Twenty-five years have passed since the horrific September 11 attack, the "Nine-Eleven" as Americans call it. To mark this 25th anniversary, a spectacular drone show illuminated New York Harbor: exactly 2,977 drones, matching the precise number of victims from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center's twin towers, whose towering vertical silhouettes were drawn across Manhattan's sky. The illumination was visible up to 100 kilometers away.
This double artistic and technical feat, "2,977 Lights Over New York Harbor," brought together the respective expertise of Addison Mehr (creative director), Sky Elements (drone shows), Design Studio Drift (artistic consultation), Shigeru Ban (Japanese architect from the Think team), Dean Maltz (New York architect from the former Think team), and Yan Paul Dubbelman (installation designer).
A firm political will was also at work, with a resolute intention not to let the memory of this tragedy fade. Yesterday, poems were recited and flowers were laid. Twenty-five years is already the span of another generation that operates by different codes, and this grandiose spectacle captures their attention and instructs their conscience.
In our country, arson elevated to a mode of operation has successively burned the Andafiavaratra Palace—in another unknown "Nine Eleven," on September 11, 1976—the Rova of Antananarivo, and the National Radio. No political will manifests itself to preserve their memory, let alone to remember them to avoid endlessly repeating such suicidal absurdity. Worse, each year of forgetting establishes a collective amnesia filled by revisionist rewriting that seeks to erase the past.
Nasolo-Valiavo Andriamihaja