Freshkills Park is already a prime example of Dark Ecology but upon its final completion the scales of that land’s existence will reset anew. The former landfill which sat upon stolen land of the Lenape people will be buried and forever out of sight. This resetting calls for an ecological awareness that is necessary to hold onto the park’s historical layers.
As Timothy Morton has said “ecological awareness forces us to think and feel at multiple scales, scales that disorient normative concepts.” Looking at Freshkills park as an entanglement of multiple histories existing on more than one scale allows that “dark-sweet” sensation to envelop the viewer.
“This uncanny sense of existing on more than one scale at once has nothing to do with the pathos of cradling a beautiful blue ball in the void.” - Timothy Morton
Field Guides & Resources:
- Freshkills Landfill History: link
- NYT Reporting on Freshkills Park: link
- Buying and Selling of Native Land: link
Local Groups:
- Freshkills Park Alliance: link
Notable People: