Rensselaer Magazine, December 2002: At Rensselaer

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Electronic Arts

Andrew Cross/ Whitney and Minetta Brook

Artistic Reaction to September 11

After the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, Colleen Mulrenan waited two days for her father to come home from his job as a deputy chief for the New York City Fire Department.

When he did return home to Warwick, an hour north from Ground Zero, Mulrenan did the only practical thing she could think of: She began to clean by hand his work shirts covered thick with soot and debris since he needed a clean uniform for the next day. Mulrenan, an MFA student in electronic arts at Rensselaer, documented her experience in a video titled “Daughter, September 13.”

The video, largely depicting Mulrenan washing her father’s shirts in a sink, was featured earlier this year in “riverrun,” an exhibition of film and video works presented in New York City by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Minetta Brook, a nonprofit arts organization. Mulrenan’s video, along with the work of five other artists, was projected onto the facade of the 110-foot-tall Holland Tunnel Ventilation Building. The museum has since acquired her video for its permanent collection.

Mulrenan’s four-minute video incorporates sampled sounds. At first, one hears the scrubbing of laundry. Then voices of emergency crew talking via scanners and radios fill the background. Toward the end, voices of children begin to sing in Spanish, welcoming home the surviving firefighters.

Rensselaer Magazine: December 2002
President's View	Your Mail	From the Archives	Hawk Talk	Class Notes Features

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