[Nettime-bold] pls forward: SEPT 11 PROJECT Town Hall Meeting

[Robert Atkins <robertatkins@earthlink.net>]

911--THE SEPTEMBER 11 PROJECT: CULTURAL INTERVENTION IN CIVIC SOCIETY

OPEN TOWN HALL MEETING, SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS, MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, 209 E.
23rd St., 8 pm

Artists/cultural workers are knowledge makers and engaged citizens. They are
experts at creatively utilizing their hybrid skills to reach numerous
audiences‹from school children and people on the street, to gallery-goers
and far-flung electronic audiences‹with meaningful "messages" ranging from
healing images and narratives to analyses of mass-media imagery and
manipulation. The traditional view of art¹s potential in this crisis was
expressed in the New York Times of September 17, in which the pleasures of
art were described as "comfort, replenishment, beauty," the museum "as a
calm haven from devastating events," and the future direction of public art
as a return to the memorial, and a turning away from the "humorous or
ironic." All of these observations are apt, but reinforce the notion of
contemporary art¹s remove from daily life. In a time of crisis, they are too
limited. 

Members of arts community(s) want to do more. This includes reaching out to
the citizenry of  New York with short-term aid (the American branch of the
International Art Critics¹ Association worked with MoMA to post a crisis
board on its website http://www.aicausa.org), opening up avenues of
expression for discussion of hasty military/political action and the
conditions that encourage terrorism (petition campaigns are circulating),
offering emotional solace and intellectual engagement through art and other
programming (already one-off and ongoing art projects have emerged), and
creating a community of concern about issues that extend beyond the
mainstream gallery-museum nexus. In a monolithic media culture, it is
imperative that more diverse voices be heard.

The SEPTEMBER 11 PROJECT is a response to an emergency that is designed to
be open-ended and evolving. Its art-world predecessors include the
pedagogical impulses of Joseph Beuys manifested in the Free University, the
collaboratively-oriented, "think-tanking" approach of facilities such as
Carnegie-Mellon¹s Studio for Creative Inquiry or MIT¹s Center for Advanced
Visual Studies, and the political engagement of the Art Workers¹ Coalition,
PADD (Political Art Documentation and Distribution) and Artists Call Against
US Intervention in Central America. Perhaps more to the point in our
networked era are the activities of Visual AIDS, which functioned as a
volunteer-run umbrella organization, information hub and presenter. But the
past can only suggest possible strategies for responding to a condition‹in
civic life and the culture-at-large‹that is unprecedented. The 911‹THE
SEPTEMBER 11 PROJECT intends to work first with New York arts and media arts
organizations as an electronic clearinghouse (see http://rhizome.org/911 for
current information), a presenter of exhibitions and programs with
affiliated organizations, a space for cultural workers to communicate and
find collaborators.

An open, town hall meeting will be held Monday, October 1st  at the School
of Visual Arts, 209 E. 23rd St, at 8 pm. Bring your ideas, projects,
concerns. 

Robert Atkins & Kathy Brew & Suzanne Anker

For information contact: robertatkins@earthlink.net or kbrew66933@aol.com or
sanker@adm.schoolofvisualarts.edu 


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