Twin Towers

Tribute in Light (Wikimedia Commons)

"Although the two towers have disappeared, they have not been annihilated. Even in their pulverized state, they have left behind an intense awareness of their presence. No one who knew them can cease imagining them and the imprint they made on the skyline from all points of the city. Their end in material space has borne them off into a definitive imaginary space. By the grace of terrorism, the World Trade  Center has become the world's most beautiful building — the eighth wonder of the world!"
Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays

King Kong

East 13th

"Cities are distinguished by the forms of catastrophe they have assumed, which is the animating aspect of their charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or the vertical bombardment, the Towering Inferno."
Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings

Where the Mad Roam Free

"In New York, the mad have been set free. Let out into the city, they are difficult to tell apart from the rest of the punks, junkies, addicts, winos, or down and outs who inhabit it."
Jean Baudrillard, America 

The Dawning of the Universe

Statue of Liberty and East River

"It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe. Perhaps because the entire world continues to dream of New York, even as New York dominates and exploits it."
Jean Baudrillard, America

Self-Attracting Universe

Union Square

"Why do people live in New York? There is no relationship between them. Except for an inner electricity which results from the simple fact of their being crowded together. A magical sensation of contiguity and attraction for an artificial centrality. This is what makes it a self-attracting universe, which there is no reason to leave."
Jean Baudrillard, America

The Anti-Ark

"LOVE" by Robert Indiana

"Such if the whirl of the city, so great is centrifugal force, that it would take superhuman strength to envisage living as a couple and sharing someone else's life in New York. Only tribes, gangs, mafia families, secret societies and perverse communities can survive, not couples. This is the anti-Ark."
Jean Baudrillard, America

End-of-the-World Show

2014 TCS New York City Marathon

"I would never have believed that the New York marathon could move you to tears. It really is the end-of-the-world show. Can we speak of suffering freely entered into as we might speak of a stage of slavery freely entered into?"
Jean Baudrillard, America