With materials like clay and juice boxes, the attack on the World Trade Center is constructed in miniature from the perspective of the victims, rather than the abstract spectacle of the event. The animation portrays the victims as “inglorious and vulnerable” in the face of their humanity and death. Helle, a member of the Hotel Modern theater company, was in Rotterdam with his colleagues when he saw the second plane crash on television, a moment that profoundly influenced the creation of his work. The work shifts from the abstract imagery of the collapsing towers to the intensely personal and painful experiences of the people directly affected.

This example is particularly relevant to discussions of medial impact. Struck by the televised spectacle of 9/11, Herman Helle tasked himself with countering the dehumanizing tendencies of the hypermediated image that dominated global screens. Despite its miniature scale and overt construction, the work restores emotional proximity and renders the tragedy perceptible in ways that conventional news footage arguably could not. In doing so it engages the question: How do we relate to mediated events, and can art reintroduce affect where news media numbs it? 

The intimate humanism of this work contrasts with the highly stylized abstraction of the following film, Collision by Max Hattler, raising questions about whether emotional truth is more effectively conveyed through representation or through symbolic form. It contrasts the previous film in this program by collapsing the global and contextual distance between artist/ viewer and this event through its focus on tragedy and human connection. 

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