Arts group hosting 9/11 'watch party' on 25th anniversary hit with backlash over 'crossing line'
An arts group has been criticised for plans to stage a 'watch party' where news footage of the September 11 attacks will be screened in real time.
The event in Bournemouth in the UK has been organised by arts group Verdurin, with the group's website indicating that they also staged a similar event on the anniversary of the attacks in 2024.
A description on the event's website explains that the screening of news footage is intended to encourage viewers to reflect on the way that the disaster was represented in the media, as well as the subsequent eruption of conspiracy theories which have come from the September 11 attacks.
The description reads: "Twenty-five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center changed the course of history, relive the highest moment of hypernormalisation and experience again the fear, tears, and paranoia of the live news channel analysis and raw footage of the disaster."
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It adds that the event 'reformulates the live responses of the mainstream media, twinning them with conspiratorial commentators in a polyphonic installation of sensorially overwhelming scale'.
The September 11 attacks are regarded by many as a moment of collective trauma, as even those not directly involved watched on TV in real time as the catastrophe unfolded.
But the event has been criticised by Councillor Simon McCormack, a member of the Christchurch Independents group in Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole council, who said he was 'deeply concerned' by the event, which will be held at the Wild Café in Boscombe.
In the post, he wrote: "There are respectful ways to remember the victims, educate people about what happened and examine how the attacks changed the world.
"But packaging their final moments and the suffering of their families as an immersive event crosses a line and risks turning tragedy into spectacle."
He added: "I do not believe this is appropriate for Bournemouth, particularly on such a significant anniversary. I urge the organisers and venue to reconsider out of respect for the victims, survivors and their families."
Pierre d'Alancaisez is the curator of the event, and said in an email reported by the BBC: "The news footage of the attacks marked a shift in how we relate to media, how we understand events, and what conclusions we draw from aesthetic experience relayed to us by television cameras.
"The focus of the screening and discussion is the unwitting role of media itself in pre-empting responses, such as paranoia or conspiratorial thinking."
He went on to highlight that the footage being shown itself is already in the public domain, saying: "What we are showing are historical documents (already available to the public) that, owing to their ongoing global influence, warrant wide engagement and scrutiny."
d'Alancaisez also denied that the event was intended to create a 'spectacle', adding: "There will be no spectacle here (note, for example, that we are asking the audience to hand over their mobile phones so that they can concentrate on the image), other than the 'spectacle' constructed in 2001 by news organisations in real time."
The September 11 attacks four planes were hijacked, with two being flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and another into the Pentagon, with 2,977 people being killed, most of them in the twin towers on the floors above where the planes hit.
A fourth plane is believed to have been intended to target the US Capitol Building, but crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the hijackers, killing everyone on board.
Kit Roberts