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The show there is curated by Olivia Georgia, who held meetings
with New York City’s Department of Sanitation and their artist-in-residence
the Conceptualist Mierle Ukeles. Pictured here is a still from the
video film in preparation, by Mierle, with Kathy Brew and Roberto
Guerra. She stresses in the video the direct connections between
‘art, trash, and commerce’. This is a multi-channel video
featuring a number of walks over the wasteland together with documented
discussions with involved professionals and workers.
From Finland, in the same exhibition, artist Jussi Heikkila, who
previously had made a well-publicised work about the waste that
Mount Everest trekking groups create there at random, surveys the
main species of birds that have found habitat at Fresh Kills. Conceptualism
does seem to predominate in the show, but the realist landscape
painter has created masterly works in the 18th century tradition
of the sublime (appropriate to the Greek Revival-style Newhouse
Center's ‘picturesque’ early 19th century architecture)
such as ‘Garbage arriving at Fresh Kills in Barges is Hauled
to the Top of the Landfill in Athey Wagons’ (1990).
In the Artforum article, the author Nico Israel explains
how Olivia Georgia, the curator, also points up the irony that when
closed in March, it was estimated that the return of the land to
recreational use following methane gas extraction may take up to
half a century, so becoming the ‘largest green space in the
city’. What permanent ecological damage will be created and
where, given the tragic human loss on September 11 – understandably
not yet fully considered – by the waste refuse shipped from
the World Trade Center site? Only now can such questions begin to
be asked.
Mierle’s Fresh Kills video still, entitled ‘Reconnaissance:
Penetration and Transparency’ seems to offer an almost Arcadian,
Tuscan view from Staten Island of the twin towers rising in the
distance from a seemingly mediaeval skyline, set in a pastoral ‘landscape
with figures’. Accidentally perhaps, that is now how we would
all wish to remember it. In more ways than one, this exhibition
on Staten Island must rank, with ‘Here is New York’ (112
Prince Street, Manhattan) as one of the most important shows of
the year in New York City.
Emerging from the ashes of the holocaust of September 11, through
adversity, is the New Yorkers’ own realisation that their city
is the greatest cultural centre of the past century. Despite the
emotional loss perpetrated to all affected by the mass murder, there
will, in this new century, be a further new-found human depth and
creative dynamic to all creative endeavour emerging from the city
and its environs.
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