Tags: events

The ReuseConex Conference, to be held in Raleigh, NC this October, will be the nation’s first conference and expo on materials reuse.  Sponsored by the Reuse Alliance, the conference will explore the societal, environmental and economic benefits of materials reuse and feature keynote speaker Garth Johnson, author of 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse.

Thanks to Connie Fishman and all who attended her talk in our Freshkills Park Talks series two weeks back.  It was an entertaining and educational look at the history and development of Hudson River Park, including a look at the never-realized Westway project and its legacy in the civic discourse about the park. 

Last Saturday, we hosted what has probably been the most provocative and unusual program we’ve seen yet at the Freshkills Park site (the gauntlet has been thrown down! Our open request for program proposals is here): choreographer Kathy Westwater‘s movement-based piece PARK, developed with collaborators Jennifer Scappettone and Seung Jae Lee. 

Thanks to all who joined our field trip last Friday, and especially to Tim and Heather at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center for so graciously guiding us through all that the Center does.  They gave us a history of the site (which was formerly the Mohlenoff family farm, itself a storied place) and its operations, explained their Foundation Seed production, soil preparation, seed cleaning, storage and banking, as well as greenhouse operations. 

Just two days after Connie Fishman’s talk about Hudson River Park in our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series, the Design Trust for Public Space is holding one of their Public Space Potlucks in Hudson River Park.  This is a series of potluck dinners in urban spaces aimed at encouraging discussion about and communal use of public spaces throughout the City. 

Our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues this coming Tuesday with a presentation by Connie Fishman, President of the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT).  Since 1999, HRPT has overseen the planning, construction, management and operation of Hudson River Park, which spans 550 acres—including portions of the River—along the west side of Manhattan, from Battery Park to 59th St. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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 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.

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.

The Spring/Summer issue of the Freshkills Park newsletter, Fresh Perspectives, is up on the official Parks homepage for Freshkills Park.  In this issue are a review of the past year’s expanded tour programs at the Freshkills Park site and a profile of the Department of Sanitation’s compost facility, located just beside the former landfill, in addition to the cover story, which offers a history of the Fresh Kills area before landfilling began in 1948 and an annotated map of historic activities onsite.

Marketing and design agency MSLK is mounting a large-scale installation called Take-Less using hundreds of take-out containers as part of the Figment art festival on Governor’s Island in June.  Latching onto the statistic that 2629 take-out meals are consumed in the United States every second, the group plans to assemble a large collection of disposable, take-out plasticware into the number 2629 atop a grassy area, reflecting on our constant incidental production of plastic waste. 

Tomorrow evening, Dr. Judith S. Weis, Professor of Biological Sciences at Rutgers University will be talking about and signing copies of her book Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History at the Greenbelt Nature Center on Staten Island.  The book is first a history of American salt marshes, their ecological functions, gradual destruction and several profiles of contemporary restoration projects. 

Gothamist discovers the Witte Marine Salvage Yard, one of the largest marine scrapyards on the East Coast, along the shore of the Arthur Kill just south of the Freshkills Park site’s West Mound.  It’s a pretty spectacular and much photographed sight to see these rusted heaps—mostly tugboats and cargo ships—half sunken in the Arthur Kill, and the various plant and marine life that has made its home there.