NYC Letter: Forgotten And Unforgotten

Remembering is important.

Forgetting equally so.

Frustrated in joining any frontline services in the aftermath of 0911, I stumbled on the Design Defense Ministry ("DDM"), now defunct, a reactionary site for propaganda by graphic designers frustrated in joining frontline services. Making posters damning terrorists, mocking Mr. bin Laden, and advertising the most wanted seemed better than doing nothing.

The above poster shows the 19 terrorists who hijacked American Airline Flights Nos. 77 & 11 and United Airlines Flights Nos. 175 & 93*, even then half-remembered though hardly known. Faces without names. Who were they? They were murderers. Mass murderers. And other than that one exceptional claim, unexceptional. Obscured by the enormity of their own evil, ironically they are remembered here to call attention to their anonymity.

Unfortunately the DDM soon enough attracted the counter-reactionaries whose posters celebrated the Sontag-Mailer-Pinter theory of American comeuppance. And four years later, counter-reactionary art is all the vogue in NYC.

PAINTING A CONTROVERSY

An art exhibit that trashes the U.S. flag - and portrays images of terror on the streets of New York - is about to open near Ground Zero to mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11.

While it's privately funded, "A Knock on the Door" has been organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council [LMCC], which receives money from New York City and state taxpayers and the Port Authority.

The cultural council, which promotes the art scene downtown, says the show, pegged to Sept. 11, is intended to "raise public awareness of the current retreat of our most basic rights."

The show's premise states:

Now, when works by certain artists or of an indefinable political nature are exhibited, we can virtually guarantee the Secret Service will show up. ... Now while this is certainly a frightening development, it does afford the possibility of an exhibition that raises public awareness of the current retreat of our most basic rights. A Knock at the Door is this exhibition.

Strangely the dark jackbooted government thugs, who have reduced America to a holiday gulag, completely missed shutting down the "A Knock on the Door" exhibit. The liberties these artists claim a malevolent government has ripped from public life are oddly in evidence by virtue of the exhibit itself. Perhaps the government agents have a grudging admiration for the profound truths these artists have risked all to exhibit.

Chicago artist Al Brandtner's "Patriot Act" features 42 mock postage stamps with Bush's image - and a 9-mm. handgun leveled at his head. When exhibited in Chicago in April, Secret Service agents photographed it and launched a probe of the artist.

"It was a show of intimidation," Brandtner told the Daily News yesterday. "The work was done tongue and cheek. The idea was for people who didn't like George Bush to look at it and laugh."

Deep.

Also hanging at the Seaport will be his "Flag: Study in White No. 1," an upside-down and whitewashed U.S. flag. "The colors have been washed out," he said. "It shows the eroding of civil liberties in America."

And it's upside-down! Double-deep!

North Carolina artist Lisa Charde echoes that theme in "The (un)Patriotic(ic) Act," in which a straitjacket patterned after the flag portrays the supposed shackles on America's freedoms.

Nuanced. But deep.

Baltimore artist Christina Nguyen Hung's "Experiments in Resistance With Bleach" portrays insidious bacteria in a petri dish eating away at sections of the First Amendment.

Deep.

New Jersey artist Grace Graupe-Pillard's "Interventions" takes images from the war in Iraq - car bombings, erupting flames, puddles of blood - and puts them on the streets of Manhattan to portray the "politics of fear" in "our own backyard."

Deep stuff. How the Renaissance pales.

I think these artists can sleep easy. No fear of big bad government knocking on their doors. These poorly executed jejune projects are hardly provocative, which is to say they are not interesting. If their projects were the least interesting perhaps the government would have something to take an interest in.

* Poster key: Black death's head Flight No.77; white death's head Flight No.11; red death's head Flight No.175; yellow death's head Flight No.93.

Posted by Damian at September 20, 2005 05:20 PM