Around Ground Zero - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 90

NewandtransparentfencearoundWorldTradeCenterSite,withexplanatorytextofwheretheformer
buildingswerelocated,amongotherdetails. PHOTO: BETHIA LIU
the photographer Margaret Morton, and Rivka Mazar). We made lists, e-mailed
notes, took photographs, followed the news in the papers and on television, talked
to the cops and the workers, noticed as subways and streets closed and opened,
collected everything and anything we could. The data gathering itself was a very
low-tech process. The map is a compilation of all this ground-level surveying and
then a number of digital sources.
There were many debates in the group about what should be emphasized and
what should be on or off the map. As with any map, this one has a point of view.
We tried to be factual, not emotional, open-ended, rather than didactic, without
hiding the political and ethical stakes of the project. There was a long time when
we had images of the burning towers on the front fold of the mockups. We took
them off in the end to avoid spectacularization. We also avoided the images that
had already become too familiar.
The map, though, was not just a humanitarian effort. We wanted to insist that
the task of marking and reimagining the site had to be an open, public process,
that the ordinary people who were visiting the site in such numbers should have
access to the area and to information about it. The map says that, and it tries to
enable it, as well. We wanted to underline the fact that before the “real” debate