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used in the AIDS Quilt, “unlike stone, with its illusion of an eternal witness, cloth fades
and frays with time; its fragility, its constant need for mending, tell the real truth about
‘material’ life” (141). Exposed to the elements and thorough cleanup crews, the paper
posters revealed similar truth. The call to remember the individual names of victims
made by those initial photocopies has recently been heard in more permanent form on the
Internet by websites such as CNN.com and may translate into the more ‘official’ efforts
of memory (Brown 9). Whether such expression constituted a chalk drawing on a
sidewalk or a simple flag in the dirt, these objects announced the robust beginnings of the
memorial process.
Perhaps even more important, spontaneous commemoration reminded New
Yorkers and visitors alike about forgotten public spaces. Union Square’s circular
walkways and benches were reclaimed by mourners, whose diverse reactions to the
tragedy were signaled by American flags, peace signs, and “I love New York” posters.
Pennsylvania Train Station’s walls were covered with a similarly motley collage of
sentiments. When a fence came up around Ground Zero, it too became a canvas for the
expression of grief, pride, and protest. People transformed these locations into genuinely
civic forums, thereby suggesting that the model for a memorial to 9/11 should be a space
that guarantees the rights to express, to disagree, to assemble, to claim and to collectively
own.
Street to Gallery: Memory Re-framed
The short-lived utopia of the vernacular monuments was supplanted by a
movement across Mitchell’s spectrum toward more sober, critical remembrance. Many
of the works that found their way to galleries and museums posed critical questions about
Convention