"Does the WTC attack feel like a movie? ... Well of course it does! It has been specifically written as a movie script... Having studied for years how Americans react in movie theaters, the game planners have decided we are now ready for movie spectaculars in real life. You are witnessing a cathartic and intense psychological operation. It is designed to alter your perceptions and hence your politics. It's a classic PsyOp. Its a made-for-TV movie with all the cliché blockbuster elements. It has mayhem, evil warlords and subtle hints of a military coup. It has terrorists who wrestle for control of Flight 93 with Die Hard have-a-go Bruce Willis clones." Wag the WTC - The Blockbuster
9-11-2001 was the ultimate day of reality television. Like most North Americans, I didn't just watch the World Trade Center attack on the evening news; I spent the entire day glued to the idiot box in shock and awe, flipping between CNN and other news channels bringing live coverage from ground zero. The images were breathtaking, like something out of a major Hollywood blockbuster, only you didn't have to suspend your disbelief: this was news.
For the first few hours, the anchorpeople seemed stunned by the magnitude of the event. There were long pauses as information gradually came through from government sources: hijackers, terrorists, Arabs, al Qaida. Practically within hours, public opinion shifted massively from recently growing criticism of Sharon's Israel, to a fierce anti-Arab patriotism.
Since then, the major English-language news media have been churning out such concerted propaganda that the internet as a forum for the exchange of information has become more valuable than ever. I heard the other day from a friend in NYC that she is afraid to look for critical information online: the truth is out there, but Americans are worried they will be electronically monitored.
By now the amount of independent research and information that points to 9-11 as a charade played out on the stage of big media news to dramatically influence public opinion is staggering. There are the seismographic recordings which indicate that 2 larger explosions occurred before the final collapse of the towers. There are the pools of molten steel observed at sub-basement levels at Ground Zero which explain the efficient collapse of the towers: the stuctural beams had been melted at temparatures many times higher than what burning jet-fuel could produce. The collapse of the towers was in fact typical of a controlled demolition rather than a chaotic disaster.
There is the question of how precision bombs could possibly have been planted in buildings with such high-tech security systems, and there is Dubya's low-profile younger brother Marvin. Marvin Bush was a principal in Securacom/Stratasec, the company that provided security for the WTC, Dulles Intl. Airport (from where two of the planes took off), and United Airlines. There is Professor Dewdney's research regarding the faked cellphone calls from flight 93. There is the mystery of the missing Jetliner and the unbelievably small hole it made in the Pentagon's outer wall; a hole much more likely to have been caused by a small bomb or missile. There is the consistent destruction of evidence including the fact that the Pentagon lawn was covered over with gravel within hours - to hide the fact that there was nothing (no plane wreckage) to cover over.
Then there is the interesting aspect of major media collaboration. The American mass media are owned by a handful of military-industrial and infotainment corporations, who are no strangers to the oil company that runs things. What makes 9-11 such a brilliant media art event is the spectacular power of the images that were beamed around the world that day, and the profound effect they had on the collective psyche. Anyone who has seen Johan Grimonperez' DIALhistory video immediately recognizes the photogenic quality of airplane hijackings, which was brought to a stunning climax with the WTC attack. What was hijacked that day was terrorism itself: this is terrorism practiced on our collective imagination by the American government and the big media.
It can be hard to make the leap out of consensual reality into the paranoid universe of meaning and artifice that such conspirative theatre brings. The movement of consciousness required to bring one's thinking around from the commonly accepted to the spectacular is intense and disturbing. To understand a media artwork like 9-11 as the massive piece of theatrical manipulation it is, one needs to accept that the most important art of our time is happening 'outside the frame' - outside of art institutions and, better yet, without any label identifying an artwork. In the theatre of the real, where we live, the most ambitious art of our time is taking place, and its delicate subject is our perceptions. Whatever happens next - even if it leads to impeachment and scapegoating - the show will go on, and most Americans will be watching it on CNN.
To see 9-11 as an isolated event would be to misunderstand both the nature of the current information war and the process by which art develops. For every outstanding work of art there are dozens or hundreds of precedents, ranging from the well-known (e.g. the 1933 Reichstag fire) to the unnoticed. At certain points the available know-how is pushed to new limits to serve a particular intention. The intention in this case was articulated by a Washington think tank a year before, calling for "a catastrophic and catalyzing event... like a new Pearl Harbor". The World Trade Center - an icon of globalization and American prosperity, had stood like two fingers to the rest of the world. It was the perfect target - could a Hollywood villain have been so fiendish as to forever alter the geography of Manhattan, leaving a permanent scar, a grain of sand in the oyster?
The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was the first to call 9-11 an artwork just days after the event, although in the ensuing public outrage he quickly attempted to retract his comments. Widespread recognition of 9-11 as a media art masterpiece is yet to come, and would run counter to the passivity engendered by the infotainment media. On the internet there is of course a lively exchange of information, and all one needs to do to begin tapping it is type a few words into a search engine. However compared with the massively effective dissemination of propaganda as top-priority news, all the information available on the web is just a drop in the bucket.
Moritz Gaede, 4.7. 2003
Author's note: Some of the hyperlinks have gone dead since this curatorial piece was first published July 4th 2003
9-11-2001 was the ultimate day of reality television. Like most North Americans, I didn't just watch the World Trade Center attack on the evening news; I spent the entire day glued to the idiot box in shock and awe, flipping between CNN and other news channels bringing live coverage from ground zero. The images were breathtaking, like something out of a major Hollywood blockbuster, only you didn't have to suspend your disbelief: this was news.
For the first few hours, the anchorpeople seemed stunned by the magnitude of the event. There were long pauses as information gradually came through from government sources: hijackers, terrorists, Arabs, al Qaida. Practically within hours, public opinion shifted massively from recently growing criticism of Sharon's Israel, to a fierce anti-Arab patriotism.
Since then, the major English-language news media have been churning out such concerted propaganda that the internet as a forum for the exchange of information has become more valuable than ever. I heard the other day from a friend in NYC that she is afraid to look for critical information online: the truth is out there, but Americans are worried they will be electronically monitored.
By now the amount of independent research and information that points to 9-11 as a charade played out on the stage of big media news to dramatically influence public opinion is staggering. There are the seismographic recordings which indicate that 2 larger explosions occurred before the final collapse of the towers. There are the pools of molten steel observed at sub-basement levels at Ground Zero which explain the efficient collapse of the towers: the stuctural beams had been melted at temparatures many times higher than what burning jet-fuel could produce. The collapse of the towers was in fact typical of a controlled demolition rather than a chaotic disaster.
There is the question of how precision bombs could possibly have been planted in buildings with such high-tech security systems, and there is Dubya's low-profile younger brother Marvin. Marvin Bush was a principal in Securacom/Stratasec, the company that provided security for the WTC, Dulles Intl. Airport (from where two of the planes took off), and United Airlines. There is Professor Dewdney's research regarding the faked cellphone calls from flight 93. There is the mystery of the missing Jetliner and the unbelievably small hole it made in the Pentagon's outer wall; a hole much more likely to have been caused by a small bomb or missile. There is the consistent destruction of evidence including the fact that the Pentagon lawn was covered over with gravel within hours - to hide the fact that there was nothing (no plane wreckage) to cover over.
Then there is the interesting aspect of major media collaboration. The American mass media are owned by a handful of military-industrial and infotainment corporations, who are no strangers to the oil company that runs things. What makes 9-11 such a brilliant media art event is the spectacular power of the images that were beamed around the world that day, and the profound effect they had on the collective psyche. Anyone who has seen Johan Grimonperez' DIALhistory video immediately recognizes the photogenic quality of airplane hijackings, which was brought to a stunning climax with the WTC attack. What was hijacked that day was terrorism itself: this is terrorism practiced on our collective imagination by the American government and the big media.
It can be hard to make the leap out of consensual reality into the paranoid universe of meaning and artifice that such conspirative theatre brings. The movement of consciousness required to bring one's thinking around from the commonly accepted to the spectacular is intense and disturbing. To understand a media artwork like 9-11 as the massive piece of theatrical manipulation it is, one needs to accept that the most important art of our time is happening 'outside the frame' - outside of art institutions and, better yet, without any label identifying an artwork. In the theatre of the real, where we live, the most ambitious art of our time is taking place, and its delicate subject is our perceptions. Whatever happens next - even if it leads to impeachment and scapegoating - the show will go on, and most Americans will be watching it on CNN.
To see 9-11 as an isolated event would be to misunderstand both the nature of the current information war and the process by which art develops. For every outstanding work of art there are dozens or hundreds of precedents, ranging from the well-known (e.g. the 1933 Reichstag fire) to the unnoticed. At certain points the available know-how is pushed to new limits to serve a particular intention. The intention in this case was articulated by a Washington think tank a year before, calling for "a catastrophic and catalyzing event... like a new Pearl Harbor". The World Trade Center - an icon of globalization and American prosperity, had stood like two fingers to the rest of the world. It was the perfect target - could a Hollywood villain have been so fiendish as to forever alter the geography of Manhattan, leaving a permanent scar, a grain of sand in the oyster?
The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was the first to call 9-11 an artwork just days after the event, although in the ensuing public outrage he quickly attempted to retract his comments. Widespread recognition of 9-11 as a media art masterpiece is yet to come, and would run counter to the passivity engendered by the infotainment media. On the internet there is of course a lively exchange of information, and all one needs to do to begin tapping it is type a few words into a search engine. However compared with the massively effective dissemination of propaganda as top-priority news, all the information available on the web is just a drop in the bucket.
Moritz Gaede, 4.7. 2003
Author's note: Some of the hyperlinks have gone dead since this curatorial piece was first published July 4th 2003
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