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9/11/02: Art And Culture


Before 9/11, few New Yorkers had heard of the Flea Theater, just north of the WTC site; after 9/11, people across the country --teachers, mothers, and businessmen -- knew about this experimental theater space. The attacks shut down the theater for a month, and brought attendance down to five percent through the fall. Then the theater mounted The Guys, written by the journalist Anne Nelson about her experiences helping a captain compose eulogies for his fallen men. The play has been running with a succession of celebrity actors to sellout audiences here and in Los Angeles, and the film version is already in production. On the anniversary, a free performance will occur at Lincoln Center.

The Flea's financial roller coaster -- from financial devastation to unprecedented commercial success -- and its artistic path -- from feeling completely unmoored to creating what has become a ritual of healing -- mark the wide parameters of experience in the cultural community since the attacks.

The first and most far-reaching effects of the attacks were financial: 57 percent drops in earned income; cuts to city and state funding; and tapering off of corporate, foundation, and private donations. A year later, however, it's clear that the events of 9/11 have only sharpened the fiscal picture that has been emerging in the arts economy over the past few years.

Most institutions have recovered from the dramatic drops in attendance sparked by the attacks, yet longer-terms trends show that audiences are increasingly buying single tickets rather than subscriptions or memberships, depriving planners of a reliable revenue base. This has as much to do with lifestyles as it does with the economy. Loyal subscription audiences are aging, and younger consumers tend to be choosy and hesitant to commit themselves to a season or an institution.

The weak economy has hurt arts institutions of all sizes, but the larger institutions with cash reserves and the ability to downsize will be able to weather the hardships. Mid-sized organizations, which like many middle-class Americans bought into the stock market during the 1990s, have had to switch gears from building endowments to struggling to stay in the black. Even during the flush years of the 1990s, many smaller organizations struggled with rising rents and other costs; in the current economic climate, many are likely to close their doors.

Individuals and companies aren't abandoning arts philanthropy in droves, but corporate and private giving are down significantly, and foundations may not be able to take up the slack for much longer. With foundation payouts typically set on three-year cycles, current giving still reflects the late 1990s rather than current trends.

For all of these reasons, and according to recent surveys and anecdotal accounts, arts groups are entering their rockiest period in decades: even if the national economy rights itself by 2003, as some predict, it will take a few years longer to lure back audiences and givers.

In addition to wreaking havoc on the arts economy, the terrorist attacks sparked a year-long conversation about the role of art in what's been called the post-9/11 world. The most concrete discussions have focused on how culture can help rebuild the WTC site and reinvent Lower Manhattan. Over the past 15 years the Downtown Alliance Business Improvement District has encouraged the growth of art galleries, museums, walking tours, and free performances. Arts leaders now want to further this agenda by creating affordable living and working spaces for artists, who have been priced out of the neighborhood over the past decade.

In the weeks after the attacks, cultural activities provided an outlet for emotion and an escape from nonstop media coverage. In arts pages, celebrity profiles made way for articles about the solace of an Auden poem or the serenity of The Met. Mayor Giuliani made a civic duty out of going to Broadway, where audiences cried more easily and laughed harder. In a city suddenly aware of its own fragility, some said, the arts might come to be valued "more than ever."

Artists themselves were torn between wanting to "do something" and feeling queasy about ripping tragedy from the headlines to make art. In the community I know best -- the theater -- friends and acquaintances complained that it felt even more "absurd" than usual to sit in dark rooms and make up fictions. This didn't last for long, however; theater people are used to reacting quickly and moving on. The week of the attack, members of the fledgling Epic Theatre Company went to schools to talk to students about what they were watching on the nightly news. "It was not like 'We've got to save the kids,' but 'We've got to create public forums,'" Epic's artistic director, Ron Russell, recalls. "If Epic had owned a space we'd have flung the doors open: 'Please come in, let's talk.'" The playwright Herman Daniel Farrell III argued in American Theatre magazine that "no one else on the planet is acting with restraint in their responses to this turning-point in time, so why should artists?" (This month, many different cultural events will commemorate the anniversary and several 9/11-inspired books, movies, music, and exhibits will come out. See Gotham Gazette's list of events.

As the country moved toward war, many artists turned to activism. The Refuse and Resist! network of artists staged happenings in public squares, wearing face masks and carrying posters that read: "Our Grief is Not a Cry for War." In November, 900 people gathered at Cooper Union's Great Hall for Imagine: Iraq, a reading of eight plays -- many in development well before September -- about American involvement in the Middle East and the EastÐWest divide.

Occasionally, rhetoric about the value of art lapsed into banalities, as in a School of Visual Arts poster featuring two potted plants in the shape of twin towers and the tag line "Art is. . . Healing." In general, however, conversations about art's ability to create public forums, spur debate, or provide forms in which to pour thoughts were intelligent and provocative. In the months after the attacks, as we returned to our media-and-celebrity-driven culture, at least people were also talking about art.

Brave New World Arts, a group best known for their marathon play festivals, is testing the theory that the arts can heal. For two weeks over the summer, the company led playwriting workshops with teenagers who either lost relatives in the attacks or viewed the attacks up close. The teens' plays will be read at the Public Theater on September 26 in a "Reflections of WTC Children" benefit performance. Producer Daniel Schreibman says that many of the plays are not specifically about the events of 9/11; overall, the project has been about "creating a voice for the kids" and "building community."

Figuring Out The Memorial


memorailWhen Anita Contini started her new job this month as the person in charge of the memorial at Ground Zero, one of her first acts was to announce an international competition to design the memorial, with a final design due no sooner than the fall of 2003. One of the next things on her agenda is to leave town. Contini, whose official title is the director of cultural and civic programs for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, will be traveling to other memorial sites around the world to get a sense of what works and what does not.

New York City is already the home to a large number of memorials. The parks department manages about 1,300 memorial statues, monuments and plaques throughout the city. The most popular sites include Strawberry Fields in Central Park, which commemorates the death of John Lennon, the Washington Square Arch, which honors George Washington, and the East Coast Memorial in Battery Park, which is dedicated to the servicemen who perished in the Atlantic in World War Two.

Downtown Manhattan alone has more than twenty commemorative sites, including an African burial ground, a Vietnam veterans memorial, the General Slocum memorial fountain, and memorials to the New York police and fire departments. The newest memorial, the Irish Hunger Memorial to mark the Irish famine and raise consciousness about world hunger, was completed recently in Battery Park City, under the shadow almost literally of Ground Zero. A nearby memorial, commemorating the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was destroyed last year on September 11th.

September 11th has already spawned thousands of tributes that could be called memorials - the bus shelters and hospital walls covered with those photocopies of the missing; the street shrines made of candles; the pieces of paper covered with spontaneous prose and drawings. For two months this spring, the Tribute in Light, a more official memorial, but just as temporary, consisted of two beams of light in the sky, suggesting the twin towers. The arts group that Contini started in 1973, Creative Time, had a hand in creating that tribute.

But now, as the effort to create a permanent memorial gets underway, Contini will travel to examine other memorials that may offer lessons for the one at Ground Zero, because they commemorate tragic events, or because they were a result of a public process.

okla OKLAHOMA CITY:
Oklahoma City is the most obvious model for a memorial downtown. As the group New York New Visions points out in their Principles for the Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, "The Oklahoma City National Memorial is perhaps the most relevant [memorial], since it derives from a recent terrorist act."

The memorial takes up 3.3 acres in downtown Oklahoma City where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building stood. The 168 empty chairs represent those lost, and a shallow pool of moving water offers a place for quiet reflection. There is also an institute for terrorism prevention, a museum, and a gift shop. This design, done by Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg, was selected through an international competition coordinated by an organization called the Oklahoma Memorial Task Force, which worked with survivors of the attacks, the families of its victims, and rescue workers. New York New Visions looks at this project as an example of an "effective consensus-building process."

But while the process in Oklahoma was established to be democratic, special priority was given to the victim's families. The project's mission statement states that "The wishes of the Families/Survivors Liaison Subcommittee are to be given the greatest weight in the Memorial planning and development process." This had a profound effect on the tone of the memorial. The decision to give such power to the victims' families was made to calm their fears that they would not have enough say in the process. But some say the tilt towards the families resulted in a tone in the Oklahoma City memorial that New Yorkers would be wise not to emulate.. Philip Weiss, a columnist for the New York Observer, writes that memorials need to be "sites of strength and understanding," and not just places to mourn. Oklahoma's memorial ignores this and focuses only on a sense of deep sadness. He warns New York to "take an important lesson from the wrongheaded memorial [in Oklahoma City]: Do not wallow in grief."

vietnam VIETNAM MEMORIAL, WASHINGTON D.C.:
Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C, is one person who knows that a process like this can lead to a tricky balancing of interests. While she was designing the memorial in Washington, D.C, chosen in an open competition, Lin had a conflict with some groups of veterans who were hesitant to cede control over the design. Lin felt that this was necessary to realize her own artistic vision. It became difficult to proceed at times. Eventually, a compromise was reached. Lin's design, a black granite wall with the names of the 58,175 American casualties of the war etched into it, was built according to her original vision. A statue of three soldiers was constructed 300 feet away to satisfy critics of Lin's design.

The process of building a memorial is an emotional event, and compromise will always be a challenge. The Vietnam memorial was built years after the war had ended. While there is far more consensus over the events of September 11th than over the Vietnam War, less than a year has passed since September 11th, and emotions are still high. Dr. Vamik Volkan, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, is not convinced that we are far enough beyond the event to build anything at Ground Zero. "It's too soon," he says. "The attacks and the memory are too hot in our minds. Americans will be repressing their grief if they try to lock it all up in the process of designing and building a memorial right now."

Volkan voices a popularly held belief that all Americans, and not just those who lost loved ones in the attack, have a serious emotional investment in the memorial process. This makes September 11th unusual. "At some level, we all shared it," Lin told the New Yorker in a recent interview, "and that had never happened before in history. I hope that is really taken into account." Contini is taking feelings like this to heart, and stresses that she has heard the need for something more than a tribute to the deceased, both from people who did not lose loved ones and those who did. "Victims' families are a primary concern to us," she says "[but] they have very articulately said themselves that this memorial will interest people from around the world. It will be a symbol to many different people. In order to create that type of extraordinary symbol you need to incorporate a number of ideas from many different people."

Another concern is to create a unified vision for a memorial that is more than simply a series of accommodations made to different groups, so that a designer can proceed with that vision in mind. Washington's competition was run by arts professionals, after the groups involved expressed their needs and an official vision was established that articulated them. At some point, the best thing to do may be to go with a personal artistic vision, says Contini, who points to Lin's work as proof that this method can succeed. "We have to have confidence in the artistic vision of the people who are selected to actually implement the vision. The Vietnam memorial.was created under a lot of controversy, but in the end the committee trusted the artistic vision of the one designer. And it turned out to be an outstanding memorial."

pearl harbor PEARL HARBOR:
The USS Arizona Memorial in Oahu, Hawaii, took some two decades after the attack on Pearl Harbor left over 2,000 people dead. A memorial was first proposed in 1943; in 1950, a flagpole was erected over the sunken ship; in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the creation of a memorial on the site, and public funds and private donations were collected. The memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1962. It was designed by Alfred Preis, an Austrian immigrant who fled the Nazis in 1939. The memorial itself is a large, white, rectangular structure. Inside is a shrine room, with the names of the victims etched into its white marble walls.

"Wherein the structure sags in the center but stands strong and vigorous at the end, expresses initial defeat and ultimate victory.the overall effect is one of serenity," said Preis of his work. He also noted that "overtones of sadness have been omitted to permit the individual to contemplate his own personal responses."

While the USS Arizona was only one of 12 ships sunk in the attack, its memorial has come to represent all those lost at Pearl Harbor.

hiroshima HIROSHIMA:
The memorial in Hiroshima is the result of a rebuilding process that dwarfs ours by comparison. The city was more or less completely destroyed after the atomic bomb attack that resulted in 140,000 deaths. One year later, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law was passed. The first article of the law states that "this law aims at the construction of Hiroshima as a Peace Memorial City, a symbol of the ideal of faithfully realizing lasting peace."

The law also called for the construction of public facilities, including a 30-acre memorial park. In the park are several memorials. A memorial to the victims, called the Centograph,is designed to resemble an ancient house of clay, with a stone coffin that contains a register of the victims. There is also a burial mound to represent the unknown victims, the Children's Peace Monument, the Monument in memory of Korean Victims of the A-bomb, The Monument to Toge Sankichi, and the Monument to All Japan Property Damage Insurance Labor union. A tour through the park takes about two hours. The law also states that the mayor of Hiroshima must continue to make steps towards the completion of the Peace Memorial City, working with residents and other interests. Part of this duty means that every August 6th, on the anniversary of the attack, the mayor makes an appeal for peace to the entire world at 8:15 a.m.

PENTAGON:
Another process that Contini may keep her eye on is the other September 11th memorial, the one at the Pentagon. Since last November, the Army Corps of Engineers has been working towards memorializing the attacks on Washington. An organization called the Focus Group has been formed, comprised of Corps employees, professional groups, and a competition consultant. The group has been in a dialogue with the Family Steering Committee, an organization of family members representing the victims. A site has been chosen, and a two-stage competition is underway. The first stage is an open competition, accepting designs from anyone whether they be, in the words of Carol Anderson-Austra, the Army Corps of Engineers project manager, "schoolchildren, professional architects or truck drivers in Oklahoma or Kansas."

This competition will be judged by a jury comprised of sculptors, architects and landscape architects, a representative from the victims' families, and two prominent citizens from the Washington D.C. area. This will take place in October. At this point five or six designs will be selected for further development. In mid December a final design will be chosen, and the memorial is scheduled to be dedicated on September 11th, 2003.

The memorial process in New York is bound to be the most heavily scrutinized part of the rebuilding. For months, people urged that nothing be built on the site. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani became the champion of the victims' families by calling for a "soaring" memorial. But public opinion had evolved by the time Mayor Michael Bloomberg voiced his disdain for the idea of a "cemetery" downtown. Governor George Pataki vowed not to build on the towers' footprints, where the buildings had actually stood, but he later backed off, saying that the promise was really an opinion. Consensus seems far off.

It may seem as if Contini has put herself in a very difficult position, she is optimistic. "I don't immediately see the difficulties of the situation but the opportunities," she says, pointing to her past as the founder of Creative Time, the artistic director of the World Financial Center arts and events programs, and the head of Merrill Lynch's Global Sponsorships and Events Marketing. "I have experience.in truly bringing people together and creating an open exchange of ideas in forging a common vision." Optimistic or not, the job is a large one. And while Contini will be keeping tabs on what is going on in other places and what has been done in the past, she believes that there is a limit to what can be learned from elsewhere. The situation in New York is unique, and will be treated as such. As a process is developed, past experiences will be taken into account, but New York's method will not be directly modeled on any one effort. "We can't just pick up some else's process and make it our own," Contini says.

###

Memorialists vs. Rebuilders?


Author: Sandra
Date: 07-27-02 03:23
I hate the idea of any type of rebuilding. A memorial park would be perfect!!! This is sacred ground & should be preserved in a respectful way.

Author: Harold
Date: 08-02-02 00:08
The World Trade Center Towers must be rebuilt a little bit taller than the original towers to prove to all the terrorists in the world that the United States calls the shots.

These posts went up on Gotham Gazette's message board about rebuildingissues just last week. Nearly a year after the attacks, there continue to be very emotional, deeply felt -- and mutually exclusive -- ideas about what should be built at the World Trade Center site.

In a July New York Post survey, about half of the New Yorkers polled supported rebuilding the twin towers as they were before the attack. At the same time, a recent New York Times/CBS poll indicated that nearly a quarter want to dedicate the entire site to a 16-acre memorial. Preliminary results from Gotham Gazette's Ground Zero Plannershow these same conflicting views.

Rebuilding officials did not include either of these options in the six plans they released last month. But some advocates say they are ignoring the will of the people.

What happens when faced with such irreconcilable positions? How can the public be a driving force behind rebuilding, when it is so split? How will anything get done?

TALKING IT OUT

Experts in grief responses and conflict resolution, as well as people who were involved in similar polarized situations in the past, all say that it can happen, but it will take time.

"There may not ever be consensus, but I think we can strive for it," said Susan Gerbino, a professor at New York University's school of social work who has studied grief. So much controversy originally surrounded the design for the Vietnam memorial that a second monument, a statue of three servicemen, was added. However, decades later, Maya Lin's design of a simple black wall engraved with the names of Americans killed in the war is universally celebrated for its powerful simplicity.

Slowing down the planning process could help, said Gerbino. "You cannot rush grief, and you cannot rush these plans," she said. "Families may feel one way now, and they might feel differently after the one year anniversary."

Wanting to rebuild the towers is also, in a way, about grieving for what happened, said Maria Volpe, director of the City University of New York's Dispute Resolution Consortium. Many New Yorkers identified with the World Trade Center as a symbol of the city, she said. "The buildings became a symbol," said Volpe, "In many ways, it is an identity thing for people, because in New York we pride ourselves in being bigger than and better than."

William Hirschfield, a professional conflict mediator who worked as a facilitator at Listening to the City, said that providing more places for people to talk about rebuilding - such as the July 20th public meeting, where groups of ten people listened to each others' ideas before submitting suggestions--is the best way to move toward a common ground. "I believe that talk works," said Hirschfield. "Listening to the City was very cooperative, with people thinking, 'how do we build on that?' instead of a traditional public meeting where everyone just gets their own two minutes."

A man at the table that Hirchfield moderated firmly supported rebuilding the towers, he said. "So we talked about how economically this might not make sense, and the environmental and safety laws that the original buildings violated," said Hirchfield. "He later acknowledged that buildings on the site wouldn't have to include offices on the top floors, that for him, the skyline was the most important thing."

HOW HAVE THE POSITIONS CHANGED?

There are other signs that even the most adamant positions can shift. Right after the attack, many grieving families were reluctant to even consider building anything on the site. In his farewell address, former mayor Rudy Giuliani told the city that the 16-acre site should be dedicated to a memorial, saying, "I really believe we shouldn't think about this site out there...as a site for economic development. We should think about a soaring, monumental, beautiful memorial."

However, after a February poll showed that about 75 percent of New York City voters wanted to see office and apartment buildings on the site in addition to a memorial, many groups reconsidered their position. Now, many victims' family members like September's Mission founder Monica Iken, who once supported only a memorial on the site, are calling for just the footprints where the towers once stood to be preserved.

Rebuild groups like Team Twin Towers, however, have only become more vocal. In October 2001, almost two-thirds of New York state voters supported rebuilding the World Trade Center, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. A wide-reaching poll has not been conducted recently, but a July survey of 609 people in the five boroughs by the New York Post(which has itself advocated for the towers to be rebuilt) indicated that 48 percent of New Yorkers support rebuilding the twin towers, while 50 percent oppose the idea.

MOVING FORWARD?

If rebuilding planners are able to develop a new plan that captivates everyone's imagination, staunch advocates may be willing to rally around it. "I would like to see the towers the way they were, but I am not going to be dogmatic about it," explained Nicole Gelinas, who wrote a New York Post column supporting the towers' return. "If I see a plan for a truly bold building, I might support it."

But the first six plans weren't even close to shaking her convictions, she said.



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