On the wall of a new exhibition called "A Knock at the Door ..." is a politically charged, eye-catching work: an American flag shaped as a straitjacket. Although the concept sounds as ham-fisted as its title - "(un)Patriot(ic) Act" - the sculpture by Lisa Charde has a simple eloquence. It is also the perfect symbol of the important issues the exhibition considers, and of the scary cultural flap surrounding its opening.
"(un)Patriot(ic) Act," the artist Lisa Charde's straitjacketed flag, is part of a new exhibition by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. More Photos >
Exploring the impact of the Patriot Act on artists, the show was the centerpiece of a deliberately provocative conference, "What Comes After: Cities, Art and Recovery," presented over the weekend by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. ("A Knock at the Door ..." runs through Oct. 1 at two sites: Cooper Union and the Melville Gallery of the South Street Seaport Museum.)
The conference's title clearly announced that its discussions, exhibitions and performances would look ahead, not merely eulogize. Coming on the anniversary weekend of 9/11, that approach was touchy enough; the last four years have shown that any departure from gooey sentimentality is likely to provoke an uproar. In a move that seemed to beg for trouble, the conference also paid tribute to Susan Sontag, who caused her own furor by writing that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards, and Edward Said, the intellectual and high-profile advocate for a Palestinian state. Yet nothing was as fraught as "A Knock at the Door ...," which was vehemently attacked in advance in The New York Daily News and The New York Post and on the Web site of a group of 9/11 victims' families.
As it turns out, the show is a thoughtful, legitimate exploration of one way in which American artists' lives have changed because of 9/11; it raises questions about artistic freedom that ought to be asked near ground zero. And the anger directed against the show reveals some chilling cultural trends: the devaluing of art as a proper response to 9/11, and the persistent, wrongheaded idea that to question the government is to dishonor the memory of those who died.
The conference was built on the solid premise that mourning and remembrance evolve over time, and that art of all kinds - challenging, comforting, even rude - is a valuable element in the process. That doesn't deny that the grief is still raw for many people, and may always be. But the media attacks on the show were hardly about grief. At best they display a yahooism that says art doesn't matter, at worst a political agenda that says anti-government opinions have no place in any event linked to 9/11.
"A Knock at the Door ..." grew out of the case of Steven Kurtz, the Buffalo professor and artist who called 911 when his wife had a heart attack last year, setting off a chain of events that led to his being investigated by the F.B.I. and arrested because he had bacterial cultures and other biological samples in his house. That material, which he used in his art, turned out to be harmless, but Mr. Kurtz is awaiting trial for mail and wire fraud for buying them. When staff members of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council began hearing from other artists who had been investigated or who feared government intrusion, the exhibition took shape.
Entering the gallery at the Seaport Museum, one of the first things you see is a large pile of trash in a corner, dozens of water bottles and stacks of pizza boxes. It is actually an installation made from the garbage that investigators left at Mr. Kurtz's house. The piece was conceived by the prank-playing artists the Yes Men, although here they attribute the work to the "U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Force" (the guys who left the trash).
As that installation suggests, the show's paintings, sculptures and multimedia pieces are wildly uneven and often playful. From a distance, Chris Savido's portrait of President Bush resembles a paint-by-numbers picture; up close, you see that the president's features are made up of many little monkey faces. An artist's statement says that last year a show at Chelsea Market was closed (by its organizers, not by the government) because the piece, "Bush Monkeys," was included.
Some works are crude and obvious. Al Brandtner's sheet of fake stamps showing President Bush with a gun pointed at his head seems like an incendiary political statement, with no artistic resonance, rather than the comment on political assassination he claims it to be.
Yet as the straitjacket flag suggests, over all the show is galvanizing and fascinating, with genuine artistic expression. At Cooper Union, there is a row of black and white photographs, fake mug shots of the president, Donald Rumsfeld and others in the administration, a work by Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese that becomes a film-noirish rogue's gallery. A painting by Miguelangel Ruiz shows Dorothy and her friends from "The Wizard of Oz" prancing down the yellow brick road while smoke rises from the twin towers in the background.
The format of "A Knock at the Door..." is annoying because there are no wall labels identifying the art, only numbers. Viewers have to step into a small booth to find a notebook with information about the works and the artists' encounters with the government. The intention is to make visitors guess which works have been investigated, but in practice this is a silly stunt.
The conference was not perfectly conceived either. Reaching beyond New York, it considered how other war- and terror-ravaged cities have dealt with art and renewal, but did so mostly in the sleep-inducing form of panel discussions with titles like "Afterword: Language of Recovery." Sontag and Said were chosen for tributes partly because of their attention to international events, said Radhika Subramanian, who put together those homages.
But if the conference's global perspective fizzled, the event was a freeing step toward the future, breaking through the homogenized responses of earnest plays and television movies that threaten to freeze out more daring work.
And while the "A Knock at the Door ..." is clearly more political than its organizers say - questioning the Patriot Act is inherently anti-Bush - there is nothing apolitical surrounding the arts at ground zero anymore, from victims' family groups that are lobbying against the International Freedom Center to Gov. George E. Pataki's announcement in June that he wants an "absolute guarantee" that art at the site will not offend 9/11 families. Art in a straitjacket is no art at all. In this politicized atmosphere, "A Knock at the Door ..." lands like a rejoinder to the governor, even though it was in the works before he made that comment.
Besides, there are as many victims' families as there were victims. The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council - a nonprofit group that presents performances, funnels grant money and offers artists studio space - lost a resident artist, who was in one of the towers on 9/11. It does nothing to honor the memory of the victims to assume they would have us speak in a single voice now. If we're not careful - or rather if we're too careful - 9/11 will become no more than a Hallmark holiday.
