Tuesday, 12. September 2006
9/11
nine eleven. five years have passed since the day in early september when i got back from school and was doing homework of geopolitics and dad called me... to watch tv and see something too incredible to believe on cnn.
five years is already an anniversary. brandeis marked it rather silently... with many american flags in front of the shapiro campus center where students are writing their papers all night, some lecture by professor linenthal, well-known for his books on the establishment of the holocaust museum in washington and the oklahoma city memorial.
how is a trategy to be momorialized? does the voice of the survivors mean more than the one of the historians who see the whole picture and all the sides? why do these deaths count more, why are the names of these people read aloud every year to remember and the other deaths in the world just don't matter? like the iranian plain that was shot down by the us some time ago? and what if someone is forgotten? and who are the survivors? those who suffered injuries or also those who were luckily late? or the citizens living in the neighborhood? and who should decide on how to memorialize the tragedy? the government, the united nations or people who live in downtown manhattan? discussions on leaving the wound open and deleting it from memory. and students... telling where they were five years ago and how what looked like the hollywood-style movie on the screen changed their lives... in colombia, in new york, in india. for the "museums and public memory" class we have an asignment... to collect some memories and some reflections... "generation 9/11" i'll call it, although i only have three so far - simon's and tathagata's, his indian roommate's, and bernard's. bernard is from new orleans. katrina took his father and his home. he was just sitting in from with a mug of coffee when i asked him about 9/11. i don't know him. but he looks sad. one of those late night encounters that mean a lot, that make you think. and that never repeat again.
but i did meet one artist from haiti on campus today... nobody was buying his postcards and paintings. but i liked them... and he told me some stories about how to create what is real although never seen.
dances in paradise. on september eleventh.
five years is already an anniversary. brandeis marked it rather silently... with many american flags in front of the shapiro campus center where students are writing their papers all night, some lecture by professor linenthal, well-known for his books on the establishment of the holocaust museum in washington and the oklahoma city memorial.
how is a trategy to be momorialized? does the voice of the survivors mean more than the one of the historians who see the whole picture and all the sides? why do these deaths count more, why are the names of these people read aloud every year to remember and the other deaths in the world just don't matter? like the iranian plain that was shot down by the us some time ago? and what if someone is forgotten? and who are the survivors? those who suffered injuries or also those who were luckily late? or the citizens living in the neighborhood? and who should decide on how to memorialize the tragedy? the government, the united nations or people who live in downtown manhattan? discussions on leaving the wound open and deleting it from memory. and students... telling where they were five years ago and how what looked like the hollywood-style movie on the screen changed their lives... in colombia, in new york, in india. for the "museums and public memory" class we have an asignment... to collect some memories and some reflections... "generation 9/11" i'll call it, although i only have three so far - simon's and tathagata's, his indian roommate's, and bernard's. bernard is from new orleans. katrina took his father and his home. he was just sitting in from with a mug of coffee when i asked him about 9/11. i don't know him. but he looks sad. one of those late night encounters that mean a lot, that make you think. and that never repeat again.
but i did meet one artist from haiti on campus today... nobody was buying his postcards and paintings. but i liked them... and he told me some stories about how to create what is real although never seen.
dances in paradise. on september eleventh.
jusionyte, 01:18h
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