Expect the unexpected

After spending last weekend shuffling and re-shuffling the pieces of debris, trying to act like a matchmaker between you and them and wanting to be sensitive to the initial ideas many of you communicated to me, I realized how silly I was being. Too many preconceived ideas - mostly my own - weighed them down. Instead, I sealed them all in envelops, shuffled them into a pillowcase, and pulled them out at random; isn't this how I had come by them in the first place? One by one I tugged them out by their corners and addressed them without knowing who was to receive what. The first batch finally went out on Friday to those of you for whom I had an address. (The reason for the delay? I had to turn in the first portion of my written thesis this week!) You should be receiving them early this week (with the exception of those of you overseas, of course). If you haven't yet emailed your address, please do so as soon as possible so you have the maximum amount of time to think and work.

So that you are aware, each envelope contains two copies of a permissions form that must be completed upon your review. It will be clearer when you have it in hand, but:
- the nature of the material should be noted as either an original artwork or work of writing;
- the source is you;
- please give as specific a description of the work as possible at this point;
- and note this year as the date of its creation.
Note how you would like to be acknowledged and contact me with any further concerns or questions. The form will legally allow your work to be included in the project, including a possible exhibition and/or being reproduced in a traditional book or catalog about the project.

I'm a little behind in responding to your individual emails from this past week, so please bear with me. Again, thank you all so much for the time, thought, and spirit you've already invested into this project. It is significant.

Below is the note I found attached to a garbage bag full of debris one morning when I walked into St. Paul's for work. Indeed, it was not rubbish.

Prompt and Parameters

The Prompt:

This fragment of paper you will have received is a piece of 9/11 debris.  It was picked up at Ground Zero, in the graveyard surrounding St. Paul's Chapel, a small colonial church that miraculously escaped the collapse of the Twin Towers unscathed despite its age and location right across the street from the former WTC.  The destruction on 9/11 left the church surrounded in debris so deep the tombstones in its yard were buried.  Papers, office blinds, and tea bags dangled from the sheltering sycamore trees surrounding the church.  Before the yard was cleared, a small bag of debris was collected and kept.  The preserved pieces are evidence of devastation and destruction, of a certain Ground Zero and of many ground zeros.  Now symbolic of one day, they were, and still are fragments of everyday lives.  Each of their stories is the same and different, as varied as the people and circumstances that marked them, filed them, mailed them; and as similar as the dust that covers them all evenly. What are these stories?  What is this story?  You will never know exactly, factually; but you can imagine.  And by imagination you can dare to remember these pieces of debris as they were when they were foresquared, legible - crisp even.  You can understand how they will never be that way again.

But maybe, too, through imaginative remembrance - re-membering - you can see how these fragments might actually be realized, re-vitalized and in some way made whole, both again and for the first time.

Look at the fragment you have received. Tell its story, show its story. Though the dust will someday win despite our best efforts at preservation, the story will remain if you truly discern it and serve it.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein 

(n.b. - the next step: your fragments will literally be re-membered when they are "bound together" in the intended artist book, many stories in one)

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The Parameters:

For visual artists the fragments are meant to inspire or be directly incorporated into a two-dimensional visual work measuring no more than 8 x 11 inches.  (Slight relief may be ok - let's discuss.)  For writers the fragments are meant to inspire a poem, short story, narrative essay, something more experimental . . . your options are as wide as your imagination. Just be sure to touch base with me when your idea has been roughly outlined. 

Above all else, artists and writers are asked to honor the fragments and what they represent, to tread lightly.  The pieces of debris are very loaded elements. Use your creative imagination and don't deny the tragedy they witness to.  Respect - especially considering the possible human remains incorporated in the dust on their surfaces - should inform all you do.  Although 9/11 is the reason for their existence (and the primary experience driving my thesis and this whole project), I am not necessarily asking you to make a statement about 9/11.  I'm asking that you partake in the opportunity of creativity come from catastrophe; of seeing a beginning in an end; of discovering unity in collapse and fragmentation (see quotations in initial email).     

Writers: we can discuss layout and various printing options. Artists: final visual works can incorporate drawing, painting, printing, photo, collage . . . as long as the completed piece is dry and non-stick.  The work can have a front and back if desired.  I can give you a piece of hand-made abaca if you'd like to use it for a surface, or we can discuss trapping the work in abaca as with my works pictured in the post below.  Actually, we can discuss any possibilities you might be imagining: artist/writer collaborations on a single fragment, a short series of pages, incorporation of conceptual elements that extend "off the page" . . .   I'm very open to your ideas and want to see you take full advantage of this opportunity.  Likewise, I want to take full advantage of the opportunity of you (plural), of an exponential expansion of imagination with each creative individual involved. Right now I'm looking into some non-traditional binding approaches that would allow the pieces to be protected in sleeves or shallow boxes like window panes; they would stack into a boxed book and unstack for exhibition.

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Time Frame:

Eight Weeks . . . or the end of May if you receive your piece of debris by April 1st. (Not enough time? Let me know; your participation is my first priority.)

An invitation

Dear friends,

Despite its seemingly impersonal address, this email has found its way after very intentional consideration of each of you personally.  You are artists, writers, poets, designers and otherwise creative people - and I am looking for collaborators like you.
    
While working in the Ground Zero relief effort at St. Paul's Chapel after 9/11, I collected fragments of paper debris from the churchyard.  After long contemplation I took a few of these pieces, burnt around the edges and covered in dust, and preserved them by incorporating them between two sheets of transparent, handmade abaca paper.  In this way they still evidence the devastation of 9/11, but within the context of whole re-made, re-created, new sheets of paper.  Here are two examples:   





I will be including these pieces in an artist's book which I am creating for my final thesis project at NYU (my thesis topic is the interdependence of creativity and catastrophe).  The book will be hand-made, hand-printed and hand-bound.  The idea is to re-create an ordered narrative from fragments - material, psychological and spiritual - that were dis-ordered after 9/11.  What is the narrative?  I have certain images and essays I have been working on, but maybe you can help me describe more of its details.  

I still have a number of these pieces of debris left and want to share them with you.  Maybe you have a poem to complete the text missing from a simple office note.  Maybe you will tell the story of a man pictured in a scratchy slide.  Maybe you can complete the collage of marks on a dust-encrusted envelop.  I would like to send these pieces of debris out to you, to find their wholeness in your thoughts, in how you might choose to preserve them or re-member them by re-creating them. 







The above are some sample pieces.  Would you like to see more?  Would you like to learn more about how this book has developed and how I see it continuing to develop post-production?  Consider this email a tease.  Please email me or forward your number and a good time to call so I can further communicate how thrilled I would be to work with you.  We will arrange to get a piece of debris into your hands wherever you are, so that you can be inspired to write, draw or otherwise make.  

While working at Ground Zero I learned that collaboration is key to any creative endeavor.  It is my hope to hear from you soon.

Have peace and do good,
Jessica

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It is not with tools only that we domesticate our world.  Sensed forms, images and symbols are as essential to us as palpable reality in exploring nature for human ends.  Distilled from our experience and made our permanent possessions, these sensed forms provide a contact between man and man, and between man and nature.  Through them we make a map of our experience patterns, an inner model of the outer world.

When unprecedented aspects of nature confront us or a model inherited from the past becomes strained, the new territory does not belong to it.  Disoriented, we become confused and shocked.  We may even create monsters using old, outworn images and symbols in an inverted negative way.  Today we are in the middle of this confusion.  

There is an urgent need for imaginative action that is guided by courage.  There is a need for artistic insight that has the strength and clarity to guide us through the mazes of our self-created chaos.  There is a need for courageous minds which carry within themselves a compass of an exploded new world.
- From an introduction to the artwork of Lowry Burgess

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It isn't enough to write a good book, a beautiful book, or even a better book than most.  It isn't enough even to write an 'original' book!  One has to establish, or re-establish, a unity that has been broken and which is felt just as keenly by the reader, who is a potential artist, as by the writer, who believes himself to be an artist. . . . The longing to be reunited, with a common purpose and an all-embracing significance, is now universal.  
- Henry Miller

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What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.  
The end is where we start from.
- T.S. Eliot