2004

Starting at sunrise on Tuesday August 31, 2004, at the Vietnam Veteran’s War Memorial Plaza, on 55 Water Street in downtown Manhattan, artist Marshall Weber did a non-stop marathon out loud reading (in English) of Homer’s entire “Iliad” and "Odyssey"; one of the most compelling anti-war and return of the 'hero' stories ever written. After completing the “Iliad” Weber walked to the Whitehall Ferry Terminal in Manhattan and read Homer's “Odyssey” while riding on the Staten Island Ferry. In this memorial reading, which was dedicated to ALL the victims of recent acts of war, including those victims of the nearby World Trade Center bombings, Weber evoked a critical historical context for the reconsideration of the USA's current military policies.

The entire performance took about 46 hours and had an audience (of various durations and attention spans) in the hundreds and received numerous national and local print and radio media attention. thus the concept of providing a larger historical and mythical context for the current US/Iraqui war was evoked with some attendant publicity for the New York City Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Listen to MT Karthik’s exclusive KPFK Pacifica Radio (in Los Angeles, CA) interview with Weber about the performance.

This event was sponsored by Booklyn and is part of the Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues & Ideas, a citywide cultural festival that inspired, instigated and supported civic engagement. From August 28-September 2 the Imagine Festival presented over 100 cultural events in 6 days, that included concerts, performances, forums, town meetings, exhibits, screenings, and other issue-based artworks.

"...in a festival of what may well turn out to be 100 events, 'The NYC
Iliad and Odyssey' may well be the most eccentric, notable and oddly
impressive." Chris Wangro, Imagine Festival, Executive Producer

Date and times:
“The Iliad”, started at sunrise on Tuesday August 31, 2004, 5:23 AM and ran 24 hours to sunrise (about 5:30AM) Wednesday September 1, at the Vietnam Veteran’s War Memorial Plaza, on 55 Water Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City

“The Odyssey”, started on Wednesday September 1, 2004, at (about 6:00AM) and ran till Thursday September 2, at 4:00AM (approximately 22 hours), on the Staten Island Ferry, running from Whitehall Ferry Terminal in Manhattan to Saint George Terminal on Staten Island. There was a lot of careening around the Terminal buldings as the ferry's were emptied at each stop. The event was free (the Staten Island Ferry is free) no tickets were necessary.

Thanks to all the volunteers that assisted in the documentation, provision of security and the care of the performer during the performance.

Photograph by Emily K. Larned

Wordly Protest

Marshall Weber got up before the sun Tuesday morning. He waited four years for this day to arrive. He slipped on a worn pair of jeans, a brown button down shirt, and Birkenstock sandals. He grabbed a black rucksack to take with him for the next three days of no sleep. He threw in water, pineapple juice (an opera singer told him it’s a good cure for a tired voice), trail mix, an umbrella, a sweater, and most importantly, his copy of the Iliad with “NYC ILIAD” scrawled in chalk across the back. At 4:30 a.m. he left his apartment in Greenwich Village and headed south on the R train to Whitehall Street.

An excess of security stood guard next to empty tables at the entrance of the downtown skyscrapers. In a few hours, when the workday was due to start, those tables will become heaped with the insides of pockets and purses. But Weber wasn’t bothered; he hardly even noticed that it was dark and pouring when he arrived at 55 Water Street. For shelter, he knelt under one of the two archways that make up the Vietnam War Memorial and with his back against the wall and his knees up to his chest, he opened Robert Fagels’ translation of “The Iliad” and began reading aloud from page one. He looked up and said, “I’ve been waiting such a long time to do this.” As he began reading again, the beat of the rain overrode his voice that no one was there to hear anyway.

Unlike the many groups of protesters that have scheduled marches, Weber is speaking out against the Republican National Convention and the wars around the world with his own style; individually. This is his third performance-commentary reading in the past eight years. His first reading was of “Ulysses” by James Joyce. In 1999 he received a grant from the New York Foundation of the Arts to perform his four-day public reading of the Bible. In this reading, sponsored by The Imagine Festival and Booklyn, Weber plans to board the Staten Island Ferry after completing “The Iliad” at the Vietnam War Memorial Plaza and begin reciting Homer’s “The Odyssey”. He expects to finish the final page on the evening of Sept. 2nd. Weber selected “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” because they are classic anti-war books. He hopes that these books will give the public a historical context in which they will be able to re-examine present U.S. policies.

Weber closed the book, reached into his bag and took a sip from his plastic water bottle filled with juice. The rain stopped, so he got up and ran his hand across a marble bench until all the rain water fell to the ground. He sat facing the war memorial and saw the excerpts of personal letters soldiers wrote home from Vietnam carved into the opaque-blue glass. “My favorite aspect about The Iliad,” Weber said getting ready to dive back into the sea of words, “is that before a person dies there is always a two-sentence-long description of their life. It humanizes them.” He felt that at a time when the government doesn’t even allow the public to see the coffins of the war victims, remembering that humans are dying, not numbers, is important.

“Dear Mom,
I’d give just about anything for a hot bath,
some clean clothes, and a cold drink of good old NYC water…”
Love,
Ray
Chu Lai, ‘68
(Inscription on the Vietnam War Memorial)

As the day became bright, dozens of people began filing past the three-year-old monument on their way to work. No one looked in its direction, let alone that of the man reading aloud. Etelvo Quentenilla, the janitor that has cleaned the plaza for four hours every morning of the last year wasn’t even engaged, “This place doesn’t really matter to me, it’s nice, but I’m not interested in these things.”

Weber looked up with clear eyes that soon would be a maze of little red veins. “The Gods in the Iliad don’t care about death because they don’t know what mortality is like. Bush is like Zeus; he can send people off to war, but isn’t personally affected by it,” he said bridging the correlation between “The Iliad” and the current events.

Weber is waging a taxing fight. In preparation, he has been bike-riding, eating less, and getting a lot of sleep. He expects that it will take him two or three days to recover, but he believes the strain will be worth it. At the four-hour mark, the first visitor approached the memorial. Jerry Tartaglia with his eyes squinted up at the wall said, “What is this? I am walking around before I have to catch my flight home, to Milan, at four.” Marshall Weber was on page 170.

Mara Freedman, Columbia School of Journalism, September 1, 2004

This page is maintained by Marshall Weber.