Letter from an Artist: Marty Pottenger

September 19, 2001
New York, NY

Dear Friends,

New Yorkers participating in artist Marty Pottenger's public art project in Manhattan's Union Square after the September 11 terrorist attack. View slideshow of images from the project.

Well, here we are. Sorting this out as best we can. The news from our one remaining TV channel, plus the Internet, indicates that both racism and anti-racism responses are happening all over the Australia, Europe and the U.S. It will be an upsetting and interesting next period to live.

The understanding of New Yorkers — that aware listening is a powerful gift — is evident as my neighbors sit on stoops, people stop to talk on the street, reaching out with a head-nod or an eye-squint. Looking out to see who else is looking out, too. The grief and shock are evident everywhere as well. Our Re-Evaluation Counseling (RC) Listening Projects are going well. They make a difference and add to what's going on already all over the city. For me their greatest impact seems to be on us. The work makes clearer our own inherent initiative, connection to all people, our ability to stretch under duress and learning to function as a team outside of traditional counseling activities.

The only time I've been able to cry from a deep place or actually feel the fear is whenever the sound of sirens fill the air or in the first seconds of a phone call from someone who doesn't live in New York. So far it hasn't failed. But I've noticed the importance for me to spend time with my friends and family as well. When I'm scared, that's usually the hardest place to stick.

My time in Kosovo and Yugoslavia after the war there serves me well here. There I learned the profound difference between what we are told by media, what our imaginations and early hurts conjure up and what is actually happening in the places themselves. I also began to understand the critical need for people to stick together, listen to each other, and to both stand up for what is right and not cut people out of the circle of community.

We were able to successfully organize a gathering of my RC colleagues last night at my home/neighborhood, which has no damage at all, but is relatively close to the World Trade Center Towers. We are in one of the "evacuated, sealed off, all-businesses-closed" part of lower Manhattan. Repeated in print, radio and TV is the fact that "No one can enter this area without identification proving they are residents." While I have no argument with any of this as a way of trying to deal with what's happened here, the reality is that we are walking around, listening to each other, sitting on stoops, going into the shops, cafes, grocery stores, schools and laundromats. The reality is that while there are police barricades that check identification north and south of us, anyone can enter the neighborhood simply by taking the subway to any one of five stations and getting out. I think it was useful for people who came to see and experience the difference between "the story" and reality.

Today I finished making two long (1' by 30') canvas banners which now hang from a fence at Union Square. It's a park where Emma Goldman and Abraham Lincoln spoke and where the first U.S. Labor Day parade was held just over 150 years ago. The banner is in two parts. In foot-high letters against a watercolor blue-and-white background (I was going for the balance of attention from sky and clouds) in English, Gandhi's

PEACE WILL NOT COME OUT OF A CLASH OF ARMS, BUT OUT OF JUSTICE LIVED.

Below this is the same size blue banner, but blank, with markers and pens hanging at either end for people to write whatever they want to. Next week we will be hanging the same size banner and text in Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish, Farsi and Russian. I "coupled" the signs to try to prevent the Gandhi quote one from being torn down. We'll see. People have a lot to discharge.

Crying earlier in the morning let me clear out enough brain space to slow down on what my sign was going to say. Much of my help making and installing it came from people literally passing by, for the most part. We painted it past midnight last night on a sidewalk downtown and at least 50 people passed, some holding candles from the vigil/memorials. About 9 p.m. a woman and man approached, she with NYU medical shirt, both looking very tired. They stopped and read it and stood there for a long time, while three of us continued painting. After the first hour, I realized it made sense to treat each person uniquely and not engage everyone who stopped. Some needed to share the connection silently, some a few words of encouragement or disagreement, others more of a discussion/session, and some people just wanted to stay for a long time.

The night cool, we were one block north of the police barricades, so fairly near to the WTCs for most of us. Quite a few rescue workers came by on their way to and also from their work down there. A few of them were near tears reading the sign and getting to stop and not "do" anything. Almost everyone stopped and stayed for awhile. Since I've been making public art works/performances for so long, I well understand the power of a public project, but never quite so clearly the power of making the work in public too.

Back to the woman doctor and partner/friend. They both had been voting right at the WTC when the planes hit. They both ran. Since then, she's been working as a doctor at the hospital right there. They both talked off and on for the whole visit. It turned out that he had lost 30 of his co-workers and friends. She asked if she could translate the text into Chinese. I said that that was the only language I had not been able to have it translated to yet. So for two hours, she sat on the curb, the headlights of my friend's car the light we were all working by, plus five candles from the vigil. Every while or so, she'd call me over and we'd think together about the possibilities. I learned a little more about the "culture" of the Chinese language. All of us trying to understand and articulate what we thought Gandhi meant by the word "justice" and then of course, "lived"!! Even "clash of arms" has its complexities. She moved here from China about 10 years ago, and explained that "justice" in Chinese would ordinarily only refer to the legal system. As she left to go home, she said that getting to do this had been her first joyful time.

Just in getting some of the translations from men I'm friends with in my neighborhood, I've already gotten to offer some [counseling] sessions. Muhammed said thank you with tears, Alex who is Russian had the opposite reaction. It's been a good project all round. I stayed with the sign once it was up for a few hours today. At least 100 people have written something, both angry and reconciliatory. Already there are at least 10 languages there, but that's New York. Two different hardware-store guys split the cost of materials 50/50 with me. We've known each other for over 20 years and I wasn't sure that they'd like the text, but I ended up telling them anyway today and they asked me to sign their names to it. We missed my deadline ... but had a very human time from beginning to end. I had wanted it up to welcome President Bush yesterday afternoon to NYC, with a hope that is would be read by men and women all over the world (CNN) in their own language, without government censors/translators. * More stories from today's ten hours of finishing and hanging, but enough for now.

Over a couple thousand people are there at Union Square at any one time. Five white cellists are playing Bach under a circle of trees, as ten black young men are playing trumpets and trombones in the center of a circle of 300 people. Hundreds of photos of the missing people are on trees, fences, lampposts, with scores of candles burning below them. The subway stop is a fence of pictures of the missing loved ones. It's big. So much of NYC will seem different from the heartrending images, memories and experiences.

There are small groups of Tibetan Buddhist monks praying with incense near Pentacostal Christians crying and speaking tongues ... both of them near a couple of homeless guys who are intermittently shouting at the top of their lungs the most intelligent words of the day — about capitalism, military industrial complex, and so on — while hundreds of people stand silent, some crying and hugging, around thousands of candles, flowers, photos, poems, together on the ground at the foot of the statue of George Washington on a horse, which is now covered in the word "LOVE" written in all colors of chalk. The sign is completely filled with thousands of statements as of last night.

Love, Marty

September 24, 2001

Just got in this minute from a fabulous project. I spent the day asking my neighbors and shopkeepers to write different versions of "We Want Justice, Not War," "End The Desperation That Causes Terrorism," "Justice Yes, War No," "Peace Comes From Justice, Not From War," "We Love Our Arabic and Jewish Sisters and Brothers." I bought 60 colored poster boards and everyone wrote three to five signs of the above in Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Russian and English. Then bought all different fabrics and decorated each poster sign with it. All at my patented, silly "talking on the phone while cutting fabric as I glue and reach for a pen" breakneck speed, of course.

Then went with a friend up to Union Square where hundreds of people had gathered for a peace vigil organized by that workgroup I was at on Monday. Strangers, friends, co-counselors ... so many people gathered and lined up in two rows, 20 people in the first one, sitting, and 20 more in the second one standing behind, holding the signs for three hours. We had a wonderful time. Hundreds of people stopped and cried, argued, shouted, thanked us, laughed, glared, discussed, hugged. At least 20 of them asked to write their language or message. I didn't bring extra poster board so I was very strict, but OK'd a few signs for "other-side writing." We now have Turkish, French and Bangla. We got to spend time with Palestinians, lots of Jews both Israeli and from other countries, Russians, Chinese, Equadorians ... truly for every language I mentioned above. Many addresses were exchanged. Our spirits were singing pretty much all the way through.

Two of my favorite stories are the Bangladeshi man that I didn't work with on his sign wrote: "War Is Very Bad Except When It Is Against Our Enemies." I figured, "how many Bangladeshi people will be by," but of course very soon some came over, read it and complained to some of my volunteers. They called me over and told me what it said (which I already knew) and I got to explain that that was most definitely going to be our most "complex" sign out of the 45. The other moment was when I walked up to a man who had begun to yell, "I just want to know what you mean by the word "justice!!" Just what does that word "justice" mean to you?!?" It was towards the end of the evening. and I, along with everyone else, was a bit exhilarated and almost giddy. I said hello and thought for a minute and then explained to all listening that justice as far as I could figure, meant that anyone in the world that you didn't know ... had to be nice to you; and that the only people who could treat you bad and mess you up ... were people that you were close to or in your own family. He was the first to crack up, with the rest of us right behind.

Men in particular took the opportunity to both join in and hold signs (from here and all over the world). They also came over and got very upset "at" us. My understanding is that this whole thing stirs up all the ways that men have been conditioned (and have also held on to) a sense of being responsible for the physical safety of others. An armed attack that they were unable to prevent comes in as their own very personal responsibility and failure. This lives inside me in a similar way, just from how I grew up, but last night it was quite clear.

Many men stopped and just shouted at us (for hours if we would have not interrupted them to individually listen). In their words was grief at the attack, extreme upset that their friends and not them were killed, that the perpetrators had to be annihilated (some variation on that one), that we didn't understand (feeling isolated), that we were traitors who deserved to be hurt ourselves, that we should have been at the WTC when it was attacked (and not their friends) and had no right to do what we were doing.

The presence of a lot of my co-counseling buddies made a big difference in how this went for everyone. The power of simply listening and not turning it into a discussion or exchange of views was profound. My conversations in these last two weeks with many men, have frequently included what they would have done (or not done) as a passenger in the plane that was brought down in Pennsylvania. The uncertainty they carry inside about their required "manhood" is like a burden and a bell that has been rung loud by all this.

That's it for now. We're three days to Yom Kippur and the Jews For Racial and Economic Justice organized a very moving Tashlicht (throwing sins/misdeeds into the water) Ceremony at the Hudson River today. Several friends were there, and the service included a statement by 62 young Israeli women and men who had publicly refused to be in the army, due to the occupation. It was followed by a publicly published letter of thanks from 12 Palestinian families who had lost a child to Israeli Armed Forces. We each threw a torn-off piece of bread into the Hudson River as the ducks and seagulls swooped down to nibble our sins into a nutritious snack. L'Chaim.

Love, Marty

* Pottenger said she is aware of her sign appearing on PBS and on Canadian, Japanese, French and other nations’ TV stations; talked about on National Public Radio; pictured on the front page of a newspaper in Puerto Rico; featured in an independent NYU documentary, and more.

Original CAN/API publication: October 2001