9/11 as Performance Art

[Finnegan]

"These are your friends from childhood, through youth,
Who goaded you on, demanded more proof."

 

[Architect]

Damn, where's my copy of Berger's Ways of Seeing when I need it.....






* answer: binned about 10 minutes after I stopped the class it was required for, that's where.

 

[Scott Sommers]

This is a most interesting idea. The first thing that comes to my mind relates to the structure of this way of seeing 9/11. By this, I mean things like the origin of the viewpoint, its reproduction, etc. I can see why Loose Change would appear to be art criticism rather than a scientific investigation. After all, this would be the only way that Avery and his crew know how to investigate. The post from Finnegan speculates on an interesting way to see this problem,

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

 

[Graham2001]

I know of one person at the time who considered it Performance 'Art':

Well, what happened there is, of course—now all of you must adjust your brains—the biggest work of art there has ever been. The fact that spirits achieve with one act something which we in music could never dream of, that people practise ten years madly, fanatically for a concert. And then die.

Stockhausen

 

[BaaBaa]

Thirded.

I second your thirding.

 

[Travis]

I second your thirding.

So it's now been sixthed?

 

[BaaBaa]

I dunno...I didn't join to demonstrate my poor math skills...

 

[Oystein]

...
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.) ...

Has anyone met that challenge?
Perhaps there is no definition of "performance art" ... that also excludes acts of terrorism. What you wrote in the OP:

...it being designed to evoke, by the use of performed, violent events with powerful symbolic connotations, certain emotional reactions from the pubic public. In other words, performance art terrorism.

I fixed a liiiiil sumpin for you in blue, and otherwise added a little to the definition to make it what many people would understand to be a good definition of terrorism.

So maybe on some level it is useful and appropriate to describe terrorist events from an art critic's point of view. However, in a very important sense, that is not what truthers are doing with 9/11:
9/11 truthers deny the identity of the artist, and consequently their critique addresses neither the actual performance nor its intended or actual impression on the audience.

To me, it seems more fitting to describe what truthers do as some kind of art. Sometimes perhaps in keeping with a popular genre of fiction that is loosely based on historic episodes and figures but spins invented stories that might fool the less history-savvy audience into thinking there actually was a woman on the chair of Peter, or a math code in the bible.



Another idea: No-one has yet discussed the question of who the intended audience is of
- performance art
- acts of terrorism
- art critique
- 9/11 trutherism

In the minds and professed opinion of their authors. all four are directed at a more or less general public, but I suggest that there is good reason to think that all four have mostly their peers in mind:

• The general public is largely ignorant of and uninterested in performance art, while performance artists go out of their way to consume as much performance art as they can. Performance artists compare themselves with each other.
• I can't find it right now - I think I have it bookmarked on my other computer - but there is an interesting thesis by a fellow named Max Abrams (or similar?) who has studied a number of terrorist acts worldwide, their professed intentions, and their actual results, and he concluded that terrorists are generally less motivated by the chance to effect political chance and redress social grievances, and much more motivated by the expectation to gain prestige among other terrorists)
• Who reads performance art critiques, except performance artists and other critics?
• Truthers circle-jerk most of the time

Yep, some of that is controversial if not adversarial, and none of it documented. Just some ideas.

 

[MarkLindeman]

I think I agree with all of that. The way I thought about it -- which seems consistent with your post -- the events of 9/11 can be construed as performance art, and trutherism can be construed as performance art. (Framing it as "performance art about performance art" doesn't seem especially revealing, although the "art criticism" angle may yield some other distinctive insights, dunno.)

Whereas "performance art" perhaps brings to mind individual, putatively original aesthetic expression, truthers don't place a high value on originality. Trutherism is one of many social activities (and art forms) in which blending in is just fine.

Your thoughts about audience make sense to me, too. A lot more could be said about that, but I'm not sure I have anything useful to say about it.

Has anyone met that challenge?
Perhaps there is no definition of "performance art" ... that also excludes acts of terrorism. What you wrote in the OP:

I fixed a liiiiil sumpin for you in blue, and otherwise added a little to the definition to make it what many people would understand to be a good definition of terrorism.

So maybe on some level it is useful and appropriate to describe terrorist events from an art critic's point of view. However, in a very important sense, that is not what truthers are doing with 9/11:
9/11 truthers deny the identity of the artist, and consequently their critique addresses neither the actual performance nor its intended or actual impression on the audience.

To me, it seems more fitting to describe what truthers do as some kind of art. Sometimes perhaps in keeping with a popular genre of fiction that is loosely based on historic episodes and figures but spins invented stories that might fool the less history-savvy audience into thinking there actually was a woman on the chair of Peter, or a math code in the bible.



Another idea: No-one has yet discussed the question of who the intended audience is of
- performance art
- acts of terrorism
- art critique
- 9/11 trutherism

In the minds and professed opinion of their authors. all four are directed at a more or less general public, but I suggest that there is good reason to think that all four have mostly their peers in mind:

• The general public is largely ignorant of and uninterested in performance art, while performance artists go out of their way to consume as much performance art as they can. Performance artists compare themselves with each other.
• I can't find it right now - I think I have it bookmarked on my other computer - but there is an interesting thesis by a fellow named Max Abrams (or similar?) who has studied a number of terrorist acts worldwide, their professed intentions, and their actual results, and he concluded that terrorists are generally less motivated by the chance to effect political chance and redress social grievances, and much more motivated by the expectation to gain prestige among other terrorists)
• Who reads performance art critiques, except performance artists and other critics?
• Truthers circle-jerk most of the time

Yep, some of that is controversial if not adversarial, and none of it documented. Just some ideas.

 

[Scott Sommers]

I feel severely handicapped here by my background. But all this does make me think about some of things I first thought about 9/11 when I began talking with Truth advocates back in 2009.

When I first read the OP, I was struck by the idea that this performance art aspect of 9/11 Truth really seemed to begin with the Loose Change thing. The whole idea of LC is that a bunch of kids with a camera and cheap software can make a powerful political statement. LC was in 2005, and by 2006 Luke Rudkowski and We Are Change had taken to the streets. Not bad for an idea that has no merit to it.

One of the first thoughts that struck me when I began my research was what a bunch of losers these guys are. And I don't just mean because they're stupid. We Are Change and its affiliated groups really are a bunch of economic losers. It's like an organization for wash-outs. It's the kind of white trash losers that Charles Murray writes about. Now that I'm looking more closely at members of AE911T, I'd have to say the same for them, as well.

It may all seem silly to us here, but 9/11 Truth seemed at the time, to be a way of empowering these guys. It made their silly lives as white trash losers almost seem heroic. It made their silly conspiracy whacked right-wing Christian ideas into a relevant political statement that might appeal to anyone from any background. Performance, rather than science, was a credible way to present it to others. Not only was it a form of knowledge within their grasp, but there was a ready audience for this kind of interpretation among other whacked out right-wing Ron Paul types. It's a way of explaining the current problems of market economies in a way that maintains private property in such a way that even they could become rich - if only things were working properly. In fact, they would be the heroes of the world for having figured out what's really wrong. Luke Rudkowski would not a silly conspiracy theorist without a job forced to steal thousands from his friends to finish school. Instead, he should have been the leader of a band of revolutionaries modeled after the Weather Underground, but not mislead by the evil Socialism. And in the end, America would be great again and they would all be rich and famous and scoring with all the babes.

All this brings me back to Oystein's question about intended audience. This 9/11 Truth crap has had very little appeal outside the USA. Even in Canada, it's just marginal. It makes me think that the intended audience was other Truthers, or at least people with the same background as the original folks who dreamed up the performance. It was a political message packaged in a form that people suffering from the same problems could relate to.