Remembering people over places
: Greg Allen — inspired by a plaque marking the place where Nathan Hale died — says this about the World Trade Center memorial:
I fear–and the WTC memorial finalist designs make me even more certain–that a memorial centered on the twin towers’ footprints marks precisely the wrong thing: the buildings, not the people. I hope it won’t take 200 years for future historians to correct this error.
So, so right and well-said.
With all due respect to the families who’ve been insisting that the footprints be retained, it’s not the place that is sacred. It’s the memory that is. And the lesson.
: When I came up with the idea of a memorial in video, I realized that could address these issues, for such a memorial would focus on the lives, not the deaths of those memorialized; it would concentrate on the people, not the place; and — most fascinating — it could live outside that place, not only in a traveling memorial but also on the Internet. Not only should such a memorial not focus just on the place, it should not be trapped by the place.
