Back to Square One at Ground Zero
Published NYT : June 6th, 2004
What artistic idea would be sufficiently bold and soul-stirring to lead ground zero into its future?
HERBERT MUSCHAMP
Back to Basics: Twin Towers II
WHAT functions can we eliminate? What uses can we subtract? These seem to me among the most constructive questions that can be asked today about the planning of ground zero, particularly about cultural programming.
Up to now, the planners have been thinking along opposite lines. How much can we add, they ask, as if an accumulation of functions is needed to produce the desired lively effect. Opera house, museum, and so on: these proposals are signs of cultural failure. At best, they denote impatience to arrive at some creative response that really requires more time and thought. More ominously, they represent distractions from the forces that have mired ground zero in politics and propaganda.
As a result, I have recently become more sympathetic to the "cop-out" position, which would mean abandoning the flawed ground zero design process altogether in favor of reconstructing the twin towers more or less as they were. Certainly, I'm prepared to defend reconstruction as a cultural act. It would be an offering to Mnemosyne, mother of the muses, from whom all culture flows.
The reduction to essentials is a great New York tradition, evident in our engineering and in our art. It is the correct tradition to invoke here. And then, to insure its revival, I would propose a school, a center of unlearning as well as learning, a place for disembedding ourselves from the welter of fantasies that has enveloped the country in recent years.
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Published NYT : June 6th, 2004
What artistic idea would be sufficiently bold and soul-stirring to lead ground zero into its future?
HERBERT MUSCHAMP
Back to Basics: Twin Towers II
WHAT functions can we eliminate? What uses can we subtract? These seem to me among the most constructive questions that can be asked today about the planning of ground zero, particularly about cultural programming.
Up to now, the planners have been thinking along opposite lines. How much can we add, they ask, as if an accumulation of functions is needed to produce the desired lively effect. Opera house, museum, and so on: these proposals are signs of cultural failure. At best, they denote impatience to arrive at some creative response that really requires more time and thought. More ominously, they represent distractions from the forces that have mired ground zero in politics and propaganda.
As a result, I have recently become more sympathetic to the "cop-out" position, which would mean abandoning the flawed ground zero design process altogether in favor of reconstructing the twin towers more or less as they were. Certainly, I'm prepared to defend reconstruction as a cultural act. It would be an offering to Mnemosyne, mother of the muses, from whom all culture flows.
The reduction to essentials is a great New York tradition, evident in our engineering and in our art. It is the correct tradition to invoke here. And then, to insure its revival, I would propose a school, a center of unlearning as well as learning, a place for disembedding ourselves from the welter of fantasies that has enveloped the country in recent years.
- bill 6-08-2004 9:07 pm