9/11 as Performance Art

[Myriad]

This hypothesis has two parts:

1. The most common reasons truthers offer for U.S. government participation in 9/11 amount to it being designed to evoke, by the use of performed events with powerful symbolic connotations, certain emotional reactions from the pubic. In other words, performance art.

2. The thought processes that truthers use to evaluate claims about 9/11 are much closer to those of art critics than to those of investigators.

Put bluntly: they (1) think it's performance art, and (2) they're therefore treating it like performance art.

In art criticism, the perceptions and emotional reactions of the audience matter more than the physical form or construction of the work. Likewise, if 9/11 witnesses say they heard explosions, that matters more than whether or not there's any physical evidence of explosions.

In art criticism, immediate impressions are often weighed more than the results of thorough examination and/or long-term reflection. Likewise, immediate uninformed reactions by news reporters and witnesses are often weighed more than results of later investigation or more informed retrospective reports.

In art criticism, what is perceived is more important than how the perception was generated. A real plane, a rear projected image of a plane, or a plane composited in later all look the same in the final video; therefore they're equivalent in all respects, and there's no reason to prefer to believe any of them over any other except by which best supports one's metaphorical interpretation of the event.

In art criticism, competing interpretations of a piece develop from competing metaphors, which are often politically motivated. One can recruit the work for one's own cause by making a convincing case, based generally on appearances and symbols, for one's preferred metaphorical interpretation. The MSM's treatment generally makes 9/11 a metaphor for American vulnerability; the Truther agenda is to turn it into a metaphor for government oppression.

Facts are no more relevant than chemical analysis of what pigments Leonardo used to paint the Mona Lisa's smile.

Except, of course, when they interact with skeptics, and try to support their critical impressions with actual evidence of the real mechanisms of the events. The result is a lot of sideways ejection of rhetorical debris. And a lot of understandable resentment from those who prefer not to treat murders as performance art.

Any useful insight here, or is this a flight of fancy that I should put out of my mind?

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[PerryLogan]

This explains the bullhorns and black T-shirts. Like Theater of the Cruel.

Glorious post!

 

[DarkMagician]

*Praises OP in interpretive dance*

 

[negativ]

"Any fool can criticize and many of them do."

- Cyril Garbett

 

[brodski]

They're correct in their assumption, it's all to do with the nature of the conspiracy. 9/11 wasn't done by the New World Order, it was in fact carried out by the Post Modern World Order, as Invisible Theatre writ large.

 

[Pardalis]

Respectfully,
Myriad

Now that's uncalled for!

 

[Alareth]

Nominated.

 

[chipmunk stew]

Nominated.

Seconded.

 

[Myriad]

Nominated.

Appreciated!

Eschewing false modesty, I agree that it's a nice piece of creative writing. But what I'm not sure about is, is this way of looking at the "movement" valid? Is it in any way useful?

A couple other points of comparison that have occurred to me:

In art criticism, it appears to be acceptable to present all the confirming evidence for one's thesis, without directly addressing the contrary evidence. For instance, if one wants to show that Hamlet is truly insane (and not just faking it), it's permissible to point out every passage that can be interpreted as indicating Hamlet's insanity, while skipping those that suggest otherwise, leaving them for those promoting the contrary thesis.

Going hand in hand with this is that in art criticism, there's no expectation that differences of opinion will ever be resolved, because there's never a single demonstrably correct answer. Not even a living artist's direct assertion that, no, Squidward is not a symbol of a repressive patriarchy trying to suppress Spongebob's feminine side, is considered sufficient to disprove the contrary viewpoint. The creator, after all, might not be aware of the messages his own subconscious is surreptitiously contributing to the piece. (Much in the same way, perhaps, that thousands of conspiracy participants are claimed to have been kept in the dark about how their assignments contributed to the plot.)

In art criticism, no conclusions are or can ever be ultimately correct or wrong. Therefore, to regard any particular conclusion as correct or wrong to any degree beyond expressing which idea one is leaning toward at that moment, can only indicate closed-mindedness. Similarly, most troothers are consistently reluctant to specify their own theories of what actually did happen, claim to remain open to all possibilities, and claim that bringing about further investigation is their chief aim. It makes me suspect that their main cause for displeasure with skeptics is not that skeptics reach conclusions opposing the truthers', but that they spoil the game by coming to any definitive conclusion at all.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[chipmunk stew]

A quick few examples:
Who was the left-brained/right-brained obsessed guy? 28th was it? And I've encountered many who feel personally attacked if you tell them their "opinion" (about FACTS!) is wrong, as though everyone is entitled to their opinion about EVERYTHING. And we now have mookid declaring:

...I don't believe I "know" anything, the same way as I don't believe you do "know" anything either....

I think your thesis is quite valid.

 

[Pardalis]

Respectfully,
Myriad

Again? Now you're asking to be banned Mister.

 

[Gravy]

Interesting observations, Myriad.

Kevin Barrett, on video and photo analysis of the WTC attacks and collapses:

Scientists aren't necessarily the best people to look at this footage and understand what they are seeing. Why? Because many scientists, especially engineers tend to be left hemisphere people. They're linear thinkers, they are very very good at following a linear path of logic, but it terms of looking at a picture and understand what they are seeing, that is a right brain and that is actually a function that artists are better at than scientists. For that reason, one would expect that engineers, subject to cognitive dissonance that we are all subject to, would in examining this event be very likely to fall into a linear track of thought that would be essentially trying to show that it could have happened the way the government said it did.

A review of the film "United 93" by "UNSCleric," posted on Dylan Avery's Myspace page

I actually saw the movie yesterday, and being a firm believer of the inside job, I think they did a very good job unfortunately. If someone sees this movie before Loose Change, it would make it twice as hard to try and make yourself disbelieve the Government's story. The movie makes the events much more real to the viewer, it's a shame what this movie will accomplish.

Chris Sarns (Christopher7):

You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.
And i don't need a engineer to tell me what i can see with my own eyes.

We don't need a paper trail. There's enough video and documentry evidence to convict Cheney et al of high treason!

We don't need another investigation. A little common sense will do.

Yes, the photographic evidence is enough for me, and any reasonible person.

It's up to us in the US to blow this thing wide open.

This case will be tired [sic] in the court of public opinion...

This issue will be decided right here on the web, the only place where the truth can be spread.

It all comes down to what you are willing to believe.

 

[Myriad]

Again? Now you're asking to be banned Mister.

Uh oh. Please don't look at my other 150-odd (indeed) posts, then.

Resp... oops,
Myriad

 

[LashL]

Nominated.

Seconded.

Thirded.

 

[R.Mackey]

This hypothesis has two parts:

1. The most common reasons truthers offer for U.S. government participation in 9/11 amount to it being designed to evoke, by the use of performed events with powerful symbolic connotations, certain emotional reactions from the pubic. In other words, performance art.

2. The thought processes that truthers use to evaluate claims about 9/11 are much closer to those of art critics than to those of investigators.

That is an interesting hypothesis. A couple of knee-jerk observations:

1. At some level, the Sept. 11th attacks (the real ones, viz. 19 hijackers x 4 planes) was in fact symbolic, calculated for propaganda value. This could be viewed as macabre performance art.
2. The Truthers seem to have missed the point of the propaganda campaign, and are applying a totally different interpretation.
3. Could it be deliberate? Are they just art critics striving to be different, and therefore "interesting?" Nobody publishes yet another review simply praising Beethoven, there's got to be a fresh angle in the art world.

In any case, thought-provoking post.

 

[Myriad]

Kevin Barrett, on video and photo analysis of the WTC attacks and collapses:

A review of the film "United 93" by "UNSCleric," posted on Dylan Avery's Myspace page

Chris Sarns (Christopher7):

Thanks, Gravy. I'm going to have to start collecting such statements as I come across them -- being careful, of course, not to take them out of context; that is, choosing ones that appear to truly reflect the speakers' general thought processes as evidenced in their other posts and writings, as you've done.

Looking skeptically at my own hypothesis, I think it does offer explanations to some otherwise baffling statements and behaviors coming out of the "truth movement." Nonetheless, some objections could be made and will take me some work to address with evidence:

1. Am I talking about art criticism in general -- which is a perfectly valid and potentially enlightening intellectual exercise when applied to the subject matter it was designed for, by the way, and I apologize to art critics if I seem to have implied otherwise -- or more specifically about post-modern anti-intellectual anti-science "lit crit" of the type that the Alan Sokal/Social Text affair highlighted back in the 90s? Is there a causal relationship (lit crit thinking in education leading to troother "all impressions are equally valid" thinking), or might they simply arise from the same sources?

2. Technically, it's difficult to discredit the notion that the 9/11 attacks (whether viewed from TOS or CT perspectives) were performance art on any basis other than, I hate to say it, common sense. I challenge anyone to come up with a definition of "performance art" that is reasonably inclusive of works that are generally regarded as valid examples of performance art, that also excludes acts of terrorism. (One could always add an explicit exclusion to the definition, but that seems a bit of a cheat.) ETA: Cross-posted with R. Mackey on this point.

3. Is this a falsifiable hypothesis? Or just an "art criticism" itself?

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[Par]

In art criticism, no conclusions are or can ever be ultimately correct or wrong. Therefore, to regard any particular conclusion as correct or wrong to any degree beyond expressing which idea one is leaning toward at that moment, can only indicate closed-mindedness. Similarly, most troothers are consistently reluctant to specify their own theories of what actually did happen, claim to remain open to all possibilities, and claim that bringing about further investigation is their chief aim. It makes me suspect that their main cause for displeasure with skeptics is not that skeptics reach conclusions opposing the truthers', but that they spoil the game by coming to any definitive conclusion at all.

I have to come clean straight away and admit that I’m quite the philistine when it comes to art etc.

Even so, I keenly recognise much of what you’re saying here. I’ve always visualised the phenomenon through the following rather clumsy comparison: Occasionally, someone on this forum will post, say, a link to a comic strip generator or something of that sort, and individual members will take it in turns to show how amusing and creative they can be. To some extent the conspiracy forums exhibit the same characteristic. But in their case, they’re not expressing their creativity through a traditionally artistic medium, but rather through theorising about 9/11. The resulting theories are rarely criticised (except by rationalists) on empirical grounds. It seems that the more fantastical, intriguing and so on, the better. It’s just another narrative, after all, so it may as well be an interesting one.

In short, many conspiracy theorists seem to see the events of 9/11 as a large blank piece of paper, pots of glue and glitter and a packet of pasta shapes. There are no wrong answers.

 

[Par]

It’s perhaps only tenuously related, but you might find this example of Terry Eagleton evaluating suicide bombings from a literary perspective – and rendering himself fairly sordid in the process, if you want my option – interesting.

Blowing yourself up for political reasons is a complex symbolic act, one that mixes despair and defiance. It proclaims that even death is preferable to your wretched way of life. The act of self-dispossession writes dramatically large the self-dispossession that is your routine existence. Laying violent hands on yourself is a more graphic image of what your enemy does to you anyway. At the same time, the bomber forces a contrast between the extreme kind of self-determination involved in taking his own life and the lack of such self-determination in his everyday existence. If he could live in the way he dies, he would not need to die. At least his death can be his death, and thus a taste of freedom. The only form of sovereignty left to you is the power to dispose of your own death. Suicide, as Dostoevsky recognised, means the death of God, since you usurp his divine monopoly over life and death. What more breathtaking form of omnipotence than to do away with yourself for all eternity?

Suicide bombers and hunger strikers are out to transform weakness into power. Because they are ready to die while their enemies are not, they score a spiritual victory over them. The ultimate freedom is not to fear death. If you no longer fear it, political power can have no hold over you. Those with nothing to lose are deeply dangerous. But suicide bombers also cheat their antagonists of the only aspect of themselves that they can control: their bodies. By depriving their masters of this manipulable part of themselves, they become invulnerable. Nothing is less masterable than nothing. By slipping through the fingers of power, leaving it grasping at thin air, they force it to betray its own vacuousness. It is, to be sure, a pyrrhic victory. But it proclaims that what your adversary cannot annihilate is the will to annihilation. Like the traditional tragic hero, the suicide bomber rises above his own destruction by the very resolution with which he embraces it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1398445,00.html

There’s so much I could say on a moral and factual level, but that’s not for here. Rather, I’ll merely point out it’s difficult to see what he’s trying to say with his comparison to Dostoyevsky’s atheist nihilists. The suicide bombers he’s referring to are all rather religious, after all.

 

[Finnegan]

Myriad,

An interesting speculation.

It seems to be indicative of a wider phenomenon: the perception, or rationalisation, of current affairs as entertainment. 'News' has become so successfully integrated into mainstream media that the boundaries between leisure and information, and even fiction and non-fiction, intersect. Not only this, but the increasingly open forms of media exacerbate, for good or for ill, the subjectivity of the decision.

An interesting fictional representation of this is JG Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, and particularly the chapter The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.

Finnegan

 

[Par]

An interesting fictional representation of this is JG Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, and particularly the chapter The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.

"This is the way, step inside!"