Video Capturing 9/11 To Screen In BK On Attacks' Anniversary

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, NY — The Brooklyn Historical Society will screen an art video that inadvertently captured the 9/11 terrorist attacks to mark the tragedy's 17th anniversary next week.

A day-long viewing of Wolfgang Staehle's "2001" will lead up to a Tuesday evening program at the society's Brooklyn Heights home reflecting on how the city has changed since the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Staehle, a German-born video artist, made "2001" as a solo work for the Postmasters Gallery in Manhattan. It meant to depict what Artforum called a "panorama of eventlessness" through webcams showing a German monastery, a building in Berlin and the Lower Manhattan skyline.

The piece ended up recording the hijacked airplanes striking the World Trade Center's twin towers on the morning of Sept. 11. The live video was fed directly to Postmasters' Chelsea space, where the gallery's owner watched the attacks unfold, according to The New York Times.

"The towers came down in real time and chilling slow motion, and what was intended as a form of contemporary landscape painting became a living history painting, a picture of history in the making," the Times wrote about a week after the attacks.

Tuesday's free screening will culminate with "Transformed Overnight: The Impact of 9/11," a panel discussion at the Historical Society's Pierrepont Street building that aims to examine how the attacks have changed the city and the world.

The talk will feature Tina Chang, Brooklyn's first poet laureate; Clifford Chanin, the 9/11 Memorial Museum'sexecutive vice president and deputy director of museum programs; and NY1 anchor Pat Kiernan. Anyone interested can register for free at this link.

(Lead image: The 9/11 Tribute in Light is pictured among the Manhattan skyline. Photo by Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock)