An unforgettable hole-in-the-ground.




What you see here is, in my view, an aesthetically moving tribute to the thousands that died on 11th September, 2001. The names of the victims are carved into the tops of the four walls that embrace, if that's the right word, the site of the twin towers. 

After viewing the hole, you can move into the museum that abuts it. You can spend at least two hours walking through the exhibits: the shattered steel columns, the pulverized staircases, the fire trucks neutered by 2000f heat. You can also see video loops of the towers falling, and hear audio loops of the frantic 911 calls. 

The museum spares no details. Visitors are warned that 'some images are distressing'. This is not the
place for impressionable children. There's even a section for conspiracy theorists that describes some of the more outlandish theories about the event. 

This being America, Hollywood has to have a piece of the action: you can view clips of movies that have featured the Twin Towers in certain scenes. 

As I wandered through the cavernous spaces, however, and peered at the faces and details of the 19 terrorists that engineered this horror, I began to feel, weirdly, that I was in the middle of an allegory about success. Success of what? Well, of what these 19 murderers had achieved. The subtext to the exhibition, for me, was 'look what man hath wrought'. Eerie. 

I remembered how, at the time, a number of individuals had spoken of the staggering 'cost efficiency' of the attack; an art critic had said, provocatively, that it was a magnificent 'creative act'. Much of that commentary seemed implicit in the 'preserved destruction' around me.

Why memorialize such evil? Surely 'the hole' is memorial enough? 

Back home, a few days later, I remembered that one of the movies showing the Twin Towers was the 1975 film, 'Three Days of the Condor'. I'd seen it then, so I screened it again. It's a complex plot about a character, played by a (very young) Robert Redford, trying to find out why the CIA was so intent on killing him. In the final scene, he figures it out; he says to the CIA guy, 'My god, it's all about oil, isn't it? You're going to invade the Middle East!'

Hmmm. 


Brian Clewly Johnson
Amagansett
May 2015. 



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