PulpLit.net

Iconography and Mourning

DON BROCKETT: The other day I was walking through Grand Central Station only to notice one of the few small memorials left over from the 9/11 tragedy. There are a few pieces of plywood hinged together and covered with all sorts of pictures and "missing" signs. The missing signs seem to represent the hopefulness that many families took up in the wake of the tragedy. Alongside the "Missing" fliers are quite a few homemade montages of words and text. The most striking thing I remember about the "compositions," which is all I can think to call them, would have to be the combination of popular text and imagery, such as eagles and quotes like "rest in peace." It is one thing to consider repetitive signage within the course of mundane, day-to-day life, but now it appears as people search for a vocabulary to describe, perhaps, their single most tragic and unfathomable experience endured.

MARILYN BARNETT: I noticed that too. I couldn't help but stand in front of the wall wanting to be moved. Since the tragedy I have grown numb to most of the pre-packaged tributes that I have seen in the media. Almost every bookstore has a photo-essay 9/11 tribute book in the window. Most of these pictures I am seeing for the second and third time, but despite their obvious photographic merit I am having trouble gleaning a type of "authenticity" that may reveal something about the moment which is unavailable through traditional fine art photography or even photojournalism.

DON BROCKETT: Are referring to a type of indexing?

MARILYN BARNETT: In a sense, yes. I want to see something more than just a crisp blue sky, tall orthogonals and a fire ball, or the faces of weeping people, for that matter. These are all things that I expect to see, given the circumstances and events. What about those who try and express themselves only to find their feelings encumbered by a lack of confidence in their own self-expression? When these people remember the death of thousands how do they begin to describe it? And can the expression of these people be beautiful or reverent in its difficulty?

DON BROCKETT: Are you referring to those whose daily life is a continual process of following protocol? And how do they, for a moment, try and find a protocol, or language adequate for the situation?

MARILYN BARNETT: Right. There is little within our language that might condition us for the expression of such an event. Even when we consider the strongest words, if we have heard them used to describe something mildly tragic in the past, then those words are automatically trite. This type of tragedy is a first in a generation, and now a generation must start to build a new vocabulary for the sake of expressing something for the first time. In this way, people will begin to look for "just" descriptions of their feelings, bypassing words or spoken language, which already seems like too small of a gesture. Our new vocabulary, that which we use to memorialize the events will be that of abstracted forms. We can already see some abstraction just within language in the way many refer to the tragedy by simply stating the date - 9/11. It seems as though it is inappropriate to try verbalize more than this.

DON BROCKETT: So what kind of forms may we expect?

MARILYN BARNETT: I think that the Towers of Light that replaced the World Trade Center are the best example we may have so far. They beg the question of "why shine light?" why imitate the towers?" After all, it is the lives that are missed more than the towers. So in some sense this memorial overshoots the real tragedy.

DON BROCKETT: But I have never felt that way. The towers of light, for me, feel very comforting.

MARILYN BARNETT: I agree. But why? Why towers of light? Don't you think it could be interpreted as sensational?

DON BROCKETT: I do. But at the same time, I feel as though the shape of the light - dual rectangular beams extending into the sky - turns the brutal removal of the towers into a mystical absence.

MARILYN BARNETT: Mystical absence? How can you use such a word to describe the absence of not only those towers but also the lives of thousands? That seems unthoughtful.

DON BROCKETT: I see what you are getting at, but I retain my position. Let me try and explain it in this way. The loss is not just one of personal sadness. Those who didn't lose loved ones where forced to view the tragedy as not only a loss of American lives, but also as a blow to the general benefit-of-the-doubt that we as humans must give one another just to be confident of our own safety. In other words, while lives have been lost we must represent the tragedy in its entirety - a mass murder, a suicide bombing, and a betrayal of trust, and the destruction of symbolic buildings.

I think the towers of light reduce and solidify the forms of this tragedy in a way similar to the post-war art forms of high modernism. Artists like Barnett Newman and Dan Flavin employed the same concepts of reductive objective form to relate the last conceptual inklings of the artist as a purveyor of "unique" form. For me, the work of those artists has always held a romanticism related to an artist's ability to add something completely new or take something away - very minimal gestures.

MARILYN BARNETT: So you see the towers of light as a kind of living illustration of modernist ideals?

DON BROCKETT: Yes - modernist ideals illustrated clearly for many.

MARILYN BARNETT: So how about the montages of text and popular images that you saw composed on the walls of the memorial at Grand Central Station? You don't sound quite as enthusiastic about those.

DON BROCKETT: That type of image making - pictures of eagles and banners that say, "In God We Trust," is valuable as well. It's valuable not as art, but rather in way the colors of a sports team's jersey are valuable. In many ways, the associations built by this kind of familiar iconography can be more consoling than an expressive piece of artwork.

MARILYN BARNETT: Sure. But that type of iconography during a tragedy or wartime is a given, just as the photo essays in all the book store windows are a given. The question I ask is, "What can be lasting?" "How may this tragedy be represented in a way that is that transcends our initial reactions?" How can this the events of this tragedy be made figurative - building fitting symbols, which may also serve as a point of convergence or alignment?"