Let There Be A Void

The year 2002 is a palindrome — meaning a word or number decipherable thesame way backward and forward. Palindromes in calendar years are often thesubject of mathematical proofs demonstrating the rarity of their occurrence.

I have begun contemplating another palindromic year, 1991. I could say manythings about 1991: America started the year at war in the Middle East under theleadership of President George Bush; Saddam Hussein was described as evil byaforementioned President Bush in speeches to the nation; and the approvalratings for presidential policy were astronomically high for a period of months.

The past and present have an uncanny relationship when palindromes areinvolved, yet the distinct historical qualities produced by 10 years of change(or lack of it) do create important cultural differences. My interest inpalindromes, however, is not entirely in years or governmental policy; rather, Iam focused on how remembering events from the past function backward and forwardin the space of memory.

In the impossibly quick duration of days since the events on Sept. 11, apersistent and uncomfortable question has lingered in my mind: now what? SinceJanuary, I have repeatedly pondered not so much what to write but how to beginwriting a critique of the historical moment in which the U.S. populace findsitself.

I am not so quick to roll heroically onward for the sake of forced normalcyand social productivity. What remains unclear in my mind is how much, if at all,life has changed in most of America. The people who died in New York,Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania most certainly left behind family members ina radically different state of everyday life.

But for the rest of the United States, I remain unsure. The one location I dobelieve intense critical thinking needs to focus — for a moment at least —is the crater left by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

In recent months, The New York Times has run a series of stories on thedifficulties in designing and creating a memorial in Manhattan at the site ofthe collapsed World Trade Center towers. Discussions about the nationalrequirement for a memorial began almost immediately after the events of Sept. 11and will continue for many months, and probably years, to come.

Round-the-clock crews clearing the area have worked at a rapid andunprecedented rate, emptying the area where the towers once stood. The quickremoval of debris has forced the uncomfortable question I find myselfcontemplating: now what?

What kind of memorial — or maybe it should be a monument — can or shouldbe built for the people who died in New York because of the events related toSept. 11? Should said memorial and monument consider the people who also died inWashington, D.C., and the Pentagon?

What kind of designed object or place can adequately articulate such adrastic and indescribably chaotic moment? Proposals for various memorial designshave begun pouring into City Hall in New York. I want to make my own suggestion.

Leave the hole created by the collapsed towers as the memorial — unmodifiedand unaltered.

Do not build a park with aesthetically pleasing gardens or commission newsculptures to represent the dead. Most importantly — and I am being entirelyserious — do not build a gift shop.

Leave the void created on Sept. 11 as an absence that reminds everybody whostares into it of what happened. No video screens reproducing television imagesof buildings collapsing 1,000 times a day, no tour guides pointing to whereoffices once stood, no long speeches by an A-list collection of intellectualsand politicians describing how a new memorial park will prevent Americans fromever forgetting what happened on Sept. 11.

Building a memorial of vast size and sentimentality only guarantees all willbe forgotten, securing the events of Sept. 11 a footnote in history books.Building a new office tower complex on the site also guarantees a covering overof the past. If the physical devastation is covered over, the need to understandhow and why such events could transpire will be lost in the design.

Memorial designs have a tendency to give explanations and produce meaningslegitimating design choices. A vast crater in the ground like the one inManhattan resists being easily explained away, and that is exactly what amemorial should do: produce a critique of historical conditions.

Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., is the rare designthat makes a person think about the countless names and deaths listed one afterthe other. Simple as the design is, it is difficult to forget or ignore thehistorical moment called the Vietnam War.

Likewise in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, craters producedin the city by bombing during the war have been filled in with a hardened, redputty. The medium-to-large red splotches are flush with the sidewalk, andpedestrians easily glide over the areas. Signs do not adorn each of the filledin craters, and a person is left to ask, as I did, why are red splotchescovering the street? The answer I received caught me off guard: "It isnational memorial. Those are the places where many people were killed during thewar, so we remember that it happened." The areas of red are everywhere inSarajevo, as if a giant fountain pen had been shaken, covering the city inmacabre ink-spots.

Ultimately, the questions regarding the design of a memorial in New York (andWashington, D.C., and Pennsylvania) will have to deal with two questions: Whatmust be forgotten and what must be remembered.

As a side note, I am indebted to the writings of Michel de Certeau ("Heterologies,""The Practice of Everyday Life" and "The Writing of History") as textsproviding significant insight into these topics. National Public Radio has beguna series of interesting segments with the "Lost and Found Sound" projectproducing a Sonic Memorial recording the aural memories of the World TradeCenter towers. The NPR project is a compelling argument against concretememorials: how the space of memory is filled with voices and sounds impossibleto design into an object.

Critics will say I am being entirely impractical — overlooking the need foroffice space in Manhattan and a place for people to remember the dead. Maybe Iam being impractical, but then I would argue the original World Trade Centertowers were equally impractical — buildings too big for any memorial tocapture in well designed sentiment. What remains of the impractical towers, alarge crater in the center of America’s financial stronghold, says more abouthubris than any dedication to the dead.

On Sept. 11, 2112, when most of us who lived the 111 years previous are longdead, perhaps a small group of people will gather around a large hole indowntown Manhattan (built over, around and beyond) to stare into the void andwonder how it all happened.

Most of the details will have also died, and the official body count willremain the one statistic of importance.Maybe, just maybe, a person will stareinto the absence and stop to ask: How was this not preventable? That is what Ihope a palindrome can accomplish.

(John Troyer is a columnist for the the Minnesota Daily. He can be reached at:  troy0005@tc.umn.edu)