Ground Zero

Ground Zero: Julie Clarke 2007

I found this digitally manipulated image on my computer this morning, filed under 'Visual Poetry'. I made it in 2007 although it refers to the 11 September, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York City. 2001 was not a good year for me, I didn't have work, I wasn't well and life was a struggle. I'd tried, but it was difficult being philosophical about the situation. Catastrophic world events almost always occur against a backdrop of the everyday or ordinary aspects of life. I was hanging my washing on the line at around 11am and a workman who had been painting the outside windows told me that two separate aeroplanes were intentionally flown into the towers. I knew this workman was quite the joker, so I laughed and told him that I wasn't about to believe that tall story. But when I came back inside and turned on the television I knew his story to be true, for footage of the event was on every station. I sat there for hours flipping from one channel to another. The images were amazing ~ cinematic. The primary scene of the first plan crashing into the building, caught by someone with a video camera, was played over and over again. It looked like a scene from a disaster movie ~ the buildings falling, the people screaming, the first hand accounts, the dust ~ so much dust, the close up looks of horror on peoples faces, but mostly, just the destruction. I placed a tape into my VCR and began to record different pieces of footage. It was then that I realised that within a very short period of time the reportage had changed from being about the utter and total loss of life and property and the possibility that this event was caused by al-Qaeda terrorists, to whether the destruction would affect the US economy, since the collapsed towers had caused the closure of the New York Stock Exchange, brokerage houses and banks in the Wall Street area. Air planes were grounded which meant that cheques and paper money couldn't be cleared or distributed. The emphasis was well and truly on money. You can watch some of the actual archive footage at: http://www.archive.org/details/sept_11_tv_archive. Of course, like everyone else, I was devastated by the knowledge of what had happened, but I suppose I'd been a little hardened by the struggle in my own life. I didn't cry about the 9/11 attacks until I heard the sound recording of a mother who had tried to contact her son on her mobile phone, or was it the other way around, I don't know, but it was hearing a human voice amidst the fear that touched me. 'I'm calling to say I love you' is the one single thing that stands out for me in this event, because it is what we would all do, reach out to the one person who is important ~ to say one last thing ~ to say goodbye. I've actually got a little side-tracked from my original intention. I was going to talk about the ordinariness of our lives and how they are made extraordinary by events that touch us in some way. I suppose we were all changed by the 9/11 event, but most of us only experienced it as a virtual event, mediated by televisual accounts. Our memories of it already virtual are rendered even more nebulous!