And if Joe Yahoo thinks my site is disturbing, he certainly wouldn't get the 9/11 "game" (where you have to choose how/whether/where to jump out of one of the top floors) which has now apparently been taken down. Dr. Emily mentioned it in response to my "Catching Up" post. There's some interesting discussion of it in another blog, regarding its real purpose and the medium in which it appeared. Is it art? Is it a sick joke? Is it truly a game? Is it something else?
How to or even if one should represent a horrific event is always a question in the recent proximity to event. How soon is one of the first questions: when is it okay to start thinking of it as anything but history? I think it was Elie Wiesel who said there should be no poetry after the Holocaust. The first people to process it into art are inevitably roundly condemned because people grieve at different rates and in different ways. No matter what, someone is always going to be offended, either by the actual piece, when it appears, the interpretation, the content, the very idea. First there was the sculpture of the Tumbling Woman at Rockefeller Center that set everybody's teeth on edge. Working out an acceptable memorial at the site is going to be a nightmare.
If I look at this "game" (which I haven't seen and probably won't now, as the site's been taken down) as art, it's a fascinating piece in a kind of exciting new medium. If I interpret it as an actual game, it's just sick, like a variation on a video game that makes it a racist killing spree. As an intellectual exercise, the game makes me queasy, which is probably what it's supposed to do. Writing the poem about it made me queasy too.
But history can't be the only repository for events, otherwise, voices are lost. Em and I have argued before about how absolute and fact-based history is, and I won't start that one again, but I will readily agree that it's not the only way for us to remember or learn about or make sense of the past. Even if art only makes you think about something in a different way, or see it from another point of view without interpreting it for you, that's important. I think that's what the best art does.
I can't say that's the function of Stories From the Ruins. Putting this book together was a way of both grieving and bearing witness for me, and I think probably for Marcia too. I've always felt that once I put a piece of writing into the world, it's no longer just mine anymore. Even my own interpretation changes with time; with some distance, your own subconscious motivations become clearer.
So I'm endlessly interested to see what kind of fine art comes out of 9/11. I make this distinction because I think the mass media is largely hopeless as producers of anything that can make you think. They're the media of titillation, and not much else. Sadly, I think they're going to be the voices preserved for history.
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