Laura Poitras’ Astro Noise is a multi-media exhibition that explores post 9/11 issues. Her background as a filmmaker and a journalist is reflected in her work. The piece stretches across several rooms. The first section, which I felt was one of the more impactful ones, features a screen suspended in the center of the room. We watch a looped video of a series of close ups of people as they marvel at the remains of the world trade center in the months immediately following 9/11. The footage is screened in slow motion; this combined with the proximity to the subjects create a very intimate experience. In class we discussed the concept of duration and the way in which the feeling of a piece changes as time passes although the content doesn’t necessarily change. In this situation, I was initially intrigued. What were these people watching? Is it possible that this is footage from September 11th? I think that it is important to mention that although it was not immediately clear what all these people were looking at, I never felt like I needed to see a POV shot. Watching the emotion on their faces was enough. Around the midway point, it begins to feel redundant. However, if you continue to watch, it begins to take on another meaning and that is one of connection. I found the choice to have this set up gallery-style (rather than in a theater setting) to be especially meaningful. The spectators in the film were very much similar to the spectators of the exhibit. We all watch with a certain intensity and then move along when we have seen enough.

As I reached the end of the exhibit a tour was beginning. I heard the tour guide explain that a major theme of the exhibit was lack of transparency regarding the U.S. government and their operations. It became immediately clear why certain aspects of the exhibit were structured the way they were. One of the first things I did when I entered the first space was look and the reverse side of the screen to see if it was playing to same thing. The opposite side was screening clips of interrogations. This exemplifies the theme of lack of transparency. As Americans, and even more so as New Yorkers, the World Trade Center was at the center of the entire situation. But there was so much more that we were unaware of. This theme is also demonstrated in another section that featured small rectangular cut outs in the walls. Inside were things like government documents describing surveillance methods.

Another section displayed the dynamic night sky on the ceiling. Viewers could watch this by lying on a large square bed. This section comes back at the end of the gallery where there is a monitor displaying a heat map of that room in real time. It is interesting to watch as people come and go, their warmth lingers on the bed and a new spectator lies on top of it. But then the realization comes that other people have been watching you as well. This is the artist’s effort to give us insight and a new level of understanding about these things that concern us, yet we know so little about.