Unraveled Memory

          September 11, 2001 left New York City blanketed in debris. This debris was sometimes as fine as dust, and sometimes as large as rubble but it all served the same purpose: the previous appearance of the city was obscured in a gray blanket of indistinguishable matter. The presence and form of this debris mirrored the manifestation of September 11, 2001 on both collective and individual memories. Like the rubble, memories were not clearly defined and previous identity obscured. This piece attempts to represent the debris of September 11 and in so doing, give traumatic memory a material form.
          In order to create this piece I first knitted a plain gray rectangle. On this piece of cloth, I painted a telephone. In some ways, this choice of object was arbitrary; the image would simply be representative of an obscured memory. I chose a phone for several reasons: phones are everyday office equipment and the rubble of the towers doubtlessly was made up in part by countless phones. In addition to literally reflecting the rubble of September 11, phones are also a powerful symbol of relationships: their primary function is to allow people to connect with one another. In this way a phone can represent memories of conversations, and the people one has talked to.
          After painting the image of the phone onto the cloth, I unraveled and re-knitted the yarn. Like the rubble, the resulting image is made up of the same materials as the original cloth and image but is otherwise unrecognizable. Rather than any defined image, the new piece shows only flecks of color on a overwhelmingly gray background. As a consequence of using paint stiffened yarn, the new piece is also looser and a slightly different shape than the original.
Both the appearance and texture of the second incarnation of this piece reinterpret the rubble of September 11. In Rubble as Archive, or 9/11 as Dust, Debris and Bodily Vanishing, Patricia Yaeger describes “the inability to distinguish, to tell body or flesh from rubble” (187). The knitted piece is similarly abstract, it is impossible to distinguish form or image, the background and image have become one and the same. The texture of the yarn is also reminiscent of Yaeger’s description of the rubble which unnaturally “crunches slightly when the spoon is placed in it” (189). When reknitting the painted and unraveled yarn, I found that it did not easily slide through my fingers and along the needles. It was stiff and difficult to work with and left bits of gray and black paint on my fingers. Like the rubble, in which previously defined objects have become indefinite, this piece is neither recognizable as image, nor normal yarn.
          As an analogy to the rubble of September 11, this piece also invokes traumatic memory. In addition to blanketing the city, “each speck of debris also suggests this narrative function: each part-object or crumpled portfolio offers an archive for exploring an era already vanished, opens a frightening portal in to the past” (Yaeger 193). Though the rubble of September 11 no longer resembles anything recognizable, the knowledge that is made up of once distinguishable forms remains. The rubble is not significant because of its present form but because of the past that it obscures. Through this history that can be attributed to each “speck of debris”, the rubble becomes a manifestation of memory obscured and disrupted by trauma. In creating of this pices, I have attempted to recall this phenomena.
          In particular, this piece is meant to represent the incoherence and confusion of memory following a traumatic event. Dori Laub argues that “it is quite common that victims of massive trauma do not know, do not remember, and do not believe what they really experienced and what was done to them” (214) leading to an inability to form a coherent narrative of the events.
Similarly, Lifton describes that “psychological blurring of the perceptions of events can contribute to collective confusion” (2263). Following traumatic events, survivors are left with incoherent, disrupted and sometimes obscured memories. Like the knitted piece, and like the rubble, what was previously recognizable is drastically altered. Mimicking an inability to remember clearly, it is impossible to distinguish image or form as a viewer of this piece.
          The phone that I painted on the original knitted rectangle is unsalvageable, and the rubble of September 11, cannot be reformed into the things of which it is made up. While these things are permanently obscured and made incoherent, however, with time, memory of trauma can be understood by those who have survived. Eyerman argues that “interpreting events may take time and distance” (306) but that “a cultural trauma must be understood, explained and made coherent through public reflection and discourse” (306). Though both the knitted piece and the rubble it mimics recall Laub’s description that “something about our ability to feel and to know what happened on September 11 has been muted” (213), this inability is not permanent. While inanimate objects like debris and yarn might not change over time; the human mind continues to process and reflect on events both in individual and collective contexts. This piece represents traumatic memory, but it only does so in a specific moment.
          The depth of the trauma and destruction of September 11, 2001 makes it an extremely difficult event to represent. In my knitted and reknitted painting of a telephone, I have attempted to reinterpret and draw connections between the rubble left by the events and the disruptions of memory that it caused. My project only scratches the surface of the actual lived realities of September 11, 2001 and everything that followed. I hope however, that I have been able to recall some small aspect of the events, and add to the tools and perspectives through which one may reflect.

Works Cited
Eyerman, Ron. "The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory." The Collective Memory Reader. By Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. 304-07. Print.
Laub, Dori. "September 11, 2001--An Event Without a Voice." Trauma at Home: After 9/11. By Judith Greenberg. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2003. 204-15. Print.
Lifton, Robert J., MD. "Americans as Survivors." The New England Journal of Medicine (2005): 2263-265. Print.
Yaeger, Patricia. "Rubble as Archive, or 9/11 as Dust, Debris and Bodily Vanishing." Trauma at Home: After 9/11. By Judith Greenberg. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2003. 187-94. Print.