A decade later - Fundação Luso-Americana

[Brent Glass] Remembering is a very human
attribute. In fact it’s what defines us in
many ways as human beings. As human
beings, when we lose our memory it’s a
catastrophic event. For a society, it’s equally
important to have a collective memory. And
one way we do that is through memorialization
– where we want to capture or
recognize and honor an event or people
for their accomplishments or for their
experience. It can take a variety of forms:
it can be a landscape, it can be a statue, it
can be something more abstract.
Have you ever visited Ground Zero in
New York? There’s a fire station across the
street that got tired of waiting for the
memorial to be built so they put up their
own memorial. And it’s very representational,
it’s very narrative: you see the firemen
running into a building, and you see the
towers on fire. I was there on a day when
a father and son were standing next to me,
and the little boy was probably 8 or 9, so
he wasn’t born when 9/11 happened. The
father was explaining what the memorial
is about, and the boy kept asking: “Why
were they doing this? Why did the planes
fly into the buildings? Why did these people
take over the planes? Why weren’t they
happy with the US?”
The kid kept asking these “why” questions.
And it made me realize that that’s what we
have to do with our museums and our interpretative
centers – is answer the “why”
questions. And that’s what memorials don’t
necessarily do. They don’t have that obligation.
They’re really in that moment of just
remembering the loss that occurred. They’re
part of the healing process.
[P] Memorials are different from historical facts.
They are more sentimental than history itself.
[BG] Yes. Some of the worst memorials,
I think, are the ones that try to tell a
story. Some of the Holocaust memorials
around the country, around the world,
are quite evocative without a whole long
narrative about what happened. Some
failed because they try to be encyclopedic
and tell that story.
The message is not objective, necessarily. In
fact, by definition, it’s subjective because it’s
being sponsored by either the state or by a
group of people who want to remember
individuals or an event in a particular way.
[P] What is the memorial planned for the World
Trade Center site supposed to commemorate?
[BG] I think the primary interest has been
to make sure it’s a memorial to the people
who died.
At the Flight 93 memorial, you have 40
names, of the passengers and crew who
9/11
A decade later
“Hidden constellations” is the way designer michael Arad describes the concept behind the memorial
at Ground Zero in which the names are clustered according to relationships of kinship and friendship.
‘ remembering is a very human
attribute. in fact it’s what defines
us in many ways as human beings.
As human beings, when we lose our
memory it’s a catastrophic event.
For a society, it’s equally important
to have a collective memory.
’
died on that flight, not the 4 hijackers
who also died on the flight; their names
will not be listed on the memorial.
That’s an interesting problem in memorialization:
what do you do with the
names of the people who were the terrorists?
How do you account for the tragedy
if you don’t mention who they are?
It’s like going to Ford’s Theatre here in
Washington and not mentioning John
Wilkes Booth. But I think that in a memorial
it is appropriate not to list these individuals
because you’re not honoring them;
you’re honoring the victims. But in a
museum you would perhaps list the names
of the 19 hijackers in some form.
[P] Aren’t these memorials also about victimhood
or even martyrdom? Because they also have a
death toll purpose.
[BG] It’s an interesting question because
at the Flight 93 memorial they use the
word “heroes.” Because
the passengers, at least
many of them, resisted
and tried to disrupt the
plans of the hijackers;
maybe they tried to capture
the plane back – we
don’t know exactly what
went on in those 30
minutes of what must
have been pure mayhem
and pure terror.
But the New York story
is more complicated. You
have passengers, you have
office workers, you have responders.
You’ve got people who did survive and
who did get out of the towers safely and
avoided injury. You’ve got survivors, you’ve
got responders, you’ve got responders
who died, you’ve got responders who
didn’t die, you’ve got people who died
without even knowing what hit them. So,
you have people who lost their lives on
different levels, not all at once, not all
performing the same function.
The World War II Memorial here in
Washington is clearly a memorial to the
people who were soldiers – who went
into battle knowing they were at risk of
dying, fully conscious of fighting for their
country. Here it’s a little different. You have
people who died not knowing in many
cases what the cause was or why they were
dying.
For all they knew, it was an accident: a
plane accidentally flew into their tower,
at least the first one.
Parallel no. 6 | FALL | WINTER 2011 9
VANESSA RODRIGUES