Meadowlands
For the last 300 years, the New Jersey Meadowlands have been subjected to physically transformative abuse taking many forms. Copper mining, Agent Orange Production, Oil refining and plastics research, and landfilling. Once a flat collection of wetlands, the indiscriminate disposal of waste physically transformed the landscape, now resembling the undulating waves of the prairies of the American West in its topography. The earth below is rich with human history. Buried beneath the surface are columns from the original Penn Station, ballast from the London Blitz, as well as all of the household and industrial hazardous waste from the surrounding tri-state area. The landscape has absorbed and integrated legacy pollutants like Cadmium, Chromium, Mercury and Lead into its tissues. But it is all underground. No matter how hard I searched, it seemed impossible to find visual indicators of these markers of human history. How does one discuss invisible problems with a visual medium?
Throwing out any attempts at objectivity through a documentary-style approach, I decided to simply chase the feeling of the experience of being in this place. I spent my time wandering through this prairie of landfills, searching for moments, surfaces, textures, longing for signs of life and stability. The Meadowlands is a region of ambiguity, and uncertainty. Being there means dealing with the confusion induced by a chaotically disordered landscape mixed with an experience of intense silence. It means traveling out there to look inward, to long for life, to address what it means to be discarded, forgotten, and to fully experience these intense feelings, channeling them through the project; a portrait of a place turned on its head, as well as a self portrait.
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