| Abstrakt: |
On September 11, 2001 the images of the attack on the World Trade Center instantly joined die ranks of photos and footage of visually impressive catastrophes that circulate globally. Still and moving pictures broadcast in real time around the world showed the dance of morbid beauty set against the blue sky, with the slow-motion plane piercing and exploding in the upper reaches of the second tower. This image is only slightly less perfect than the emblematic pictures of the cloud formations sent up by the atom bombs after they were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. For those of us living in the United States, the assault on the towers, the monumental architectural achievement of capitalism, has had a chilling effect on the scale of a major war or natural disaster. This view and the ones that followed—the collapse of the towers and other nearby buildings, and the rescue efforts of heroic disaster workers— are now seared into our collective memory. The senseless toppling of buildings and the loss of human lives in overwhelming numbers have struck home. Our proximity to these horrific events has, we hope, brought us closer to a thoughtful understanding of the uncontrollable nature of other tragedies. |
