Tags: events

We’re excited to restart our Freshkills Park lecture series, Freshkills Park Talks, this coming Monday, December 7th.  Eli Cohen of Israel’s Ayala Water & Ecology will be speaking about his work designing naturally-based solutions to help remove contaminants from soil, air, and bodies of water and to rebuild ecosystems’ capacity for self-sustainability. 

NYU’s Robin Nagle, Anthropologist-in-Residence of the NYC Department of Sanitation, will be giving a talk tomorrow evening called Gotham and its Garbage: What it Was, What it Is and What It Might Become, at the Bloomingdale Library on the Upper West Side and sponsored by the Park West Neighborhood History Group. 

On Monday, the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities is holding a one-day conference called In the Wake of the Half Moon: Environmental Transformation of the New York Metropolitan Region: 1609-2109.  The discussion will center on current, former and future transformation of the City’s environment and the challenges to that transformation. 

In honor of America Recycles Day this Sunday, Brokelyn offers a Brooklynite’s guide to responsibly ridding yourself of stuff–through swaps, donations and recycling.  Lots of New York City-wide non-landfill options in the other boroughs here, too; this is a rich, comprehensive resource. 

This Friday, journalist and land policy expert Anthony Flint will be discussing and signing his new book, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City at the Greenbelt Nature Center on Staten Island. 

Wednesday the 28th, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) will host a discussion called The Infrastructure of Urban Ecologies.  Speakers will include William Morrish, Dean of the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons, and Kazys Varnelis, Director of Network Architecture Lab at GSAPP. 

The Council on the Environment of New York City and the Staten Island Compost Project will be co-hosting a recycling and home composting workshop this Saturday afternoon at the St. George Library on Staten Island.  Tin can tricks and live worm bins, fun for all ages.  

A volunteer coordinator from Transportation Alternatives and Staten Island bike advocates will be leading a ride around the borough tomorrow morning, October 10th, ending at Lee’s Tavern in Dongan Hills.  The group will be “discussing the current challenges facing cyclist, pedestrian and mass transit users in Staten Island, and developing some advocacy plans for the future.” 

This Saturday and Sunday, October 10th and 11th, is Open House New York weekend.  OHNY’s 7th annual offerings include building tours and site visits of unique locations across the five boroughs.  Staten Island is represented by its array of historic buildings as well as two Parks-related listings: Freshkills Park and the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC). 

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation will be leading free public tours of one of its first phases of park development this Sunday, October 4th, as part of the Atlantic Avenue Development Corporation’s Atlantic Antic street festival.  The Pier 6 section of the park, which connects with Atlantic Avenue, is scheduled to open in early 2010, will include a 1.6-acre playground, a dog run, a promenade, a restaurant and three sand volleyball courts.  

Randy Ludacer’s performance at the Freshkills Park site last Saturday was terrific.  An eager audience poured out of our Parks bus at North Mound to hear Randy serenede them (and the millions of tons of discarded packaging buried underfoot) with the new album of songs he’d recorded for the event, including “The Prettiest Package” and “This Landfill is Your Landfill.” 

Spencer Finch’s The River That Flows Both Ways–the first public art commission on the High Line–is an installation of 700 panes of colored glass on the Chelsea Market building, between 15th and 16th Streets on the elevated park at 10th Avenue. 

Choreographer/performer Jill Sigman and composer/vocalist Kristin Norderval have collaborated to produce Our Lady of Detritus, a performance piece focused on “trash and transcendence” that has been making its way through various outdoor New York City sites for the past month.

Nature Find is an online tool provided by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) to aid in finding local nature or nature-related amenities.   Users plug-in a zip code, and the software locates nearby events, city parks, science centers, zoos and other wildlife-related happenings.

We’ve updated our flickr stream with photos from the Composting Workshop we held at the end of August and last weekend’s reading from the works of Robert Frost.  Both events were rainy but drew enthusiastic and game crowds and speakers. 

GreenEdge NYC and Solar One‘s free, seven-evening Solar-Powered Film Festival begins tonight on the East River.  A series of environmental documentaries will screen in Solar One’s outdoor eco-theater, with projector and sound system powered by solar energy captured nearby.

Thursday, September 10 – Addicted to Plastic (2007, 85 mins)
Friday, September 11 – Who Killed the Electric Car (2006, 93 mins)
Saturday, September 12 – Flow: For the Love of Water (2008, 93 mins)
Sunday, September 13 – [Rain Date for any of above]

Thursday, September 17 – A Sea Change (2008, 85 mins)
Friday, September 18 – The Garden (2008, 80 mins)
Saturday, September 19 – Burning in the Sun (2009, 65 mins)
Sunday, September 20 – [Rain Date for any of above]

September 25 at 7 PM [Rain Date September 26] – What’s On Your Plate?

Randy Ludacer has unveiled the design scheme for the “Songs About Packaging” CD he will be giving away during his Saturday, September 26th performance at the Freshkills Park site.  Each package is a miniature pop-art homage to items found in his recycling bin, paying respect to the product’s original design while commenting on its disposable nature.

An event this Saturday on Staten Island invites artists to bring leftover ideas and pieces of work to an afternoon of collaborative dada production.  Day de Dada is August 1st from 1:00 to 4:00 on Van Duzer Street between Wright and Beach Streets, Staten Island. 

Open and on view for one more week at The Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens is The University of Trash, an installation by artists Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman that functions as the backdrop for a host of lectures, workshops and events. 

The Bronx River Art Center‘s new exhibit features work by Staten Island-based artist Tattfoo Tan and Bronx-based artist Abigail DeVille.  The show is called Black Gold, a term that’s often used to describe compost, and the work–painting, sculpture, installation–circles around issues concerning the natural environment.