronger, more equitable and just? Will we come out unified for access, inclusion, a clean environment and a strong citizenship?
As Eric Ward said in our interview, “It's hard to ask people to go to a future that they can't visualize. That they can't comprehend. That is a really scary thing … And the role of artists is to help us understand what that world looks like what it feels like. It’s to prepare us.”
Let’s get to work.
