Occupy the Void

John McDaid:

The contrast embodied in Lower Manhattan is almost too simple to name: the emergent life of Zuccotti, the emptiness of the Memorial. An older, modernist age would have perhaps tagged them Eros and Thanatos, the forces of life and death. And it is no accident that our existing cultural mechanisms produced the latter: years of legislative gridlock, legal wrangling, political infighting, egos, money, and city politics buffeted the Memorial, until finally the looming threat of the tenth-year anniversary cracked the rusted nut of politics-as-usual. And you can see how barely they made it; just to the side of the Memorial plaza, chain-link fencing still holds supplies and construction equipment for the Museum, yet to be opened, beneath the plaza level.