Imagination in the Post-9/11 World: How Have We Changed? Diverse Voices & Visions from the Creative Research Center Symposium & An In-Depth Interview with Neil Baldwin Looking Back at the Symposium and Its Significance

[We are pleased to post a vibrant and eloquent video of the post-9/11 symposium; a video interview with CRC Director Neil Baldwin reflecting about the October 12, 2011 Symposium convened in Memorial Auditorium on the Montclair State University campus, photojournalism major Haylee Lenkey’s online article in the Montclarion, selected links [see below] to related media around the event; as well as transcripts of the  provocative and insightful talks by Profs. Harry Haines, Lori Katterhenry, Scott Kight and Ofelia Rodriguez-Srednicki; and a link to Mike Peters’ multimedia visual essay, The Dream.]

NB: I will start with a quick confession – in addition to all the biographies of people I have already written in my life, I have always wanted to write a biography of the imagination. I still might do it. I am fascinated – obsessed by – the creative and intellectual potential of the mind in all shapes, forms and media. And that, in a nutshell, is one of the ways in which this unique day came to be. It was two years ago that the historian part of my imagination realized that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was coming up. I respected the extreme importance of commemoration on the actual day – the solemnity of remembrance, the emotional whirlwind of the families, the trauma, and the need for recovery. There needed to be a respectful pause after the memorializing of the event, and the reverence, and the sadness. I wanted to create a separate cultural moment that combined reflection, introspection and projection into the future  – where have we come from, and where are we going? The Creative Research Center decided – in accordance with our mission to spotlight the imaginative works of others, to share the spotlight –  to ask six members of our university community to respond to the concept and the question of the imagination in the post-9/11 world – how have we changed? And – this is very important – we would offer them the chance to speak, each in their own way, in their own style, through their own “lens” and personality, chosen form, discipline, and life’s work.  You also need to know that the event  about to unfold is a hugely collective effort –it would not be possible without the massive support we have received – visible and invisible – like right now – the crew, stage management, complex administrative planning, and on and on – indeed, the most important thing I have learned since joining the Department of Theatre and Dance four years ago – is that teamwork & collaboration – really and truly is at the root of everything we do. Because we all come from different “disciplines,” colleges, departments, buildings, majors (declared and undeclared). We travel through the university in very tight groups. On occasion, it is important to get out and get to know each other. The people on this stage represent a mere fraction of the dozens and hundreds of people I have met – faculty and students alike – who have a lot to say to each other. In just a moment I will introduce our distinguished panelists, who have been waiting patiently here – in the order in which they will be speaking – and each one will come to the podium in succession and deliver their five minutes’ response to the overarching concept/question of the day. The final presenter will be Mike Peters with his multimedia artwork. And then, for the second phase of the program, we will bring up the house lights and, just as it says in your programs, we will conduct a lively Q&A session with the panel. Then for the conclusion of the event, I will introduce Lori Katterhenry, and she will introduce a very special dance presentation – Jose Limon’s evocative, elegiac There is a Time. Here are our panelists in order of speaking: Dr. Ofelia Rodrguez-Srednicki – Psychology Dept; Prof. Norma C. Connolly – Chair – Justice Studies Dept [Note: Transcript of remarks to come]; Dr. Harry W. Haines – Chair – Communication Studies Dept; Prof. Lori Katterhenry, Director, Dance Program; Dr. Scott Kight, Molecular Biology Department; and Mr. Mike Peters, University Photographer.

HH: I need to begin by telling you that I was teaching in San Antonio, Texas when the attacks came against our people on 9/11. I must tell you how profoundly moved we were by the suffering and heroism that we saw unfold on our televisions on that day and afterwards. It needs saying that people throughout the country were of one mind on 9/11 and that our hearts were with the people closest to the horror. Young people, especially, who were children on that day need to understand how the horror rippled across our country and, in fact, around the world. I am honored to be invited to participate in this event. I’m very grateful to Neil Baldwin for his imaginative approach to developing the Creative Research Center. For thirty years, my research has focused on how the arts—and my field uses the anthropological term “cultural forms” to describe what my colleagues call the arts—have given meaning to the Vietnam War in the aftermath of that horror. That’s what the creative imagination does following any great crisis. The creative imagination, which operates within many cultural forms, is compelled to make sense of the crisis and bring the meaning of the crisis into the on-going national narrative. The creative imagination has no other option. Remember that we are members of a peculiar species compelled to make sense of things. We’re wired for communication. We constantly seek and produce meaning. Social drama theory implies that the creative imagination is crucial to our survival following the crises that beset us. For me, the postwar sense-making of Vietnam was especially important, as I tried to give meaning to my own experience as a soldier in the war zone and the experience of my buddies and, indeed, of my generation. We are forever marked by that war. The experience determined what kind of men and women we would become. It haunts our politics. It took about ten years for cultural forms to start making sense of the American experience in Vietnam, as if Vietnam left the country speechless for a decade. So much had been said during the war itself—often at high decibel—that cultural forms pretty much closed down in the immediate aftermath. I call that period “the decade of strategic amnesia.” The creative imagination everywhere simply pretended that Vietnam didn’t happen. This avoidance, of course, had profound impact on Vietnam veterans and our families, who were left with the job of picking our way through the debris with little societal support. In fact, many of us had to purge Vietnam from our resumes just to find work. And the avoidance put-off for ten years or more the toughest job of all: The recognition of combat death and what that human sacrifice meant to the continuing American national story. This ten-year lag in sense-making was stopped short by Maya Lin’s startling design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.  The Wall changed more than the physical landscape on the Washington Mall. It changed the creative landscape of all cultural forms, opening the way for a flood of creative sense-making in literature, cinema, documentary film, all of the traditional visual arts, music, memoirs, and poetry— and even military parades. The Wall made it possible—necessary, really—for the creative imagination to at last go to work on the tough job of making sense of the Vietnam War experience. And the Wall focused precisely on the hardest part of the sense-making: What meaning to give the sacrifice of the soldiers whose names appeared in black, reflecting our own images as we stood before them. It happens that way, sometimes. The creative imagination breaks through like a giant exclamation mark. And so ten years after the 9/11 attacks, the creative imagination seems now to be addressing the meaning of that horror and loss. Like Maya Lin’s design, the recently unveiled 9/11 Memorial in lower Manhattan recognizes our losses on that day. It invites—perhaps demands—other cultural forms to address the meaning of 9/11. The completion of the magnificent tower at the site will encourage similar creative responses— responses yet unknown and predictable only to the extent that we can be sure they will happen. The creative imagination is clearly searching for meaning in the aftermath of 9/11. One good sign is Mayor Bloomberg’s recent insistence that we stop calling the site “Ground Zero.” I think it’s a good idea. We are moving—and we must move—beyond the horror of that day, and labels count. I accept the argument made by political scientists that our current wars really began back in 1990 with Kuwait, what we call the Gulf War. From this perspective, we’ve been at war in that part of the world for over twenty years. I see no end in sight. And from this perspective, I want to recommend a few examples of how the creative imagination is processing the meaning of our involvement in that part of the world. I select these examples based on how they imagine the experience of our soldiers in the war zone. First, I recommend the 1999 film Three Kings, starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube. It’s a very important film in the combat genre. Three American soldiers do the right thing for embattled civilians in Kuwait, a major turnaround from much of the Vietnam combat films. Second, I recommend a fine television series, Over There, produced by Steve Bocho in 2005. The series lasted only one season, and there are only thirteen episodes. The series is set in Iraq, and each episode focuses on a significant challenge to American military personnel as they traverse a reality that is morally murky and often filled with bad choices. Third, I recommend a few PBS Frontline documentaries that report important aspects of the on-going war. The Soldier’s Heart and The Wounded Platoon imagine the challenges experienced by American combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The News War is a sophisticated analysis of how news media, especially television, are co-opted for purposes of propaganda. Fourth, I recommend a BBC documentary, Why We Fight, produced in 2005 and seen by very few Americans. The documentary takes its title from the famous series of short training films produced by legendary film director Frank Capra and targeted at U.S. soldiers during World War Two. The similarity ends with the title. The BBC documentary provides an overview of what President Eisenhower identified as “the military-industrial complex.” I have to admit that the British perspective sometimes rubs me the wrong way, but at least this documentary examines the military-industrial complex and its impact on our democratic institutions. There is no meaningful discussion of this topic in the United States, despite the fact that we’ve been at war in the Middle East since 1999. And fifth, I very strongly recommend reporter David Finkel’s extraordinary book, The Good Soldiers, a title that operates on many levels. Finkel stays with an American unit in Iraq for several months during the surge. I conclude with a couple of wishes. First, I would like us to re-imagine our role in the world, with particular attention to the impact of our imperialism on democratic values and institutions at home. What are the limits to our ability to project military power globally and indefinitely? We need a serious discussion of this matter, similar to the discussion that took place in Britain following World War Two pertaining to Britain’s postwar role.  Second, I would like us to re-imagine what obligations we share, with particular attention to military service and other forms of national service that might be appropriate to a truly democratic people. This re-imagining would be challenging. It would require us first to recognize how unfairly we have treated our service personnel and their families since 1990.

LK: Imagination…. In the post 9/11 world … how have we changed?… Those are three big ideas…Albert Einstein said, “The imagination is more important than knowledge.” That seems to be a good starting point for this conversation…Imagination implies whimsy, childlike curiosity and playfulness leading to creation or a manifesting into form. Making stuff… Children, first and foremost, come to mind… but also Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Martha Graham, the Beatles, Thomas Edison … all madhatters of invention…. Then there is the middle part of the question….9/11….   it is a demarcation in time, like BC and AD…a shorthand for a defining moment in our history when our national sense of security was toppled, and not by a natural disaster like Hurricane Irene, which was totally devastating but bore us no malice… No, this destruction, this taking OUT of form, was imagined by those who still plot every day to bring us down…. And then, the last part of the question… How have we changed? Is this asking how has our imagination changed? Is it asking if it is possible to have a healthy imagination when we are anxious about the possibility of another 9/11? Can we be playful and on guard at the same time? Because that is the ultimate in multi-tasking…We have only to look at the news in the last few weeks for evidence that the American imagination is indomitable and that we are still fearless, cheeky, wild-eyed optimists in spite of what happened on 9/11. Or maybe even because of it. The 9/11 Day of Remembrance showed us so much about our national imagination and what makes us different from the rest of world. The three-hour parade of people who read off the names of the victims reminded us of our greatest strength.. Our diversity… We don’t look like anybody else… we look like everybody because we are from everywhere….a nation of mutts with a spicy and complex gene pool that has produced every conceivable color of skin, eyes, and hair…Because we are hybrids we have been emotionally and philosophically advantaged to thrive in the toughest of conditions. It is our shared belief in freedom and endless possibilities that unites us. No one personified this can-do “Think Different” spirit more than Steve Jobs. iPods,  ipads,  iMacs, and iPhones…… he literally changed the world.. but it wasn’t just function… they were beautiful and fun looking… like cupcakes or lifesavers. The candy colored tools gave us the ability to become musical composers, movie- makers, writers, publishers… we could communicate, research, find our way, find love… He made everything easier by making it possible to be everywhere without ever leaving home. Sort of a Wizard of Oz in reverse. He helped to shrink time and distance… But his inventions weren’t just child’s play… They even helped to bring down dictatorships and fuel the Occupy Wall Street movement which has spread like fiberoptic wildfire across the country. Einstein also said, “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” I don’t think everything is happening at once but I do think that time has become overlapping and dense and much faster….I’m not sure what 4g is, but I know it is a jaguar compared to the 3-toed sloths of just a few years ago. Here’s the thing about imagination… it can’t be hurried. A child can’t be made to play quickly… laying on one’s back and looking at the clouds can’t be done in a rush. In fact, imagination is best nurtured when clock time is not a factor at all. Imagination is the incubator for inspiration.. the “aha” moments. In dance we call this period “improvisation”… focused play… A kind of movement “free association.” After imagination comes the application of knowledge and craftsmanship…     I am not going to lie to you… Making dance is still 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration but without the 1%,  the rest of it is just so much flailing around, however nicely costumed. Steve Jobs, who never graduated from college, gave a memorable Commencement Address at Stanford University in 2005. His final words address today’s topic completely.  “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”

SK: Most people have a personal story about where he or she was at and what he or she was doing on the morning of September 11, 2001. I will briefly share mine because it bears on how the events of that day intersected with my professional life as a biology professor. My academic department had only the year before occupied the newest building on the Montclair State University campus. I was helping a student in my office when a colleague arrived for work and mentioned that he had just heard on the radio that an airplane crashed into one of the trade center towers. One unusual thing about biology professors is that some of us have binoculars in our offices. I suspect that my colleague and I may have been the only people on the MSU campus that day to get such a close up look at what happened. My colleague, who would normally use his binoculars to study birds, watched as the second plane struck. It was then that our understanding of what was happening shifted from accident to attack. I witnessed the attacks from the rooftop of my science building, a place where I teach courses and conduct research. We could not have known it at the time, but the way we used that building, the kinds of activities we conducted within it, even the ideas we would study, were to be changed by the events of that morning. In the year that followed, caution and fear began to influence the decisions people and those in charge of people made. New threats and attacks seemed to be on the news every week. Among these were dangers far subtler than aircraft: biological weapons of terror were on the minds of most people. The media reminded us of them every day. It, therefore, should not have come as a surprise when the Men in Black showed up at Science Hall one day to ask about the security of our facility. It was not lost on government agencies that terrorist cells might be cooking up anthrax or smallpox in microbiology teaching laboratories at public universities. Among the questions the agents had for our department chair were: “Do you have incubators and equipment for culturing microorganisms?”Yes.“ Do you know unauthorized people can access these at night?” We don’t think so. Maybe? How are the laboratories secured?” With locks. “Can you account for everyone who has a key or could make copies of a key?” Uhh .. no. Could strangers be cooking dangerous microbes without your awareness? We don’t think so. Probably not. Maybe not? Our absolute lack of security and knowledge of our facilities may seem ridiculous ten years later, but before the world changed our facility was open and accessible to our students. Students have research projects to conduct. They use incubators and Petri dishes and nutrient media to culture bacteria – harmless bacteria that grow from a few cells into billions in only a few days. The labs were often unlocked, even at night, because many students have jobs during the day and can only do their class projects at night. The world had changed and the Men in Black had come to educate us about the way things had to be now. We needed electronic locks with access cards that could identify exactly who entered the room and when they did. We needed to secure our teaching laboratories at night. We needed to be careful that the kinds of tools that might be used for biological weapons were not left lying around and unaccounted for.  It was not only the workplace that changed in my profession. The very questions that we, as biologists, asked also changed. Research is expensive and the kinds of questions that get asked often depend on the willingness of a funding agency to pay for the research. Suddenly federal funding agencies were interested in bioterrorism. They wanted to fund projects that helped us understand dangerous weapons-grade microorganisms. In an era that had seen computer hardware and software improve by leaps and bounds, there was even more intense interest about information technology that might apply to intelligence gathering and monitoring communication networks. There was also sadly a need for understanding the health impacts of the collapse of the two largest buildings in Manhattan on the human population and rescue workers who were exposed to it. A professor in my department, Dr. Ann Marie DiLorenzo, recently published a study on the effects of World Trade Center dust on the growth of cells in culture. She and her students found that the dust negatively affected cell biology. As my time at the podium draws to a close, I would like to leave the audience with a few questions to ponder about how imagination for a biologist might have changed since the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps we can discuss some of them during the question and answer session that will follow Mr. Peter’s photographic essay. Is knowledge still free and open when you have to lock the doors? Is discovery constrained or channeled when it is motivated by fear or defense? At least one of the 9/11 terrorists was in our country on a student visa. How does this affect the way we teach at universities? How have international collaborations among scientists been affected? It was once taboo to collaborate with scientists from the Soviet Union, but today I have colleagues from former Soviet states in my department at Montclair State University. How have collaborations with scientists in countries that have been classified as state sponsors of terrorism been affected? All of these questions are about the ways scientists use imagination. None of them are easy to answer.

ORS: The impact of 9/11 significantly tapped all of my identities. My perspective and my reaction to these events were complex. I worked in downtown New York City during the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and personally experienced those events. I vividly remember the multitude of people who had been evacuated from the towers, and how their coats and faces were marred by the grey tint of smoke. I recall the sense of confusion and distress at not being able to communicate with my loved ones and the hours it took to arrive to my home.  The roads were blocked and there were emergency vehicles all over the city. It was the first time that I questioned if we, as a country, were safe. And part of my idealization of America being “safe” was shattered. However, within days things were normalized…and my desire to believe that I was living in a free and safe country was restored. How naïve to not think that 1993 was a precursor of things to come! If 8 years later, I had been at that same position, I would have in the midst of the most horrible man made disasters our country has experienced. Terrorism’s goal is to provoke fear, and fear is an emotion that I confronted throughout my childhood far more than I would have preferred. Having grown up in Cuba, in a tyrannical and oppressive government, we were controlled by fear: fear of speaking, fear of praying, fear of wanting, fear of being, fear of playing, fear of being killed or incarcerated for self-expression. This type of fear is very personal to me, having suffered through my father’s imprisonment. The magnitude of the events of 9/11 triggered this deep repressed childhood state of worry and hyper-awareness. It reminded me of the horrifying possibility that I could realistically lose loved ones at the hands of an enemy. September 11^th is a marker event. It is the type of event in which we can remember where we were, and where the people who were important to us were when we heard the news. On that day, as a mother, I experienced a sense of anxiety regarding my sons’ safety. One son was in New York City and the other in middle school. I brought home the one I was able to hold, and worried about the other one until I heard his voice. As a wife, I shared my husband’s sadness, who as school principal, had to comfort his students and attempt to address their unanswerable questions. Some of those children had parents working in New York City and close relatives in the World Trade Center. As a professor, I dealt with my sense of fear, pain, rage and shock in various ways. I read about terrorism, I engaged my students in processing this marker event and in my supervision class, I assisted my graduate students who were in the field working with children, to understand the symptoms of stress that the children were exhibiting. I also conducted research and did presentations on the topic of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ten years later, with the distance of time I, along with Professor Connolly, used our creativity to deal with this traumatic marker by developing a team-taught interdisciplinary course on Terrorism. In developing this course, we have been able to see each other’s development since the terroristic attack occurred. As a psychologist, I had the opportunity to help patients who were directly and indirectly affected by events in New York City and Washington, DC. I was able to be compassionate in a personal way, since I, too, had experienced the attack. I saw the impact which a country held hostage had on my patients: many felt increased anxiety, depression and anger. Some were mourning the loss of loved ones. Others felt a stronger commitment to become involved in peace efforts and volunteering. I saw the interpersonal dynamics of a country whose president had said, “you are either with us or you are with the terrorists” that all or nothing thinking engendered by terrorism had an impact at the macro and micro level.  It is very clear to me that a person’s response to trauma is defined by the lifetime of experience which they bring to the event. It is also very clear that our awareness and vulnerability have been altered. Anniversaries such as the one that just passed revive the emotions of a marker event and allow us to see what lessons we have learned and what types of commitments we want to make for our future.

MP: The Dream on Vimeo

***Media and related coverage of The Imagination in the Post-9/11 World: How Have We Changed? The Newark Star-Ledger, Baristanet, The Montclarion, Montclair State University Magazine, and Montclair State University News***