- “O’ Say Can You See” still image from film by Laura Poitras. Photograph by Natalie Crimp.
On September 11, 2001, filmmaker Laura Poitras was in lower Manhattan, where she lives. In the hours and days after the bombing and collapse of the World Trade Center Towers she shot film footage of stunned and grief-stricken citizens. The world has dramatically changed since that date, and Poitras has made two probing and powerful documentary films that examine post-9/11 socio-political realities as they impact individuals, families, government policies, and belief systems.
O’ Say Can You See is Poitras’s first gallery exhibition. The installation features a projection of the imagery from Ground Zero in 2001, with audio recorded weeks later at the Yankees’ come-from-behind Game 4 World Series victory on October 20. Poitras says, “O’ Say Can You See is a meditation on loss and revenge.” Interviews with recently released detainees from Guantanamo Bay are presented on flat screen monitors, adding new layers of information and emotion about the War on Terror.
O’ Say Can You See
Installation by Laura Poitras
July 25–December 22, 2011
Kreps Gallery, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
Artist’s Talk and Reception
September 20, 2011, 6–9 p.m., talk at 7 p.m.
Center for Documentary Studies
This installation is part of a campus-wide observance of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Other events are described on this site: http://today.duke.edu/2011/08/911roundup.
