Investigative Aesthetics in the American Studies Classroom: Approaching 9/11 through Alejandro González Iñárritu's 11'09''1: September 11

This article introduces and explores the implementation, potential, and challenges of investigative aesthetics, a methodology established by the interdisciplinary Forensic Architecture Network, as a specific didactic method in the realm of aesthetic education in the American studies classroom, more specifically in the teaching or, rather, learning of 9/11. Investigative aesthetics is particularly suited to the hermeneutic inquiry of 9/11 because, as Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman emphasize, it is an anti-hegemonic approach to knowledge-production which acknowledges that the "capacity for collective sensing and sense-making" enables a collective to "work towards a renewed, careful, but politically powerful conception of truth practices" (4). By employing a multiplicity of methods, skills, and literacies, the methodology is inherently interdisciplinary. However, as its implementation also poses challenges, the article discusses the use of Alejandro González Iñárritu's short film in 11'09''1: September 11 (2002) as an accessible and low-threshold version of investigative aesthetics. By staging eleven minutes of (almost) visual silence, the film neither fits the dominant narratives and iconography of 9/11 nor lends itself to easy interpretations. Instead, its analysis requires a critical holistic, transnational approach, a reflection of presences and absences, a consideration of material involvements, and an openness of the learners to attune their senses to perceive and experience the film as an aesthetic object. The short film exemplifies the effects of shifting the sensibilities and of playing with different modes of perception, thus allowing the learners to simultaneously encounter the effect of 9/11 footage while also critically engaging with its aftermath.