911國家紀念館落成開放----中壢英文補習班－金學堂英語的部落格

【聯合報╱by HOLLAND COTTER／陳世欽譯】

At Ground Zero, the Story of 9/11

The National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero in Manhattan delivers a gutpunch experience — though if ever a new museum had looked, right along, like a disaster in the making, this one did, beginning with its identity. Was it going to be a monument to the dead or a theme-park-style tourist attraction? How many historical museums are built around an active repository of human remains, still being added to? How many cemeteries have a $24 entrance fee and sell T-shirts? How many theme parks bring you to tears?

Because that’s what the museum does. It’s emotionally overwhelming, particularly, I expect, for New Yorkers who were in the city on that apocalyptic day in 2001, but almost as certainly for the estimated two billion people around the globe who followed the horror unfolding on television, radio and the Internet.

Anguished, angry questions about the museum, raised by families of some of the 2,983 people who died on September 11, 2001, and in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, have been widely reported. Debates over purpose, propriety and protocol are still in the air. But the museum that emerged is true to its goal: to tell the September 11 story at ground zero bedrock.

While the National September 11 Memorial — two granite basins of cascading water that fill the twin tower footprints — is viewable from a street-level plaza, the museum is subterranean. The bulk of it, some 10,000 square meters of gallery space, is 21 meters below ground, where the foundations of the towers met raw Manhattan schist.

The drama starts with an entry pavilion between the fountains. Designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta, it’s a glass box set at a tilt, like a tipping building or a listing ship. The blond-wood atrium is atmospherically neutral, but offers an unmistakable sight: two of the immense steel trident columns that were the signature features of the twin tower facades.

Projections of global maps and stricken faces line the path to a second lobby. Recorded sound plays a major role . So does scale. You emerge from the close, oppressive aural cloud onto a platform overlooking a yawning space and an archaeological monolith: a 18-meter-high exposed section of the World Trade Center’s slurry wall. This barrier of poured concrete was, and is, the bulwark between the trade center and the Hudson River.

When the twin towers collapsed, there was fear that the wall would give, flooding the site. But it held, and was quickly claimed as an emblem of indomitability and resilience.

The interior design of the museum, by the New York firm Davis Brody Bond, preserves this kind of metaphorical thinking . At the end of a long, descending ramp, visitors may go toward a subdued exhibition commemorating those killed or toward a vivid evocation of the events themselves. Photographs of nearly 3,000 people cover the walls of a gallery. Some 14,000 still unidentified or unclaimed remains reside, unseen, in an adjacent repository, at the request of a majority of families.

The larger exhibition calls on recordings, photographs and hundreds of objects : recordings of last phone calls; photographs of doomed firefighters heading into action; surveillance videos of hijackers passing through airport security. The hundreds of small, battered personal items can leave you dumbstruck and make the experience of moving through this museum at once theatrical, voyeuristic and devotional.

In this telling, the angels are many and heroic, the devils few and vile, a band of Islamist radicals, as they are identified in a contextless film called “The Rise of Al Qaeda.”

Within its narrow perspective, the museum has done something powerful. And, if it tackles the reality that its story is as much about global politics as about architecture, about a bellicose epoch as much as about a violent event, it could deepen all our thinking about politics, morality and devotion.

中譯

位於曼哈坦911恐攻世貿雙子星大樓原址的911國家紀念館足以使參觀者產生強烈感受，然而如果說有什麼新建博物館看似醞釀中的災難，這座紀念館便是如此，而且從它的定位開始。

它會不會成為罹難者的紀念碑？或淪為主題公園式的旅遊景點？有多少歷史博物館以主動的人類遺物貯藏室為中心興建，而且還在不斷增加中？有多少公墓入場收費24美元，同時販賣T恤？有多少主題公園會令人潸然淚下？

因為這正是這座博物館的功能。它具有巨大的情緒力量，尤其是，我認為，對2001年那個恐怖日子未出城的紐約人而言。不過幾乎可確定對當時透過電視、廣播與網路目睹此一駭人景象的全球20億人而言，也是如此。

2011年9月11日的2983名罹難者，以及1993年紐約世貿中心恐攻罹難者的部分家屬，曾經針對這座紀念館提出痛苦而憤怒的問題，並獲媒體廣泛報導。有關目的、是否合適及禮節的辯論仍未平息。然而紀念館的目標不變：在原址訴說911的故事。

911國家紀念館包括兩個填補雙塔足跡的流瀑花崗石盆，站在街上的廣場就可以看到。紀念館位於地下，主體是大約一萬平方公尺的長廊空間，主體位於地下21公尺，雙塔的地基在這裡與處於自然狀態的曼哈坦片岩相會。

故事在流泉之間的入口展示館開始。它由挪威史諾赫達建築公司設計，是傾斜的玻璃盒，有如傾斜的建築物或船舶。在氣氛上，亞麻色木中庭營造中性氣氛，卻呈現明確的景象：兩個曾是雙塔立面特徵的巨大三叉鋼柱。

全球地圖與受傷臉部的投影羅列在通向另一處大廳的走道旁。錄下的聲音扮演主要角色。比例也是。你走出有壓迫性的密閉聽覺雲霧區，登上一個俯瞰裂開空間與遠古龐然大物的平台：高18公尺的世貿中心泥漿牆裸露部位。這道水泥障礙曾經是，目前也還是世貿中心與哈德遜河之間的防波堤。

雙塔倒塌時，有人擔心這道牆可能撐不住，使原址被河水淹沒。然而它撐住了，而且很快就被視為不屈不撓與韌性的象徵。

紀念館的內部由紐約戴維斯‧布洛迪‧龐德公司設計，而且保留這種隱喻思維。在一道下降的長斜道盡頭，遊客可以參觀悼念罹難者的展覽，也可以看到事件本身的鮮明重現。近3000名罹難者的照片布滿一道長廊的牆壁。在多數遺族要求下，大約1.4萬件無法辨識或無人認領的罹難者遺物存放在一間看不到的緊鄰貯藏室。

更大的展覽配合錄音、照片與數百件遺物：最後通話內容的錄音；殉職打火兄弟衝入現場的照片；劫機者通過機場安檢的監視錄影畫面。數百件嚴重受損的個人小物件可能使你深受震撼，並使紀念館的參觀之旅兼具戲劇性與窺探及宗教儀式的感覺。

以這方面而言，天使很多，而且具有英雄氣概；惡魔不多，行為可恥。後者是無背景影片「凱達的崛起」所描述的一群伊斯蘭激進分子。