Essay
Fresh Kills
Solo Exhibition
May – August 31st, 2005
Three Riffs On Fresh Kills
And the Work of Alexis Rockman
Part I - Definitions
Merriam-Webster Dictionary Definitions
fresh\'fresh\adjective
Etymology: Middle English fresh, fersh, from Old English & Old French; Old English fersc fresh, not salt, unsalted; akin to Old Frisian fersk fresh, Middle Dutch versch, Old High German frisc fresh, and perhaps to Russian presnyi fresh, sweet, unleavened.
1 a: not containing or composed of salt water: not salt "sediment…is carried out to sea much farther than if the ocean were fresh"-- G.E. & Nettie MacGinitie; "fresh water"; b: having or conveying no taint: PURE, INVIGORATING, LIVELY, BRISK "how sweet it was to breathe the fresh air."-- Bram Stoker;
2 a: newly produced, gathered, or made: not altered by processing (as by canning, pickling in salt or vinegar, or: unaltered by surface agencies (as rain, wind, or frost): "fresh vegetables" "fresh fruit";
b: having its original qualities unimpaired: as (1) not exhausted or fatigued: full of renewed vigor: "next morning he was fresh and gay, all his weariness gone"-- R.L.Stevenson; specifically of land: not depleted of its fertility, recently put into cultivation: "New England had its troubles…when…the greater product of fresher lands came flooding eastward"-- Russell Lord* (2) not stale, sour, decayed, or deteriorated in any way: "meat kept fresh by refrigeration";
3 3 a: (1) experienced newly or anew: "I got a fresh cold in my head" -- Tobias Smollett: ADDITIONAL, ANOTHER, DIFFERENT "we must make a fresh start"; (2) not trite or hackneyed: ORIGINAL* (3) not faded or tarnished: BRIGHT, ALIVE "the beams and paint are as fresh as spring"-- Sacheverell Sitwell; b: newly or recently made or received, RECENT "those scratches are all fresh"-- Erle Stanley Gardner; "a fresh wound" "on striking fresh lion spoor the trackers follow on it"-- James Stevenson-Hamilton;
c: having little or no experience: RAW, GREEN; d: newly or just come or arrived: "a new car fresh from the assembly line"-- F.L.Allen; e: of a cow or other female mammal: (1) having the milk flow recently established; (2) having recently calved; (3) giving milk f: of a bird: newly molted, having the feathers unworn and unmarred.
kill\'kil\verb
Etymology: Middle English cullen, killen to strike, beat, kill; perhaps akin to Old English cwellan to kill
1 a: to deprive of life, put to death, cause the death of: "killed by enemy fire" "this poison kills rats" also: to terminate suddenly the life processes of (as in preparing tissue for fixing and microscopic examination); b: to destroy as if by killing: "kills whatever core of human decency he ever had in him"-- Aldous Huxley; c: to slaughter (as a hog) for food, convert a food animal into (as pork) by slaughtering; d: to shatter (a clay target) by hitting in skeet shooting;
2 a: to put an end to especially abruptly: cause to cease: stop, especially with finality: "knew he could not kill the evil in the world" "kill the enterprise by denying it the money necessary to proceed" "killed the engine and got out of the car" "a snack to kill her hunger" "the fire-killing power of the chemical" b: to get rid of, ELIMINATE
3 a: to destroy the vital or active or essential quality of: "kill a disease with antibiotics" "killed the pain with drugs" "believed that to explain a joke is to kill it"; b: NEUTRALIZE: "threw an alkali in the solution to kill the acid"; c: to deprive of the power to germinate: "kill the seed."
kills\'kils\noun
Etymology: Dut ch kil, from Middle Dutch kille; akin to East Fris. kille watercourse, Old Norse kill small bay, arm of the sea, and perhaps to Old High German kil wedge: CHANNEL, CREEK, RIVER, STREAM, used chiefly in place names in Delaware and the state of New York (as Catskill mountains.)
Part II - Moments Trapped In Time:
An Unofficial History
At its most literal, Fresh Kills is a landfill located on the western shore of Staten Island, in New York City. Characterized by four large mounds resulting from more than 50 years of accumulated household waste, the landfill covers approximately 2,200 acres, and shares the unusual distinction, with the Great Wall of China, of being one of the few man-made objects visible from outer space. "Fresh Kills," claims the artist Alexis Rockman, who lives and works in nearby Manhattan, "is a microcosm of what happens when humans try to control the landscape."
Separated from the rest of Staten Island by barbed-wire fence, which runs around its periphery, the landfill has managed, in spite of its degraded appearance, to nurture its own subversive ecology. Like a natural-world island of misfits, it provides a sanctuary for misanthropic progeny such as poison ivy, phragmites, ailanthus, Norway rats, Virginia opossum, muskrats, brown-headed cow birds, fish crow, turkey vultures, German cockroaches, bluebottle flies, and mosquitoes. "We find the place unsavory," comments Rockman, dryly. "But they go there for dinner." The landfill also acts as a truck stop for the more socially acceptable migrating great blue herons and butterflies, both of which continue to take a forgiving stance toward the dump's ignominious toxicity. Like so much of the planet, in other words, Fresh Kills reflects nature's defensive strategies, and also its resourcefulness, in response to humans' consistent and unabashed intrusion.
This delicate power-play between humans and their environment has been a source of fascination for Rockman since 1966-7, when, as a child of four at his mother's side in Peru, he admired the side-by-side placement of garbage dumps and food stands, observing that maggots dine on waste and meat with equanimity (the artist's mother, an urban archaeologist, is also obsessed with garbage). This childlike enchantment with, and empathy for, the natural world's reaction to humans has fueled Rockman's career as an artist.
Rockman began painting at the age of 21 and, since then, his work has followed a long trajectory of what ifs? What if cloning brought back the extinct Devonian-era placaderm, or a Mesozoic-era ichthyosaur played beach ball like a modern-day dolphin, as in Sea World, 2001-4? Or if, as in Human Ancestors, 1997, humans confused their evolutionary history with Ray Harryhausen's mythological cyclops from the film the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, 1958, or animals could be altered to look like Crash McCrary's manimal from Island of Doctor Moreau, 1996? What if the paleontological illustrations of American high school evolutionary textbooks or Czech illustrator Zdenek Burian actually dictated evolution? Or, as in Soccer, 2004, what if the apotheosis of athleticism presented a hybrid of scientific breakthroughs, from steroids, to prosthetics, to genetic engineering? What if we widen our interpretation of fresh kills, to include, say, animals freshly killed by hunters, as in the painting Big Game, 2000, or by cars, as in Route 10, 1997? What if a mythological creature such as a jack-o-lope were threatened by the real-life prospect of becoming roadkill? Even more perversely, what if a donkey with birth defects, shunned by its more desirable horse ancestors, were then exploited as a human sex slave?
"It's about the way animals are objectified," Rockman says, of The Donkey, 1997, recalling a visit to the S & M store, where he purchased the bondage paraphernalia he embedded in the piece.
When Rockman began working with resin in 1996, he saw "resin as a way of freeing myself from the predictable associations with painting." Having already exhibited his work, to considerable praise, in the United States, Europe and Asia, Rockman wanted to bring a different set of associations to challenge his viewers' expectations.
Inspired by an exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History called Amber: Window to the Past, the artist began to think about his work as moments trapped in time. "All the specimens in the amber show," says Rockman, "were displayed on little platforms and spot-lit like jewelry. There was a lizard trapped in amber. A diorama constructed by one of the museum curators documented how animals and insects get trapped." To arrive at the proper formula for his own "moments," Rockman conducted a series of amusing, if misguided, experiments. Tying a piece or resin to the front of a car, for example, he drove around in the middle of the night. "I thought nocturnal insects would stick to it," he recalls, "and I'd have a beautiful moth painting-you know, 'just add velocity.' All I got was a bunch of smudges radiating from the center." Another test, involved a preserved Diamond-backed Rattlesnake from Carolina Biological Supply House. "I took it outside, and beat it with a wooden beam. Then I ran over it a couple of hundred times with a car to simulate road kill." For Route 10, he says, "I cast a rat and a toad in latex rubber and then combined them to create a new fictional species."
Alexis Rockman's fascination with the boundaries between plants, animals, insects, and reptiles-not to mention those between human perceptions of reality, science and popular culture-again echoes back to the late 1960's, when his mother worked as an assistant to Margaret Meade, at the American Museum of Natural history. The young Rockman would wander the halls of the museum alone, gazing at wildlife dioramas by the early 20th century explorer and taxidermist Carl Ackley. Growing up in New York City, the artist's most intimate and enchanting contact with nature was often confined to this institutional context, where nature stood at a distance, behind glass, and was made up of humanly mediated, artificial materials. Treating the wildlife dioramas as his own adoptive backyard, Rockman's imaginative play found it's home, ironically, in these Depression-era time capsules of remote African ecosystems. Symbols of substitution, of real for fantasy, home for exotic landscape, tactile and sensory for conceptual or cerebral, the wildlife dioramas ultimately led the artist to the imagined worlds found in his artwork. A multitude of meanings and imaginative word plays find a home in these worlds, which in addition to presenting "moments trapped in time," reveal the artist's profoundly felt political views. Hybrids and chimera-such as that found in The Hydra, Rockman's poster for the John Kerry 2004 Presidential campaign-abound. And nature fights back, as demonstrated in the artist's mural-scale painting Manifest Destiny 2004, a view of the Brooklyn waterfront after global warming, and Man-Eating Plant, 2000, which bears a self-parodying image of the artist caught in a gigantic plant's vice-grip. If nature had a voice, Rockman seems to be saying, imagine the stories it would tell us.
"My work is about the stuff you don't want to think about," says Rockman. It's about remembering that you're an animal and that you're mortal. The paintings and the resin pieces are unofficial history lessons."
The Fresh Kills Landfill was closed in 2001 before 9/11. During the 53 years in which Fresh Kills served as the dumping ground for the rest of the city's garbage, says Michael McMahon, a chief of Waste and Sanitation in Staten Island, it operated in violation of state and federal environmental laws. It is unlined and continues to spill millions of gallons of toxins into our waterways each year. When a group show commemorating Fresh Kills history was organized by the Snug Harbor Museum in Staten Island, Rockman agreed to participate, and asked to visit the dump to collect samples for his drawings. He was denied entrance. "They wouldn't let me go in," he recalls, "They collected the samples themselves. They insisted on removing all the heavy metals, because it was toxic waste, they were afraid if I got sick I'd sue them."
After 9/11 Fresh Kills was re-opened for ten months as a collection- ground for debris created by the collapse of the World Trade Center. More recently, plans have been circulating to roll out a carpet of sod and put a park over it. At its most literal Fresh Kills may be a garbage dump, but as a metaphor, it's a diorama of the future. "Nature abhors a vacuum," suggests Rockman, quoting an unremembered source.
History is littered with botched control schemes.ear. When a group show commemorating Fresh Kills history was organized by the Snug Harbor Museum in Staten Island, Rockman agreed to partiear. When a group show commemorating Fresh Kills history was organized by the Snug Harbor Museum in Staten Island, Rockman agreed to participate, and asked to visit the dump to collect samples for his drawings. He was denied entrance. "They wouldn't let me go in," he recalls, "They collected the samples themselves. They insisted on removing all the heavy metals, because it was toxic waste, they were afraid if I got sick I'dcipate, and asked to visit the dump to collect samples for his drawings. He was denied entrance. "They wouldn't let me go in," he recalls, "They collected the samples themselves. They insisted on removing all the heavy metals, because it was toxic waste, they were afraid if I got sick I'd
Part III - The Official Word:
Two Fresh Kills press releases
Recovery: the World Trade Center recovery operatoin at Fresh Kills.
On the night of September 12, 2001the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island was designated a crime scene. Trucks began arriving from Ground Zero with steel and crushed debris from what was once the World Trade Center. Over the next ten months, 1.8 million tons of debris was inspected by the New York Police Department, an FBI evidence recovery team, twenty-five state and federal agencies, and fourteen private contractors.
4,257 human remains were recovered, that have resulted in the identification of over 300 individuals. Approximately 4,000 personal photographs, $78,318.47 in domestic and foreign currency, and 54,000 personal items such as identification cards and driver licenses were also recovered. Of the 1,358 vehicles found, 102 were fire apparatus and 61 belonged to the Police Department.
FRESH KILLS: LANDFILL TO LANDSCAPE
Today, apart from four large landfill mounds on the site, small forests, tidal wetlands, and freshwater wetlands are still in existence at Fresh Kills Landfill. One of the fundamentals of nature, adaptation, is demonstrated in the evolution of these natural features in an unnatural context.
Perhaps most representative of nature's ability to adjust to humans is the Isle of Meadows. Located at the mouth of the Fresh Kills Estuary, the Isle of Meadows was first harvested for its salt hay. The island then served as a repository for spoils from channel-dredging operations. Now it serves as a source of ideal materials for herons constructing nests.
Dorothy Spears
Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Inc.
Iljinka Street 3/8 bld. 5
Moscow, Russia 109012
Tel: (+7 095) 101-21-02 Fax: (+7 095) 101-21-04
e-mail: info@tatintsian.com
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