ABSTRACT
Creativity can counter the destructiveness of death. Creative acts not only give those encountering death a project to focus on, but also provide them with a way to physically enact their grief—to give shape to sorrow, and to evoke the presence of the dead among the living. On September 11, 2001, New York filled with such overwhelming sorrow that rituals of grief spilled out of private homes and lives into public spaces. The creative transformation of the destroyed girder into something sacred began symbolically with Silecchia's interpretation of it as such. The anthropomorphization of the towers indicates that the World Trade Center was mourned both for the loss of the buildings themselves and for their symbolic representation of all the people inside them and below them who were killed. Inscription was the dominant form of creative expression in response to September 11. Perhaps the ultimate form of inscription is the self-inscription of tattooing.
