Field Operations on the Design of South Park

Tatiana Choulika—Project Design Manager at James Corner Field Operations for our upcoming project in the southern portion of the Freshkills Park site—gave a great presentation on that design two weeks back at the Arsenal.  Our thanks go to her and to the large crowd that came out to learn about South Park.  We’re very excited about this section of the park and FO’s design for it, which responds to a variety of expressed local and regional needs and desires while carrying through the principles set out by the 2006 Freshkills Park Draft Master Plan.

Tatiana’s slideshow is available for download as a PDF (5MB).  You can stream the entire audio of the talk, below, as you page through the slides, or download it directly as an MP3 (30 minutes, 28MB).

PARK movement-based performance, June 26th

An image from Kathy Westwater's movement research project PARK, at Judson Church in April 2009.

It seems like no New York City site has truly been inaugurated as a public space until it has hosted an avant-garde dance performance.  Our time has come!  A group of artists and performers organized by choreographer Kathy Westwater has developed a movement-based project responding to their research and on-site study of the Freshkills Park site over several visits this spring.  PARK, as the project is called, isn’t a traditional dance performance—more a combination of movement, writing, and game playing.  It is “concerned with our construction and consumption of nature.”

Kathy and her dancers have previously performed PARK in locations as varied as Yosemite Park and Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea. This incarnation of the project, which will take place on June 26th, will follow an abridged tour of the Freshkills Park site and will involve audience participation for its duration (45 minutes to one hour), on the top of the scenic North Mound.

Parks Department buses will provide all attending guests transportation from the St. George Ferry Terminal at 9:30 am to the Freshkills Park site and return attendees to the terminal by 1 pm. This event is free, but space is limited, and registration is required. To RSVP please email doug.elliott@parks.nyc.gov or call (212) 788-8277.

Saturday, June 26, 2010 | 9:30 am-1pm

Art by the Ferry Festival this weekend

The third annual ART by the Ferry Festival runs this weekend and next in Staten Island.   Offerings will include visual arts, music, performance art, street performers, circus acts, crafts, literary readings, workshops and local food.  Everything takes place within a few blocks of the St. George Ferry Terminal.

Saturday and Sunday, June 5th & 6th, 12th & 13th, Noon-8pm
Events and performances are free; workshops are $5 per person.

Key to the City starts today

We received our beautiful, custom Key to the City yesterday from the folks at Creative Time.  Feeling empowered and ready to open up that hidden door in the Brooklyn Museum.  We also installed and verified the locked box inside the Freshkills Park tour bus.  Tour attendees who hold the Key to the City: just let the tour guide know, and he/she will present the box and its exciting contents to you.  We think this will be a really fun and enriching complement to the tours.  (A note on this: we’ve reserved a limited number of seats on every public bus tour this summer for holders of the Key to the City.  If you’re interested in joining a 10am or 1pm tour on 6/5, 6/19, 7/10, 7/24, 8/7 or 8/21 and you’ve got the Key, email doug.elliott@parks.nyc.gov with the subject line Key to the City, to check availability.)

You can participate in Paul Ramirez Jonas’ summer-long project by being bestowed a key at the Times Square kiosk for the project, which opens today at 6pm and will start operating daily tomorrow through June 27th.  You can also volunteer to be an official “key master,” distributing keys in the heart of Times Square.

SI mobile garden expo and parade this Saturday

As part of its annual SummerFest, the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI) joins artist Tattfoo Tan in hosting a mobile garden expo and parade this Saturday, June 5th in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.  Attendees are encouraged to bring mobile gardens—gardens on wheels, in the form of skateboards, rolling office chairs, shopping carts or anything portable—to Tan’s garden on Monroe Street for the expo, followed by a parade to the St. George Ferry Terminal, where the gardens will take up residence for a month in the taxi plaza as part of the NYC Department of Transporation‘s urban art program, Arteventions.

Saturday’s event will also include a workshop by artist Jay Weichun on making ‘flower bombs’—clumps of flower seeds mixed with clay and potting soil to be tossed into abandoned urban spaces to help nature regain footing and beautify blight.

Sat, June 5, 2010 | 2-6 pm
Tattfoo Tan’s Garden
67 Monroe Avenue, Staten Island

Public hearing on Solid Waste Management Plan

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently released a draft of its plan for a new direction in waste management, “Beyond Waste: A Sustainable Materials Management Strategy for New York.”  The plan aims to shift the state’s waste management focus from the end of the waste chain closer to the beginning, more emphatically supporting waste reduction, reuse and recycling.  It proposes stricter regulation for solid waste management, educational programs for businesses and individuals and a shift to manufacturer responsibility in the creation of products and packaging.  If implemented, the DEC projects the plan could reduce the State’s waste production from 14 million tons annually to 2 million tons.

The DEC will be holding a series of public meetings about the plan throughout the month—New York City’s meeting will be June 8th at the Department of Public Health.  DEC will be accepting public comments on the draft through July 6th.

Public hearing about the draft NYS Solid Waste Management Plan
June 8th, 5 pm
New York City Department of Health
125 Worth Street, 2nd Floor Auditorium, Manhattan

Staten Island Film Festival, June 2nd-6th

The fifth annual Staten Island Film Festival starts tomorrow and features a slate of dozens of intriguing short and feature-length films, many of them about or featuring New York City’s outer boroughs.  Participating filmmakers include 15 from Staten Island (including Wu-Tang Clan leader the RZA) as well as many more from throughout New York City and as far afield as Las Vegas and Australia.  Some of these films sound amazing, and especially in the case of the Staten Island-based ones, this could be the best opportunity to catch them.  The festival kicks off at the St. George Theatre with Michael J. Weithorn’s A Little Help tomorrow at 7pm.

The Fifth Annual SINY Film Festival, June 2nd-6th
Screenings at the St. George Theatre and the College of Staten Island

Next Freshkills Park Talk: Wednesday, May 26th

Quick on the heels of our terrific if rainy lecture this past Tuesday, we’re thrilled to host another lecture in our Freshkills Park Talks series this upcoming Wednesday evening, May 26th—this time at the Arsenal, on Central Park.  We’ll be joined by Tatiana Choulika, Senior Associate at landscape architecture and urban design firm James Corner Field Operations, who will be presenting and discussing the design for the first phase of the Southern quadrant of Freshkills Park.  This area of the site hosts some of the most beautiful overlooks and variations of landscape of anywhere onsite, and the design that FO has developed for it is really dynamic and exciting, meeting a host of community-expressed priorities as well as accommodating some of the particular challenges of developing on a former landfill site.

This first phase comprises 20 acres of the full 425 acre-buildout of this quadrant of the park, and it has been designed as a connected series of overlooks, meadows and recreational facilities including walking and biking paths, softball fields, play areas and event spaces. It will also be the first project allowing public access to the top of one of the site’s mounds, with expansive views of Staten Island and beyond.  We’re excited about this project and hope you’ll join us to learn more about it and FO’s process in designing it.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 | 6:30-8pm
The Arsenal, Central Park, 3rd floor gallery
830 Fifth Ave, Manhattan

Next Freshkills Park Talk: Tuesday, May 18th

This coming Tuesday, we’re happy to have photographer Nathan Kensinger joining us for a Staten-Island-centered follow-up to his March talk and slideshow on New York’s post-industrial waterfront.   Nathan will be presenting photos from around Staten Island, including an abandoned chewing gum factory, a partially demolished color works, rotting train stations, empty hospitals and boat graveyards. His work has been described in the Staten Island Advance as documenting “places that even the forgotten have forgotten.”

This talk will be co-hosted by the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island.  Should be a fun one.

Tuesday, May 18, 6:30 p.m. @ Cargo Cafe
120 Bay Street, Staten Island (a short walk from the St. George Ferry Terminal)
FREE| No RSVP necessary

A weekend for New York City trashies

The “Fast Trash” exhibit is a gift that keeps on giving: two excellent organizations are holding awesome-sounding garbage-focused events at Gallery RIVAA on Roosevelt Island this weekend, piggybacking on the last week of “Fast Trash”‘s run.  On Saturday, May 15th, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) will screen two documentaries on New York City waste disposal: the rare and intriguing-sounding 1979 documentary Collection and Disposal, a Job for the Birds, and CUP’s own 2002 Garbage Problems.

Focused on New York’s garbage glut, Robert Machover and Catherine Pozzo Di Borgo’s “Collection and Disposal” asks where NYC garbage will go when the landfills reach capacity. Through informal interviews with the sanitation workers who each lug 6,000 pounds of trash every day, the documentary gives a glimpse into the challenges of hauling and planning for the future, and reveals some insider garbage slang on the side.

Picking up where “Collection and Disposal” left off, 2002’s “Garbage Problems” finds that three decades later there’s still no clear solution to the city’s garbage crisis. The documentary, CUP’s first-ever Urban Investigation, uncovers some of the dirty politics of putting together a comprehensive waste plan for the city.

The screening will be followed by a presentation from garbage historian and environmental planner Benjamin Miller on the prospects and challenges of implementing a citywide pneumatic garbage transport system.

And on Sunday, Urban Omnibus hosts a meet-up on Roosevelt Island to explore the Island on foot with landscape architect Donald Richardson, who worked on the its 1969 master plan.  The walk will be followed by a guided tour of the “Fast Trash” show with its curator, architect Juliette Spertus.   Both of these events sound incredibly interesting to us.  Two great days to spend on/learning about “The Island Nobody Knows.”

Trashy Pictures
Saturday, May 15, 5 – 7pm
Gallery RIVAA
527 Main Street, Roosevelt Island
F train to Roosevelt Island
FREE | Seats very limited, RVSP to info@anothercupdevelopment.org

Urban Omnibus Meet-up
Sunday, May 16th, 2010, 2pm
Roosevelt Island, meet outside the F train stop