MTV Music Television Network
MTV News
September 11, 2002
Television Program
Running time: 03:34
Author: -
This interview is about my "I AM NOT TERRORIZED" dollar bill project. Transcript coming soon.
You can watch the video clip below.
MTV.com
mtv.com
9.11 Remembered: Portraits of Motivation
September 9, 2002
Online Website
Author: -
9.11 Remembered: Portraits of Motivation
David Greg Harth: Spending A Message
My name is David Greg Harth. I am an artist here in New York City. My studio is just twenty blocks north of Ground Zero.
On September 11, 2001, I watched from my rooftop as the twin towers went down in smoke. Immediately, I knew the world was changing before my eyes and that I was a witness to war.
I felt angry and helpless. I had to do something. I went from hospital to hospital looking to donate blood. I spent the rest of the week trying to volunteer at various locations throughout the city, but found few opportunities because so many New Yorkers had already come forward to lend a hand.
As I roamed the streets that week, I kept a journal and photographed my journey. I remember telling myself repeatedly, "I am not terrorized" and "I am not afraid."
It didn't take long to realize that the best way I could make a meaningful impact was through artistic expression. Communicating through art became my way of trying to help other Americans heal.
My previous work has employed various mediums including photography, performance, film, and painting, but I also do a lot of conceptual work, employing less conventional outlets for expression.
The terrorists struck lower Manhattan, the financial capital of the world, so I chose actual U.S. currency as my medium to attack back. I began stamping dollar bills in heavy red or black ink with the phrases "I am not terrorized" and "I am not afraid."
To send the bills out into the world, I just spend them. Each time I do, it sends a message. To broaden their circulation, I also trade the dollars with friends and people from all across the world who contact me through my website.
So far, there are over 200,000 stamped bills in circulation in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Washington D.C., London and Berlin. Clearly, the message is getting out there.
I'm David Greg Harth: artist, American, New Yorker, human. And I will never be afraid and I will never be terrorized.
The Denver Post
The Denver Post
"Firefighter bracelets seek home: Money Talks"
September 9, 2002
Sec A, Pg 2
Author: Dick Kreck
Firefighter bracelets seek home: Money Talks
Are we 9/11 saturated? Kelley Horton is beginning to wonder. She founded United We Stand, an Englewood company producing remembrance wrist bands to honor firefighters.
She's tried, without luck, to get a local retail chain, any chain, to carry the bracelets. "Most of them say, 'We can't help you. We've already given."' Missing her point, some bury her in paperwork; others put her off to an unspecified meeting date.
She doesn't want a handout. "After the attacks, like a lot of people I spent two or three days sitting in shock. I gave blood and donated money. But I thought there's got to be more that I can do." Mulling it over, the former owner of a high-tech recruitment company decided that her contribution should reach beyond a 9/11 tribute.
She created a series of commemorative bracelets, similar to the POW/MIA model.
It's not about the money. There is no hidden campaign. "It's all on my own," Horton says. The aluminum bracelets are being sold for $10 with September profits going to the Denver Firefighters Orphans Fund, the Colorado State Fire Chiefs Foundation, the Colorado Professional Firefighters Foundation and the Colorado Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
"It would be great if people could buy them at a store," she says. "People call and ask, 'Isn't there any place I can go pick this up?"' No, there isn't. Horton sells them only by phone at 303-788-0402.
Money talks
Gotten one of those dollar bills marked "I Am Not Terrorized"? I have two.
They're the work of a New York City artist named David Greg Harth, whose studio is in lower Manhattan, not far from the World Trade Center.
He and his friends have stamped more than 100,000 $1 bills with the mottos "I Am Not Terrorized" and "I Am Not Afraid" as his answer to the terrorists. "Communicating through my art became my way of helping myself and other Americans heal," he says. Those dollars are all over the world.
Harth, whose history of stamping bills has appeared in New York magazine and The New York Times and on CNN Headline News, notes that stamping bills does not render them unfit for circulation.
My two bills, brand new, came from Harth himself. I will pass the word, and the bills. Part of the deal is to send him two unstamped bills in exchange.
In all the papers
I don't have the wackiest writing job in Colorado. It's nothing compared to the penned production of John Lynch of AJ Indoor, a Denver-based marketing firm.
Lynch's most recent epic involved writing about Charmin toilet tissue. I was surprised to learn that there is a national ad campaign to "put Charmin in the hands of thousands of needy consumers when they need bathroom tissue most."
AJ Indoor has put up bathroom billboards in 30 area stalls. "We're having a hard time keeping the dispensers filled. We have to fill them twice a day."
Is there some intestinal epidemic I'm not aware of?
Around Denver
Community, school and church groups will take part in radio station KALC-FM's "Freedom Bell" reading of the names of those who died in the 9/11 attacks. The program, which begins at 6:45 a.m. Wednesday, will be broadcast live. ... Last roundup: Long-time Boulder cowboy favorites Dusty Drapes & The Dusters will reunite, probably for the last time, on Oct. 4 for a concert at the Boulder Theater. ... Craig Meis, who helped resurrect the Ski Train to Winter Park in 1987, has departed to be a consultant, elevating the train's longtime general manager Jim Bain to vice president. The train begins its winter runs on Dec. 21. ... Reminder: The Film on the Rocks series at Red Rocks Amphitheater ends tonight with a screening of "Gladiator" after a performance by Opie Gone Bad. It all starts at 7. ... Quotable: "You're either part of the solution or part of the problem." - Eldridge Cleaver.
Copyright 2002 The Denver Post
The News-Press
The News-Press
"Preparing for the unknown"
September 8, 2002
Sec A, Pg 10
Author: Alison Gerber
Preparing for the unknown
Preparing for the unknown After feelings of doom, gloom, fear steadily fades from Americans' psyche
The sight of two planes slicing into New York City's majestic skyline nearly a year ago plunged a dagger into America's safe bubble of immunity.
America had changed forever, we were told. Things would never be the same.
Anthrax in mailboxes left the nation feeling even more vulnerable, even more skittish and fearful.
Americans imagined a world where they couldn't drink the tap water, where they stashed gas masks and bottles of Cipro, where they had to open the mail wearing plastic gloves.
For a while, some of those things were reality.
Yet a year later, Americans have slid back into their day-to-day routines, with little obvious concern for personal safety.
We visit Disney World and ballparks, we work in skyscrapers, we drink tap water.
We go about our lives, even as CNN plays disturbing videos of terrorists poisoning a trapped dog.
Even as we teeter on the brink of war with Iraq.
Less than a year after the attacks, Americans are consumed with other dramas, real and created – what Rachel of "Friends" named her baby, a roller-coaster stock market, the color of CNN correspondent Ashleigh Banfield's hair, corporate greed scandals.
"There was 9-11 followed by anthrax, and people were terrified," said Robert Butterworth, a clinical psychologist and director of International Trauma Associates, a Los Angeles-based firm.
"Now I get the feeling there's more fear over West Nile virus."
Fort Myers resident Peggy Poulsen, who grew up in New York City, plunged into depression after Sept. 11. She emerged with the help of a doctor and prescription drugs.
She still gets angry when she thinks about Sept. 11, but she says she feel safe.
"My life is still the same – water aerobics, the movies, dinner with friends," said Poulsen, 73.
"What I worry about is my grandchildren. They're the ones I'm fearful for. The world they're growing up in is very fragile."
The year's images confirm that: war-torn Afghanistan, lost American soldiers, a man with a bomb in his shoe and a murdered journalist.
Fear still lurks, even if only deep in people's minds. Apprehension hovers. Our sense of safety may not be shattered, but it is dented.
Many would rather drive than fly, even long distances. Poulsen's daughter pulled out of a trip to Canada to celebrate her parents' 51st wedding anniversary because she was afraid to fly.
A Fort Myers nurse wrote Gov. Jeb Bush demanding access to a smallpox vaccination.
An AirTran pilot on a Fort Myers-to-Atlanta flight told passengers they could use the seatbacks as a flotation device – and also to protect themselves against an attacker.
"Emotionally, people feel touched but behaviorally, a lot of people have blocked it out," Butterworth said.
"I don't know if it's a question of denial or if it's because there have been codes and colors and scares, but nothing else has occurred."
People are most concerned about a threat immediately after a disaster, said Cape Coral Fire Chief Bill Van Helden.
"Right after the attacks people were very aware and very concerned and were saying, ëWhat should we do?' " Van Helden said.
"That's waned."
Some believe Americans are getting too slack.
"So many people slipped into denial without realizing it," said retired Army Col. David Hackworth, the author of "Steel My Soldiers' Heart."
"But the threat still exists. ... The threat is as real now as when we had 50,000 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at us."
Even if that threat has not caused us to change day-to-day behavior, government and law enforcement agencies are preparing for further terrorist attacks.
Van Helden and other emergency officials are creating plans and training workers to deal with biological or chemical weapons.
Southwest Florida health care officials are working on a statewide plan of action in case of a smallpox bioterrorism attack.
Law enforcement officers are on alert.
In July, a plane that made an unscheduled stop in Fort Myers because it needed fuel was greeted by FBI agents and other law enforcement officers.
They hustled to Southwest Florida International Airport fearing the plane had been hijacked.
Air travel is perhaps the No. 1 cause of fear and stress in post-Sept. 11 America.
Traffic at Southwest Florida International Airport fell 11.6 percent in July.
Nationwide, that drop was 10.3 percent., the Air Transport Association reported.
Other Americans are defiant, refusing to cower to terrorists.
Immediately after the attacks, tourists started flocking to the building tours offered by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
"It was kind of surprising, but people weren't afraid about being in tall buildings, and Chicago is skyscraper city," said Anne Brooks Ranallo of the foundation.
Soon after Sept. 11, New York City artist David Greg Harth started stamping dollar bills with the words, "I AM NOT TERRORIZED" and "I AM NOT AFRAID."
Harth, whose studio is a few blocks from the World Trade Center, said he never considered leaving the city and refused to live in fear.
"I have continued to do what I have always done, go to restaurants, go to work, create art," he said.
"The terrorists struck lower Manhattan, the financial capital of the world. I chose money as my medium to attack back."
He said there are more than 150,000 stamped bills in circulation, from New York to Florida to California.
Fort Myers resident Doris Helveston will board a plane from Fort Myers to New York on Sept. 11.
"I'll step onto that plane with my flag and my patriotic shirt," said Helveston, 68.
"I just want to get into an airplane that day to show some American spirit," said Helveston, who has flown a dozen times since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I want to make a statement: I will not let those terrorists set my schedule."
A defiant attitude about terrorism doesn't guarantee emotional calm, said Anie Kalayjian, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York.
Kalayjian asks: "Are Americans as a whole in fear? No."
But the possibility of another incident or fear of the unknown can cause anxiety, she said. Even if it creeps into the back of a person's mind or burrows into their subconscious, it takes a toll.
"It's stressful. Sept. 11 has affected everyone's sense of safety and security," she said, whether they realize it or not.
Van Helden, the Cape fire chief, tells people to have an emergency plan in case of terrorism – supplies, phone numbers, an evacuation plan. He also tells them not to panic.
"We face as great a threat every hurricane season as any attacks with weapons of mass destruction," he tells people.
"I tell them to go about their lives but to have a plan. Just in case."
Copyright 2002, The News-Press.
Switzerland’s dimanche Newspaper
Switzerland’s dimanche Newspaper
Special Manhattan Resurrection Section: "The Artists Between Documentation And Activism"
September 8, 2002
pgs 12-13
Author: -
The Artists Between Documentation And Activism
English Translation:
In another register but with the same urgency, David Greg Harth, an artist who lives a few blocks from the towers, has printed phrases as declarations to terrorists such as "i am not terrorized" or "i am not afraid" on one-dollar bills that he has exchanged in the street. To this day, more than 200,000 bills are in circulation. "I wanted to act fast, communicate rapidly, what is more rapid than money, especially since the WTC was financial symbol", explains the 27-year-old artist, who realizes the contradiction of using the symbol of the American power as support.
© Dimanche.ch; 2002-09-08; Seite Z12; Nummer 36
Norway’s Nordlys Newspaper
Norway's Nordlys Newspaper
September 7, 2002
pgs 1, 16-17
Author: Lasse Jangås
View Referenced Art Work
English Translation of the article is below.
Front page:
Illegal art
"I am not afraid" it says, printed on the banknote. Itπs not fake; itπs art, imported from New York. *Culture pages 16-17.
Main article:
Look out – you might have a work of art in your wallet
Norwegian banknotes marked "I am not terrorized" and "I am not afraid" is now circulating in Troms. They are not fake. Itπs art, imported from New York City.
The American performance artist David Greg Harth has a studio just a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero in New York. 11. September last year he was a witness when the World Trade Center collapsed. In anger and despair he decided he had to do something. Now his art has spread itself to Troms.
Protest
Harth was recently interviewed by the TV-station MTV, where he told that he on 9/11 wandered from hospital to hospital offering to give blood and he also volunteered to the work that had to be done in the city.
- I remember I was walking around on Manhattan and told myself: "I am not afraid" and "I am not terrorized". It didn’t take me long before I realized that the best way I could do something meaningful was through an artistic expression.
Because the terrorist attacks in New York was aimed at the financial centre of the world, the artist chose to strike back by using the American currency to express himself. Today there is more than 200.000 dollar bills with Harth's imprint circulating around USA.
And now you can risk getting Norwegian banknotes with the American artists expression on them - on the street in Troms.
- I met David Greg Harth in New York in May, and I immediately felt interested in the project, "Erik" a Troms-guy says.
He doesn’t want his name or picture on print, both cause he fears reprisals from the police - and because he doesn’t want to take any of the honour away from the American artist.
- This is his project, Iπm just spreading the message, the Troms-guy says.
When he suggested that Harth should spread the message in Europe as well, the artist offered to send printing tools to Troms. About a week ago it arrived in Troms, and these days the Troms-guy is labelling all the banknotes he’s got.
- Compared to all the bills in circulation throughout Troms, these amount to a quite modest lot. But I hope people will think twice about the message, he says.
Simple message
- The terrorist attacks made a big impression on me too, I have family in New York as well, he says.
- Of course you have to take the terrorist attacks seriously ≠ the threat is real, but we can't let it ruin our everyday-life. Then we won't get anywhere.
Nobody makes money on the project. The bills are labelled in New York and Troms - and then released into the market as regular bills.
- I'm going to continue doing this until Harth tells me to send the printing tools back.
Article down left:
But is it art?
- The artist uses a different communication-channel for a clear political message, historically he can be linked to a generation, or a tradition, within American art that has it's origin in the 60's and 70's, says steward Jarle Str¯modden (picture) at Troms Kunstforeing (Art association).
- For example the artist Jenny Holzer wrote a bunch of texts quite early in her career, "Inflammatory Essays", which was attached to walls, light poles, trash cans etc. in public. It was just random who read those texts, just as it's random who gets in possession of these bills, Str¯modden says.
- Is it art?
- That's a question that we could go on and on about. The action is carried out by an artist, and as much of performance and newer theatre, this is an inclusive artistical art form. I think that no matter what you answer, you have to say: Why not?
I don't think everything is art; cause in that case nothing would be art. Let me put it like this - something is beautiful because something else is ugly, he says.
Str¯modden has the following answer on the question whether Harth's expression is good art or not:
- My attitude is that all good art is political, while all political art is bad.
Article down right:
The bills will be destroyed
The high circulation-rate on bills in Norway will make it difficult for "Erik" to spread the message. Every time a bank makes a cash-deposit into Norges Bank (Norwegian National Bank) or gets their night-safe emptied by Norsk Kontantservice AS (Norwegian Cash service AS), all the bills and coins goes through a control.
- A 200 NOK bill goes through Norges Bank about 10 times a year on average. If it has any labels, drawings or graffiti etc. the bill will be destroyed, says assistant director Leif Veggum in Norges Bank.
- I recommend people to be careful with accepting bills with labels/prints on them. It can be difficult to control if they're actually real, says Veggum, but stresses that labels/prints won't make a real bill worthless.
In 2001 Norges Bank produced 70 million new bills. To label bills with "I am not afraid" or "I am not terrorized" won't apply any big costs for Norges Bank. One bill costs below one krone (NOK) on average to produce. If "Erik" could afford it, it could be an idea to mark the 1000 NOK bills. They only get checked twice a year on average. On the contrary the message won't reach out to a lot of people.
The Journal News
The Journal News
"Learning to live with loss"
September 6, 2002
Sec E, Pg 1
Author: Georgette Gouveia
Learning to live with loss
Loss is a gaping hole, an empty sleeve, the "Vacant Chair" of the Civil War song.
It is the biblical backward glance when you know you must move on. It is moving forward when you know you will never really let go.
Loss begs the question "Why?" - the portal to all other questions. Why them and not us? And more softly, ashamedly even, Why us and not them?
It can be measured in degrees. After terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, Mount Vernon painter Michael J. Singletary lost the chance to be an artist in residence there, while Somers management consultant Lorin Woolfe lost his job with the American Management Association in Manhattan, as business travel dwindled. But neither would say his loss was comparable to those who lost their lives or their loved ones.
Loss can be measured in numbers, too, even as it remains incalculable. For what mind can grasp, what heart can hold the some 2,800 who died in the Twin Towers' tidal wave of glass, steel and smoke?
The mind that seeks to understand, the heart that truly loves sees the numbered lost as so many multiples of one.
"I didn't feel it was 343 firefighters (who died at the Twin Towers). I always felt it was 343 times one," says former New York City Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, author of the new "Strong of Heart: Life and Death in the Fire Department of New York" (Regan Books). "It was Bill Feehan, it was Pete Ganci. To me, it was always one, and that was what made it so difficult. One (firefighter's widow) told me her husband was 6-foot-one. All they gave her was an ounce of remains. It's terrible to think of a young woman going through that ä One of the reasons I felt I had to leave the department (at the end of last year) was I said to myself, I can't do the funerals, I can't do it next year."
Loss is as concrete as that fireman's remains and the single tooth that looms so large in "Beyond Ground Zero: The Forensic Science of Disaster Recovery," Richard Press' photography exhibit at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan. And it's as intangible as the dread that wells up inside you when you wake from a nightmare ã or the dream that was your life.
"Sept. 11 revealed my naivete, a loss of innocence in my assumption of how safe we were and the world was," says North Carolina textile artist Marguerite Gignoux, whose "Uncommon Threads" exhibit, commemorating the first anniversary, is at the Katonah Village Library.
The loss of security and solace ã or rather, the loss of their illusion ã creates fear, the parent of resentment, rage and revenge. In the untitled pair of plaster arms that White Plains artist William Becker has sculpted as a possible Sept. 11 memorial, one is raised in a defiant fist. That anger is something photographer Jeffrey R. Hewitt encountered in the days after Sept. 11. Hewitt ã part of the "Surviving 9/11/01: Three Photographers Remember" exhibit at the Historical Society of Rockland County in New City ã had just moved from Hastings-on-Hudson to the East Village, with the end of his marriage. He was not looking forward to Sept. 11: It would've been his 25th wedding anniversary.
"One loss stirs up past losses," he says. "I saw after Sept. 11 in the East Village both the desire for no more war and retaliation times 10, the Achilles syndrome."
Loss is Achilles dragging around Hector's body to avenge the death of his beloved Patroclus. It's Lear howling in the storm for his irretrievable sense of himself as a wise king and adored father. It's Heathcliff begging the ghost of Cathy to hound him for all eternity. "I cannot live without my life," he says. "I cannot live without my soul."
But he does. And we do. Loss is the negative space that outlines the positive. The measure of its pain is the measure of the possibility of gain.
"If anything, I think I gained more than I lost," says David Greg Harth. "I've gained so much strength, whether it's doing more as an artist or spending more time with my family or appreciating a butterfly."
Harth - who grew up in New City but lives in Manhattan - went to St. Vincent's hospital to volunteer after the Sept. 11 attack. There was already a waiting list ã an indication perhaps that a city so brutally ravaged nonetheless contained everything and everyone it needed to heal itself. Soon Harth ã whose art consists of stamping U.S. paper currency in different denominations with patriotic phrases ã was trading more than 150,000 bills that say "I am not terrorized" and "I am not afraid," via his Web site.
"When I was in Washington Square Park (after Sept. 11), I saw a sign that said, 'Like the apple bitten that has not fallen from the tree,' '' says Harth, who donates blood every 56 days and bolsters his friends. "I'm sticking around, because this is my city."
What is cherished is never lost as long as you hold fast. "Death ends a life," playwright Robert Anderson writes in "I Never Sang For My Father." "But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some resolution, which it may never find."
"Each time you tell the story (of loss), you integrate it into the narrative of your memory," says Hewitt, who volunteers at the Bereavement Center of Westchester in Tuckhoe. "In doing that, you move forward."
Loss, then, is about moving forward by looking back and holding on by letting go. The raised hand in Becker's untitled sculpture may be clenched, but the other lies open in acceptance.
"You have to let go at some point and accept," says Gignoux, who grew up in Bedford. In her textile work "Tuesday's Sky," richly patterned stars float on a blue background. They represent the individuals vaporized in the Twin Towers.
"People were snatched out of the air," she says. "I felt I had to help the souls go. You no longer have your body, so how do you cope with that? ä I felt I could somehow show how beautiful they were, the same and yet different, all locked in that world."
Loss is colored by how you lose. The people who died on Sept. 11 were taken by a horrifically willful act of malice in which their countrymen were forced to be either terrified participants or helpless witnesses. That will always haunt.
The places in which that loss occurred ã a quiet Pennsylvania cornfield, a citadel of military power, the towers of global industry ã are forever tethered to tragedy, like Gettysburg, Chernobyl and that grassy knoll in Dallas.
"It's impossible to separate human relationships from the places where they occur," says painter Michelle Mackey.
On Sept. 11, she stood on the roof of her Brooklyn apartment building with 19 other people after the Twin Towers were hit. In her painting "Knowing," on view at Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art in Manhattan as part of "Art: 911," an abstract of the Towers' grille-like skin seems to waft above water.
The Towers.
Amid all the missing posters in Union Square and Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan were those for the "lost Twins." Ultimately, the loss is about the buildings, too, isn't it? It was there that Mackey, as a newly minted New Yorker, went swing dancing at the Windows on the World restaurant. It was there that Michael Singletary would pick up his wife Michelle, also a painter, who worked across the street. And it was in the shadows of the Twin Towers that photographer Camilo Jose Vergara would capture his children playing. You can see those photographs in his book "Twin Towers Remembered" (Princeton Architectural Press) and the accompanying exhibit at the New-York Historical Society.
"There were lots of great things down in that community ã arts, music, people congregating, different types of people," Singletary recalls. "That whole scene is lost."
Loss is what was and what might've been.
"I lost the sense of the infinite future," says Jeri Riggs, a quilter from Dobbs Ferry who's part of the "America From the Heart: Quilters Remember September 11" exhibit at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers. "Looking at the skyline, I feel very sad. It's a jarring dislocation."
In loss, you lose your moorings. The Twin Towers were like the double mast of a ship-shaped Manhattan, says Camilo Jose Vergara, who came to New York in 1970, when the World Trade Center was still under construction:
"The Towers were full of contradictions. Up close, it was the raw power of how tall they were. On top, everything human looked so small. At a distance, they were evanescent, with this tremendous reflective power ä There was that brutality. We want to awe you. But then, they were so gentle, too."
Loss is what was and what still is, in the mind. In death, the lost beloved is no longer part of the past but of a never-ending present, in which all phases of life are contemporary. Older Elvis coexists with young Elvis. The Jackie of Camelot with Jackie O. In Vergara's exhibit, the Twin Towers rise, fall and rise again.
And yet in their timelessness, the lost are of their time.
"I find I look at movies, and all of a sudden they are historic, periodic, because they have the Twin Towers in them," says architectural historian Barry Lewis.
Similarly, he says, you can never see an image of the Twin Towers now without knowing their end. So you gaze at a Vergara photo of the Towers in sunset, and you shiver in recognition, for it and they have become metaphors for the sunset of an era.
In loss, the lost are transformed, but so are those who've lost. Lewis, a lifelong New Yorker who co-hosts PBS' walking-tours series, never liked the Twin Towers. And yet he remembers coming back from Europe after a six-week trip, spotting them from the plane and knowing he was home.
"The Towers are an emotional symbol," he says, "like certain people in your life: You didn't realize what they meant to you until they were gone, and then you realized you missed them."
In Henry James' novel "The Wings of the Dove" ã the expatriate New Yorker's valentine to the city of his youth ã British journalist Merton Densher romances a dying New York heiress, Milly Theale, solely for her money. She dies leaving him her fortune. But he no longer wants it. All he can think of is her.
The Towers are our Milly. And in their loss, we are likely to remain under the shadow of their wings.
For in truth, we loved them so.
Copyright 2002 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc.
Las Vegas Weekly
Las Vegas Weekly
Letters: "The fallout from horror"
September 5-12, 2002
Pg 4
Author: -
The fallout from horror
I am a young artist living and working in New York City and my studio is in lower Manhattan, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center.
Like so many people, I felt so helpless and wanted to do something. Communicating through my art became my way of helping myself and other Americans heal. I created a project where I stamp dollar bills with the phrases, "I am not terrorized" and "I am not afraid." The terrorists struck lower Manhattan, the financial capital of the world. I chose money as my medium to attack back.
I spent the stamped bills and put them in circulation, and I also trade the dollars. There are over 200,000 stamped bills in circulation, including such places as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Washington D.C., London and Berlin.
-David Greg Harth
Time Out New York Magazine
Time Out New York Magazine
"What's up with that?"
September 5-12, 2002
Issue 362 Pg 6
Author: -
What's up with that?
Q:
What's up with those dollar bills stamped with the pronouncements "I am not terrorized" and "I am not afraid"?
A:
Time Out New York Magazine, September 5-12, 2002; Issue 362
David Greg Harth, a 27-year old New York-based artist, began stamping these statements on dollar bills a few days after the September 11 attacks. Harth witnessed the destruction from his Nolita studio that morning, and like so many New Yorkers, he felt a desperate urge to help in some way. After being turned away from overcrowded blood banks and volunteer centers, Harth decided to create a rubber stamp that spelled out his reaction to the situation.
"I was angry that the terrorists targeted New York City - my backyard - and I wanted to encourage people not to be afraid, and not to alter their lives, letting the terrorists win," he explains. To circulate his message, he chose a medium that quickly travels far and wide: cash. "I could tell you, 'Hey, I am not terrorized,' but put it on a dollar bill and hundreds of thousands of people will get that message," he says. In order to get as many bills out there as possible, he sent duplicate stamps to friends in other cities. He estimates that about 200,000 bills are currently in circulation.
This isn't the first time Harth has used money to communicate with the masses. In 1998, he stamped one-dollar bills with the words I AM AMERICA. The year 2000 inspired I AM NOT A DOLLAR, and the following year: "I AM TRUST". People who find the patriotic intention at odds with the defacement of government property need not fear: What's illegal is rendering currency unfit to be reissued. "Obviously, I don't intend to make the bill unusable," Harth says, "The government should be happy that I'm doing this."
Senior Citizen Magazine
Senior Citizen Magazine
"The New York State of Mind"
September, 2002
Volume 3, Issue 9, pgs 21-22
Author: Maria Esposito
The New York State of Mind
I am a life-long New Yorker. I am used to seeing my city in the center of the media glare. And if the truth were known, I've actually come to expect the constant scrutiny; it's the price you pay for living in the city that has been called the crossroads of the world.
Lately, however, I've started wishing that all of the media would go away. Since the attacks on September 11th, being in the limelight feels like being watched at a wake. You want to scream and cry over your loss, but you really can't let go while the company is still here.
I thought that perhaps I was the only one who needed to find my own way to release all these pent-up emotions, but after doing some searching, I discovered that I wasn't alone. There are many people involved in finding a personal way of making sense of it all.
Of course, in times like these, artists have always been leaders in finding a form for expression. I discovered one such artist, David Greg Harth; who lives and works in New York City.
As a matter of fact, his studio is located in lower Manhattan, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center.
Like so many people, he felt so helpless after the attacks and he needed to do something. Communicating through his art became a way of healing himself and others. He created a project in which he stamps dollar bills with the phrases "I AM NOT TERRORIZED" and "I AM NOT AFRAID." To him, money represented the ideal medium for his symbolic attack on terrorism because the terrorists struck lower Manhattan, the financial capital of the world.
David started stamping bills right after the September 11th attacks. He spends the stamped bills so that they are circulated. He also trades stamped dollars with people from all across the world who have contacted him through his website. Currently, there are over 150,000 stamped bills in circulation in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Washington DC, London and Berlin.
Finding comfort in the healing artwork and images that were created by ordinary people right after the tragedy is a special project underway at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Cass Bruton-Ward, the Director of University Relations reminded me that Hoboken lost people in the attacks too, which is why this project is so important to them
This art of the common folk was displayed on the streets of the city, yet most people have never seen them. Stevens Institute has documented hundreds of the best and they plan to present them to the public on September 7, 2002 in documentary format with live music and guest voiceovers.
Another documentary in the works is a joint project between the American Psychological Association and Discovery Health. The film, entitled Aftermath: The Road to Resilience, presents profiles in resilience from people of diverse ages in dealing with the events of September 11th as well as other hardships that we all experience.
The individuals profiled in this documentary all live or work within the same block in Brooklyn, just outside of Manhattan. They talk about recovery, healing and moving beyond.
And finally, no observance of the anniversary of this horrible event would be complete without some overt manifestation of our pride in our city and our country. That is why the tradition of flying service flags will be revived.
The service flag tradition began during World War I. As they watched their sons and husbands being sent overseas, women would hand-sew red, white and blue flags to hang in their front window to honor their loved ones. The flags were white with red edging and had blue stars to signify each member of the family serving in the war. When a family member died in battle, a gold star replaced a blue one to honor the solider who was killed. These flags have flown whenever America has been at war, Steve Rupp, a business owner in St. Louis wanted to bring back this tradition and he obtained authorization from the U.S. Department of Defense to do so. In addition to the military service flag, Steve has developed a version to honor firefighters that has a red Maltese shield and one to honor police officers that has a silver badge.
There will be many more outpourings of our collective emotions in this great city. No matter what form they may take, all them will have one thing in common. Each and every one of them will be saying that just like the loved ones whom we honor, we are proud to live in the city that has been called the crossroads of the world.
Copyright 2002, Senior Citizens Magazine.
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
"Art: Signs of struggle and understanding"
August 25, 2002
Section - Pg -
Author: Alan G Artner
Art: Signs of struggle and understanding
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001/2002.
At 8:45 p.m. on a Friday in July, spotlights for a film being shot in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art illuminated a scene that proved deceptively gratifying. At first notice that the museum soon would close, visitors began exiting in a stream that did not significantly abate until well after the hour.
All those people in a museum at the start of a weekend in the middle of summer! At the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris that would be a matter of course. But such reaffirmation of the drawing power of art in Manhattan, 10 months after the terrorist attacks? Surely everything was back to normal.
Well, no, it isn't. Since Sept. 11, attendance has been down at the Met by 1 million visitors, and only by cost-cutting in every department has a projected $20 million deficit been reduced to $7.5 million. This has been quite a change at America's largest art museum.
Outside New York, results varied. The Art Institute of Chicago's "Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South," the blockbuster exhibition that opened less than a fortnight after the attacks, attracted just under 700,000 visitors, 100,000 fewer than projections. But annual attendance at the Museum of Contemporary Art was up by 12,000, and May saw the highest number of visitors since the building opened.
Tourism has, of course, been down, but it has proved impossible to separate the impact of 9/11 from the general state of the economy. Representatives of the Travel Industry Association of America say no one knows when foreign tourists are coming back to the United States. TV host Otto Deppe -- known as the Walter Cronkite of Germany -- told a staff member at the Institute that, despite terrorists, everybody would be back as soon as the Euro tops the dollar.
For the first three months after the attacks, transporting art from museum to museum became more difficult because of changed airline schedules, but travel is again easier. On the other hand, borrowing works of art for public exhibitions is expected to become more difficult. And even if no one wants to predict the increased risks of art traveling, insurance rates certainly will be higher.
The nature of art museums has not, however, changed.
"A museum is a stabilizing institution in a community because of what it does," says Institute Director James Wood. "A great and broad art museum fosters interest in and toleration of other cultures; it can transcend the immediate political reasons for learning about those cultures and, in fact, help us understand their complexity."
But what of other institutions?
Early this year the Illinois Arts Alliance asked state arts organizations to report their fiscal health and outlook after Sept. 11. Forty percent said foundation and corporate giving was down from last year while at the same time constituents were asking for an increase in programs.
"Our research tells us that since Sept. 11, people have been drawn to the arts in greater numbers," says Alliance director Alene Valkanas. "Corporate and foundation giving may be down due to declining assets, but arts organizations are reaching out through special appeals to individuals who value what they offer. And they are optimistic they'll be successful, more so than other non-profit organizations polled in a similar survey."
Such institutions, large and small, already have shown art shaped by 9/11. The best of it, such as "Time Left," a video installation by Michal Rovner at the Whitney Museum of American Art, is not "about" the attacks yet indicates a changed awareness. "Everything around us affects us," says Rovner. In her case, the degree of suffering she saw from her home near Houston Street was abstracted and transmuted into a piece of universal import.
"I have not observed a notable shift in artists' practices in response to this event," says Elizabeth Smith, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art. "But a couple of works stand out to me that manifest effective and appropriate responses. One is a print by Tony Fitzpatrick [commissioned by the MCA and sold in its store]; the other is the drawing installation by Raymond Pettibon at this year's Documenta [in Germany] that mirrors the inchoate frustration and anxiety so many of us have felt."
To combat that anxiety, New York artist David Greg Harth has stamped dollar bills with the phrases "I am not terrorized" and "I am not afraid" before putting them back in circulation. He has written, "The terrorists struck lower Manhattan, the financial capital of the world. I choose money as my medium to attack back."
For many artists, though, there has been another, less noticed response.
"Joel Meyerowitz is a friend," says Wood. "As a photographer and a New Yorker, he immediately felt he had to exercise his craft. So he used his art to record the events of last September but did not use those events to make art. That, I think, happened a lot. It is still a period where you have to digest."
Copyright 2002 Chicago Tribune
RubberStampMadness Magazine
RubberStampMadness Magazine
"Have no fear..."
July/August 2002
Issue 124, Pgs 120-121
Author: -
Have no fear…
In New York City, folks are still dealing with the aftermath of September 11. Susan Smpadian returned to rubber stamping after a long hiatus. She says stamping helped take her mind off the tragedy.
New York artist/stamper David Greg Harth says he won’t be terrorized anymore. And he means it, putting his money where his mouth is by stamping U.S. currency with appropriate slogans.
Harth has been stamping on currency since 1998, but the terrorist attacks gave new urgency to his art-making.
"I have an ongoing art project in which I stamp U.S. currency with various phrases," he says. "The first one I did was 'I AM AMERICA.' I started that in July of 1998 and stamped over 100,000 bills and put them in circulation. Then I released 'I AM NOT A DOLLAR' in July 2000 and 'I AM TRUST' in July 2001.
With the attacks on the World Trade Center, I have released two new phrases and four new stamps [in varying formats], 'I AM NOT AFRAID' and 'I AM NOT TERRORIZED.' I stamp anywhere on the bill, in red or black ink—on the front, back, upside down, or right-side up."
This artist has been profiled in The New York Times and featured on CNN, among other media outlets.
Visit him on the Internet at www.davidgregharth.com.
The New York Sun
The New York Sun
"Who Needs the Bryant Park Tents?"
June 06, 2002
Style Section p.12
Author: Nicole Graev
Full transcription coming soon.
“...In the fine art category, David Greg Harth's multi-media tableaux feature below-the-belt iconography that's not exactly suitable to describe in a family newspaper ($160-$6,000).”
Japanese Cosmopolitan Magazine
Japanese Cosmopolitan Magazine
The Battle for the Restoration
February 1, 2002
Issue #24-2nd Pg 113
Author: Shu Hirata
English Translation of the article is below.
The Battle for the Restoration
Power to the New Yorkers --- Stamped Dollars Project ---
The war is not over yet. Since the end of the cold war, the America has become the greatest power of economy in the world. It has been for three months since the twin towers, that symbolized the American greatest power of the economy, collapsed.
The America is attacking in reprisal against Afghanistan with full power of their politics and military. However, New Yorkers are facing to another battle, the battle named Restoration.
Still the air smells of wreck on windy day in down town, and the fear of anthrax virus crosses your mind every time you open a mail, and in the city there are so many notices to search missing people.
We should not forget this detestable event occurred this time. But if we get depressed, it will be considered that we submitted to the terrorists. The messages of the Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the Governor Gorge Pataki are often reported on TV. Even Woody Allen, the most famous New Yorker, as a movie director besides an actor, who has never cared about TV commercials so far, is now showing his brilliant (?!) ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center for being as a proof of the New York's energy, and cheering up the people at the same time. Also, all celebrities from fashion field and Hollywood wear in black for formal situations, to mourn for the people who passed away on this atrocious event.
However, there are not only these like campaigns to heal people's mind. One is that, in New York City where many live alone, indoor plants being a partner of their lives. Since the terror-event happened, the sales result of indoor plants has been increased a lot. This reflects that people wishing to calm down are increasing.
Also, with his hope of peace for people's wounded hearts, David Greg Harth in New York started "dollars art project." He stamps "I AM NOT AFRAID" or "I AM NOT TERRORIZED" on U.S. dollars, and the stamped message on the dollars circulates from one to another.
This is officially considered to be a defacement of currency as a violation of the United States Code. But this project is introduced on New York Times and CNN, and drew the public attentions.
Once a dollar is stamped, it is supposed to loose the currency value and will be unable to be used. However these David's stamped dollars are passed and passed into other hands in many places.
"If, even one person meets this bill, and feels relief or courage to live in his/her future, I am glad enough." People sympathize with his thought, and they rush to order the stamped bills. David said that he has stamped one-dollar bills more than thirty thousand so far. And also said David, "Every time I hand out my stamped bill for my shopping, a cashier softly smiles." The momentary smiles will hopefully heal people. Certainly it might be against law, however, nobody has never refused using the stamped bills yet.
"How sloppy they are!" you might want to say, but this seems the source of their power. Yes, New Yorkers are now very willing in their minds, to be live powerful.
-
Photograph Caption: Exists more than thirty thousand!!?? Stamped Dollars Project. There are two colors available, red and black. Visit the studio of Mr. David Greg Harth in East Village, or send a check, and he will exchange single bills for the same amount of your payment. In other words, he charges no fee on stamping. Although sending currency by postal mail is illegal, once stamped, it is said that it becomes not currency, therefore able to be sent by postal mail service.
China Elle Magazine
China Elle Magazine
2002
No - Pg -
Author: -
English Translation of the article is below.
New York artist, David Greg Harth, used red and black ink to print on a few thousand US dollar notes "I am not afraid" and "I am not terrorized", [thus creating a new awareness]. He started printing on the 2nd day of the 9-11 incident, hoping to have $100,000 worth of such notes in circulation. He says, he is doing this to [console and in honour] of the people of New York City.