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9/11
Tuesday 28 October 2008 - 8 p.m.
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What impact has 9/11 had on the visual arts and how do artists depict the post-9/11 world? Often the terrorist attack of 9/11 and its political and military aftermath are interpreted as an appeal to artists to leave their ivory towers and produce politically engaged art dealing with the social impact of the war on terror, as in the abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners for example, the complicity of the mass media in war propaganda, or the introduction of rigid national immigration policies and the rise of an ‘economy of fear’. On the other hand, Karlheinz Stockhausen called 9/11 ‘the ultimate artwork’. There appears to be a perpetual fascination with the visual spectacle triggered by this and successive attacks, just think of the crashing airplanes, explosions and falling bodies seen in many recent works of art. How do these two reactions relate to one another? Do they have a common foundation or are they opposites? How does contemporary art relate to art from other periods dominated by social conflict and disorder?

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Speakers
W.J.T. Mitchell (US) is Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. Mitchell is a theorist of media, visual art and literature, specialising in different modes of representation within the context of social and political issues. His publications include Picture Theory (1996) and What do Images Want? (2005). In 2008 he published the essay Medium Theory, Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.
Sean Snyder (US) is a visual artist. His work centres on the global circulation of information and the process of translation from one ideological system to another. His videos, photographs, text-based works and installations have been exhibited throughout the world, including Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Secession in Vienna.

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Moderator
Jaap Kooijman (NL) is Associate Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam.
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