Tribute in Light.

Two beams

Every year on the night of September 11, from dusk to dawn, two pale blue beams rise straight into the sky over lower Manhattan. They stand parallel and close, taller than every building around them. From a distance they look like two towers made of light.

This is Tribute in Light. According to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, it uses 88 xenon bulbs of 7,000 watts each, arranged in two 48 foot squares. Each square stands for one absent tower. The beams reach up to four miles into the sky and can be seen within a 60 mile radius of lower Manhattan.

The lights are set up on the roof of the Battery Parking Garage, south of the memorial. By day there is nothing to see but rows of lamp housings on a concrete roof. Only after dark, when the lights come on, does the work appear, and the whole city sees it.

A work by many hands

After September 11, 2001, several artists and designers arrived at nearly the same idea at once: to rebuild the towers in light. The Municipal Art Society and the public art organisation Creative Time brought them together into one project.

The people behind the work include the artists Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda, along with John Bennett, Gustavo Bonevardi, Richard Nash Gould, and the lighting consultant Paul Marantz. None of them signs it alone. It is a work conceived in parallel, then joined.

Tribute in Light was first lit on the six month anniversary, in March 2002. Since then it has returned every year on the night of September 11. Today the installation is produced by Michael Ahern Production Services.

A memorial without matter

Most memorials are made to last: stone, bronze, names cut deep. Tribute in Light does the opposite. It has no mass, no surface, nothing to touch. Creative Time calls it an ethereal surrogate for the absent towers.

That lack of matter brings the work closer to loss. The towers are gone. A stone replacement would insist that something stands there. Two beams only show the empty space, and let it glow.

Light also needs air to become visible. A beam can only be seen thanks to dust, moisture, tiny particles in the night. On a misty night the columns are thick and clear. On a clear night they are thinner. The work is different each year, depending on the city's weather.

Returning on schedule

A work that exists for one night a year has a particular relation to time. The eye never grows used to it. New Yorkers do not pass it every day as they would pass a statue. They wait for it, as one waits for an anniversary.

That repetition turns the work into a shared ritual. People look up from different streets, from across the river, from apartment windows, and see the same thing. Then in the morning the lights go off. The sky returns to what it was.

Other light works speak of the dead, such as The Living Need Light, the Dead Need Music by The Propeller Group. But Tribute in Light is singular in that it tells no story. It projects two squares, in the right place, on the right night. The rest, viewers bring with them.