We were searching for a collective way to mourn nearly 3, victims and move forward. The world had been transformed in a horrendous way, and the memorial became something similar to a symbol of irrational hate, though not only of the terrorists anymore. It became the most visible reminder that one was not allowed to criticize a war with no real purpose remember, Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks , and of blind nationalism. Starting in , I found myself avoiding those two towers of light at all costs, and some years, I decided not to leave my apartment at all.
As social media picked up speed in the late aughts, that avoidance was harder than ever, as people shared images as a form of visual solidarity, not realizing what it could mean for others. Rather than use the moment to heal and correct paths, the US government, under the guidance of President George W.
Bush, amplified the worst of this country. It appeared to blind most of the population and created a storm of hate towards SWANA Southwest Asia and North Africa people and Muslims became the focus of new waves of hatred that have never subsided, though it was always present.
I, for one, was forced to register in NSEERS, which restricted my movements, not allowing me to use LaGuardia to fly to Canada, and prevented me from using many other points of entry and exit.
The program also forced me to be photographed, questioned, and fingerprinted at least three hours before every flight, and every time I returned. The impact was everywhere in our lives. It was stomach-churning. I refused to do that.
Others did too. The illegal invasion of Iraq alone caused over half a million deaths and resulted in lawlessness and national schisms that fermented new and more virulent terror groups, like ISIS, which in turn drove more death and displaced people from their homes.
A report this week from the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University calculated that the War of Terror has uprooted 37 million people, including 9. A few years ago, I was moderating a panel on public art in New York, and one of the panelists said she thought the Tribute in Light was the greatest memorial in the city. My heart sank. Sign up for our email newsletters! I was talking the other day to a class of students about what motivates my looking at art and I unabashedly talked about beauty, about visual art that is beguiling and celebratory without caveat or disclaimer.
And, to be clear, I…. Using sonic frequencies that register just below human audibility, this exhibition in Richmond, Virginia provides site-specific experiences for sound to be deeply felt.
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ART covers it all. A new book joins meticulous historical analysis with more than lush, full-color illustrations of these magnificent books and their elaborate bindings.
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Actually the backlash is from the majority of the country that witnessed one of the most horrific days in American history. Also quit trying to use nationalism or patriotism as a negative. I was brought up to believe that America was strong enough, big enough to withstand and work past criticism of our country. My, how times have changed. Get a life. Yes ,well. The event is one thing—the effects are another.
Perhaps recognizing each in separate ways is a a solution to your view. But the people who died and their families, and the many first responders who worked ,suffered and in some cases died all deserve this acknowledgement and recognition. I think you reaction to the pillars of light is an excellent example of the potential and the cautions of visual language. A symbol created for one purpose can be interpreted entirely differently according to individual context and experience.
With perspective it should accommodate a range of reactions accepted within the context of this massive trauma — yours included. While seeming draconian and very Big Brother, it is actually the norm for many non-Western countries: China does this on ALL there citizens to enforce a class system based on political compliance.
Immigrate if even allowed to many countries, or just visit any dictatorship, and you will be monitored by the government the whole time you are there, usually having your passport held. As a White Westerner and Christian you would likely also be socially persecuted, and as we have seen in some placed continually experiencing turmoil in Africa and SE Asia, targeted for terrorist attack, such as at religious centers or schools.
If you were a New Yorker who experienced the attack you would feel much differently. We will go to our roof to night and see the lights and think of friends we lost.
Pillars of light were a norm at nazi rallies. This was never a tribute to fallen American and was always meant as a trophy to those American politicians whose sympathize with the nazi party, like the G. Actually, the TWO pillars of light directly represented the fallen Twin Towers, and have gradually shifted to represent the lives lost, not just Americans but citizens from all over the World.
The grammar was terrible. Should have looked that over first but I was getting ready to head out for the day. Well, I was not a fan of either Bush and they both had essentially the same puppet masters behind them.
We did start the conflict, btw. I am sorry for what you have endured. They were my neighbors and their simple mosque was 3 blocks from my apt. The men cheered when the first tower fell.
Yes, they cheered and praised Allah when the first tower fell before my eyes. TV reports were that 30, people were probably in the tower. Progressives want to kill me for stating that fact, but it is true. It makes my friends utterly crazy when I state my experience publicly. We could move forward better together, if I ever heard facts like this one admitted by presumably good people like you. It never happens, but just as I own Donald Trump, you own my experience that day — because this is how you have framed the Sept.
I weep for your experiences but you must also understand that I too felt like an alien in America that day. Eight years later in Brooklyn , my guy and I were walking to the train on a hot, humid July morning. I was wearing a grey halter dress from Banana Republic, skirt covering my knees, swing skirt, no cleavage. Out of nowhere two Muslim men came up to us, speaking only to my friend — the man.
IMO opinion, rigid nationalism is wrong in all its forms — Trumpian or Islamic. Would you agree? At first glance I thought this was a good idea, but maybe you should first run it by the families of the victims and first responders? Look, if you want to address runaway nationalism, then tell me why do sports teams, cops and fire fighters have to wear little American flags on their uniforms? This gives me lots to think about. A merciful departure from all the bronze sculptures of white male firefighters, eagles, flags and other jingoistic garbage out there.
But your essay is an eye opener and your experiences appalling. Really feel you. For the families of victims who come to the top of this garage each year, and for the cops and the firemen who arrive in full dress uniform to look on and upward, these are the Towers, too.
The lamps feature 7,watt Xenon bulbs, among the most powerful ever made, custom-supplied by the fantastically named Italian company Spacecannon.
The setup begins each year in the week leading up to September 11 itself. The lights are tested night after night. To that end, folks on top of the garage are communicating on Nextels with spotters stationed in uptown Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, who provide feedback on tweaks and adjustments. The leader on the technical side is Massimo Moratti, a technician for Spacecannon, whom everyone on top of the garage spoke of with an admiration bordering on reverence.
The crew did not want to be quoted on the record for this story. He can take apart and rebuild these intricate machines by muscle memory, one of the few people on Earth with this kind of skill set.
There was talk that he began training someone—an apprentice, you might say—last year, but only he can do the job for now. And besides, after 20 years, building the Tribute each September is about more than knowledge or skill, or even experience.
Another longtime member of the staff suggested that, even if they could find someone else with his skills, they could not bear to do this without Massimo. There was something beyond the familiarity of coworkers atop the garage.
Maybe it is the sacred task at hand. But it was surely also down to the influence of Michael Ahearn, of the eponymous production company that still puts this on. The way that everyone spoke of their former leader, who died in , more than bordered on reverence. There was a genuine love for him here, a sense that they are doing all this with such craft and precision and dedication because it was what he did and what he called on them to do.
He fought for the project from the beginning, waged the bureaucratic and political battles inherent to any undertaking in New York City year after year, helped bring the project back from the brink of extinction in But his wife, Mady, says he was never prouder of anything than he was of this, and that he kept this thing alive because everyone he met, even the city bureaucrats and the sharp-elbowed politicos of each new mayoral administration, could not deny that he was genuine—that he cared, that his enthusiasm was real, that he was listening, and that he actually wanted their perspectives on this problem or that.
On the night we were gathered, the breeze was strong enough that it prevented the bugs from gathering as they might normally in the late summer weather. It is something of an understatement to say that moths are attracted to the lights—this is more like their Super Bowl—and even when we were there, towards the end, we witnessed a member of the crew using a horsehair brush—more resistant to the heat—to brush some fallen insects off one of the lamps.
There was something kind of glittering about it. It just kind of comes back down to the world again. They could stick around—well, fly around—the lights, swirling chaotically, drawn to it particularly on nights where there was no moon to guide them through ancient instinct.
It could be enough to strip them of the energy they needed to make the full journey south. How can we work together? They do it all as he led them to do. And even in these six years since his death, even after a pandemic that threatened to close down the project through logistical headaches and financial strain, all the city departments and the advocacy organizations and even the FAA continue to cooperate. Paul Myoda helped design the project along with Julian LaVerdiere, prompted by the sullen cloud of smoke and ash they saw illuminated by film lighting rigs on the night of September 11, , as rescuers tried desperately to pull people from the rubble.
Lightning designer Paul Marantz was also crucial to the execution, along with Ahern. Myoda reminded me, before I went down to the site, that the piece was designed for viewers far away—by some estimates, the lights are visible for 60 miles. If you stand and you face it and look up, it's there, but then if you turn around and look up, you can still see it.
It is not only so public, where millions of people can see it, but also it feels really personal, because it follows you around. More than that, though, he sees the lights as a Rorschach Test. Everyone takes something different, or at least something their own.
Mady Ahern agreed. There's no agenda. There's no political agenda around it. We really did not want that to happen, because it was not about Afghanistan. There were maybe a hundred different countries who lost innocent people in the buildings. It really was not, for us, about some nationalistic image. For his part, Myoda sees something celestial.
I had this kind of fanciful thought that, if there is intelligence out in space, that they will see this kind of strange Morse code going out there, because the light is going out every year. We're sending out this little signal. Wondering just how far out the lights go—do they break the atmosphere and reach into space? But more than that, like the rest of us, he had some thoughts on the lights. Light does feel gravity, but Earth's gravity is far, far too feeble to trap light.
There's something deeply poetic about countless massless particles streaming up into the sky, barely noticing gravity. It does evoke people's souls rising up from the ground, no longer constrained, and going up into the sky, but also illuminating the sky as they do it, illuminating the whole area.
They come in discrete amounts, but they don't quite have locations in a way that is easy to understand, to visualize. And so there's this basic ontological ambiguity at the heart of light. Light is so fundamentally ambivalent about its own nature. From a distance, the lights communicate a notion of the infinite, the sense there is no end and perhaps no beginning.
It dovetails with the Reflecting Pools at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum , which took the reins of the Tribute project in , and where the water flows downward into what what the eye tells you is an abyss.
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