Memory, recorded and revisited is at the core of my work.
What do we remember, what slips away, what do we retain, what do we revisit and re-tell.
When I moved to NYC in 2006, the city was still recovering from 9/11.
I was in Paris when it happened, I remember my day watching the news, glued to the tv, to the radio, emailing all my friends and relatives living in NYC, my evening, stunned by the news, celebrating quietly my birthday with my dad.
I witnessed it from far, crushed like many, like I was there, like I belonged to the city already.
When I came to live in New York, I knew that this particular day somehow was a large piece of identity of this city.
And to understand it, I had to know about it from people who were there.
Then I asked around : Were you here in NYC on 9/11 ? Where exactly ? Would you talk about it ?
Most people would not want to speak about it, or had very little to say, from a personal perspective.
Just a few details, the papers flying, the odor, the dust, the atmosphere, but they would not recall their journey on that day. It was a deep trauma many wanted to bury with the rest, to recover, to let the city, themselves rise again.
I didn’t want to know about the epic or tragic stories I’ve read already in the news, I wanted to listen to the unheard voices, maybe to the people who could have been me on that day: the artist visiting from Europe, the story teller who settled in this city, the mother to be.
Three women accepted to share their personal stories with me. They may not be the most spectacular stories about 9/11, the most heroic or tragic, though they showed me the deep imprint it had on them, and how it definitely changed their lives and connections to that city and its community, and so to my perception of it.
The process was always the same : meeting and discussing where they were when it happened, and meeting again on the re-construction site.
Recording their memories, their impressions, their perceptions, their path though it.
I chose to tell the personal stories of those 3 women, 3 witnesses, a tourist, a journalist, a mother to be, to draw and remember that particular day, and make me feel belong a bit more to that city I love, to that skyline I watch everyday from my own windows today.
bettina
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pia
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susan and samatha
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