BELLY/BLOG

Serene-ness: An Interview with Ted Nabavi

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:58:53 -0400

On September 11, 2011, with Jennifer Scappettone, and Jae Lee, I interviewed Ted R. Nabavi CHMM, Director, Waste Management Engineering, NYC Department of Sanitation. Below is an excerpt from the interview that occurred ten years to the day after the World Trade Center bombing. In 2001, in the aftermath of the tragedy, the landfill, which had been officially closed the year before, was briefly reopened to accept the debris from the bombed site.

Transcribed by Kay Ottinger, Edited by Abby Block

TN: I have my own personal, emotional, and psychological behavior when I work in [landfill] environments. A lot of times I remember - not only from 9/11 - areas in the landfill where one can experience a sense of serene-ness. I used to go to areas where I would release all my anxiety and mind. A lot of that has to do with the topography. I’m the wrong guy for these types of observations, but I share them with you because they are very beautiful. My secretary would know where I was because I used to say if anyone were looking for me I would be at that certain location because it was beautiful and peaceful.

When you are driving the perimeter it is somewhat circular, and when you are driving you go higher and higher, and there are different things that take place in the mind from a religious, psychological, or personal point of view. I find them refreshing and beneficial. I expressed those on a tour once with the public, and I asked, how many of you have stood on a mountain and looked 360 degrees, and nothing is there other than a beautiful sky? Where do you get that? They said, you’re right. I said, look at the lake or creek, the water, the birds, the animals… there’s trees.

There are beautiful serene feelings here that you don’t experience anywhere else. I have at parks and volcanoes, but some of that exists here too, and I don’t think the general public appreciates that. I say the trails here are beautiful because in some areas you will see what you will never see in your life. A trail on the Blue Ridge Mountain is a different perspective. Depending on your socio- makeup, you will go through different experiences.

I have a lot of feelings; I’m a softy. Again, 9/11 happened and everyone experienced a lot that we don’t hear talked about. It’s difficult at times, and you go up there, and I don’t think I ever told anyone, but I used to go up there and I thought I saw people there. It’s crazy.

It is the serene-ness of nothing. I called it zero atmosphere. It was beautiful. I didn’t hear anything. That was fine. North or South Mound isn’t the point. It is what you make of it - where you will be happy. That is what I told the people. Yes, you can see the New Jersey Turnpike, but I say I see the clouds.

The trails are beautiful out there. Even in the 80s when I was working at the Edgemere landfill in Queens, I said to this person in the parks department that you should come up here and make a little gazebo and look out at what you can see. I have a picture of the Kennedy Airport, World Trade Center, and Verrazano Bridge, and I just happened to take a picture, and there was a seagull on a pole. I said, look, you can see man, animal. It was by accident. To this day I keep this picture. You could see everything. When you come to the United States, it is the first point you see when you land at Kennedy.

Those are some of the theories I have - more physiological and psychological than biological. A lot of contractors go to these locations at on the top [of the mounds] for their lunch break. I said, you are just forgetting about everything. They say, yes. That is serenity. Like I said, I used to listen to the birds, the water… this is incredible.

That is why I am a big advocate of parks. People don’t recognize it. I say to my kids, look at these trees. I said to my son, when he asked where these trees come from, when the birds were flying that was their solid waste. They ate a berry, the berry came from a tree, and the tree is here now. The migration of the birds and their feces contain certain seeds. Mother nature took over. Those are my feelings and observations, if you may. Those are the sounds: nothing.

Section Six and Seven [of Fresh Kills] haven’t been completed, but there are two lakes there. One time there was a duck and he had a yellow neck. Beautiful. Like someone painted his head yellow and the rest of his body white. Someone saw me crying and asked why, and I said, you will never see this again for the rest of your life. It looked like someone had just painted him. I saw a fox. No one had ever seen that. I couldn’t believe it.

These types of trails and open areas may not have any structure, and if they were added on to the tours it would be great. One thing I would like to see added to the tours is to have the public get out and walk a short trail. People want to touch and feel. It makes it real. That is why we love the model you are making. People ask about the landfill. What does it look like? What’s underneath that? This is what it looks like.

When I studied environmental science in ’81, my father asked, what are you going to do? And I said, I don’t know Dad. Clean up chemicals. A lot of people in my college were not studying environmental science, but I always believed that there would be a time when someone would have to clean up these sites. I studied chemistry, environmental science, and these types of landfills to get a better view how they can coexist.

Photo taken at Fresh Kills of South Mound as seen from North Mound
credit Marina Zamalin, October 2011

words + string + mylar

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:10:39 -0400

On October 2, at Fresh Kills amidst an annual festival-like event that included kite flying, goat petting, food carting, and kayaking -- all happening in a dump!! -- we created a movement/installation of mylar, strings, and words.

Words sourced from post-consumer waste, i.e. magazines, grocery bags, cereal boxes, carry-out containers, etc., were strung alongside fragments of Jennifer Scappettone’s poetry, reaching up to 260 linear ft., the length of the short-side of an average city block.

A block-long length of mylar was the ‘template’ or base for the installation, and the strings of words, four total, were threaded (with upholstery needles), measured, and accumulated above the mylar surface.

A block-long length of mylar is a lot of mylar and yet, in relationship to the scale of the Fresh Kills landfill, it’s size was dwarfed.

Over 2,000 people were there that day.

The Wandering

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:32:51 -0400

From fieldwork at Fresh Kills on September 12, 2011, this video captures the ‘wandering’ practice that anchors much of our work. It also documents an experience of, and the present condition of, the North Mound as it transitions from landfill to parkland. The extremely tall lengths of late-summer grass -- reaching 5 feet and up -- induce experiences much like those I’ve had walking through, and getting lost in, cornfields.

Video by Seung-jae Lee

Library

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:29:05 -0400

An Atlas of Radical Cartography
Lize Mogel & Alexis Bhagat, editors

Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage
Heather Rogers

Picturing Science Producing Art
Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, editors

Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage
William Rathje and Cullen Murphy

Society of the Spectacle
Guy Dubord

Topophilia
Yi-Fu Tuan

Performer Abby Block Remembers

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:41:42 -0400

Over a year ago I accompanied Kathy (choreographer, director) on the first visit of her 2010 residency at the Fresh Kills landfill. Also along were Seung-Jae Lee (architect, collaborator), Jennifer Scappetonne (poet, collaborator), Rebecca Brooks (dancer), and Raj Kottamasu (from the NYC Parks Department).

Kathy’s been blogging about work on this project for a bit, but hadn’t had a chance to write something about that first visit. In order to assemble documentation of each day spent onsite, she asked me to contribute an account of that first visit. So here I am, over a year later. These are the fragments of what I remember:

April 18, 2010
The views from the mound, moving out: rolling green grassy hills, a sparkling blue creek, grey New Jersey industry, hazy NYC skyline, birds gliding above.
Piling into the Parks car and driving on through a maze of paved, gravel, and dirt roads. Like being on a private, secretive, high security compound.
Pieces of plastic netting emerging from underneath a thin layer of soil and grass.
I had heard of Fresh Kills before visiting it, but never gave it much thought (other than the fact that I thought it was creepy that “kill” is in the name of a landfill), until I heard more of it in my composting class. I took a Master Composter course through the Department of Sanitation a few years ago and learned that there is a composting facility and compost give-back at Fresh Kills.
Wildflowers and grass.
Signing the waver before entering.
Finding a place on the side of the mound where nobody could see me, and I couldn’t see anyone. Not being seen means nobody around, peace and quiet, solitude in the big city where it's hard to be alone with your thoughts, especially when outside – something that I usually think of as reserved for being out in the woods or in the countryside.
Could this landfill explode?
Lots of sky.
Volunteer trees.
Random pieces of plastic, and how did they make their way into my view…did they escape when the mound was capped, did they blow over from another mound that was capped later, or is this piece of plastic from another trash era all together?
Is it safe to be pregnant here?
Fat geese waddling in the road.
Driving by the September 11 sifting site.
L-shaped pipes sticking up from the ground, here and there.
A writing exercise, during which we listed things we had thrown out that could have ended up at Fresh Kills, like my disposable contact lenses.
Is this toxic?
The land beneath my feet: it’s just a thin layer covering a mound of junk.
This big hill is filled with trash, not dirt or rocks or worms or bugs or roots.
This is strange but pleasant to be outside taking a walk – alone, under the clear blue sky, in the green grass – so close to New York City.