Open Session #17: Hosted by Olivia Crough

Writer and art historian Olivia Crough presents a talk about Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill and its relationship to artists Gordon Matta-Clark, Ken Kobland, and Shu Lea Cheang, who each created films about the site during the ’70s and ’90s, before its eventual closure. Formerly known as the world’s largest landfill, Fresh Kills’ vast mounds of toxic municipal garbage blanketed in screaming gulls were studied by these artists but stayed out of sight and mind for most New Yorkers. Crough’s research examines the links between the three experimental films and wetlands, waste, and land value. Since receiving the debris from the World Trade Center in September 2001 and the site’s subsequent closing, the city’s Parks and Sanitation departments have collaborated to “reclaim” the site’s salt marshes and swamps by engineering a 2,200 acre urban park slated to open in 2036.

This event will be the final Open Session in dialogue with Swamplands. Open Sessions will resume with the launch of our next research theme. Watch this space for updates on other upcoming programs and projects this spring and summer

Olivia Crough is a writer and historian of twentieth century art and media. She is completing a PhD in the department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University, and visiting assistant professor of History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. As a critic, she is now writing about films made in the Okefenokee Swamp, and the work of gardener-filmmakers Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré.