A Tour of the Monuments of Paterson, New Jersey

Paterson, New Jersey sits just west of Yonkers across the Hudson River. In 1967 Robert Smithson toured Passiac, the next city south along the much smaller Passaic River, visiting the monumental "ruins in reverse", the growing suburbs and infrastructure lines that surrounded the river.  Today Paterson houses equally monumental ruins in the form of decaying textile and paper mills which to this day push and pull the river through meandering raceways and dams, manipulating its truly monumental force, stretching it like taffy into the the city.  Paterson is home to a massive dam built through the pushing and pulling of glacial ice throughout millions years of geologic history.

The Great Falls, a roughly 70 foot tall basalt formation rushes with water that powered the growth of the city and its mills in the 19th century.

A couple of days ago I drove with a friend 2 hours north of Philadelphia to tour the ruins and geologic rearrangements.  Just south of the Great Falls, now a National Historic Park, lie the ruins of the Colt Mill complex.  Once the economic base for the city, the mill now stands as a wild collection of brick and basalt ruins scattered around the river, raceways weaving in and out of the old buildings. Constructed from the vertical walls of the carved rock, the buildings tell their own geologic history. The line between building and ground is so blurred that it's next to impossible to distinguish the two, particularly along the edge of the water.

 

  Were these great walls formed by the  scraping of glacial till over millions of years, were they carved by our hands in the making of now forgotten industries?  Piles of building rubble lay scattered throughout the site, ruins in reverse; built and then fallen, now waiting a future rearrangement.  This material is a glacial drift of its own right, deposits from a new geologic era.

 It's possible (inevitable?) the park will expand into the mill, which in its current state offers an amazing potential to the imagination of any curious trespasser.  In the face of such sublime, exposed and manipulated geology, I fear any design would miss the mark, even though it would be a huge asset to the community and improvement in the context of public safety.  The rawness of the material of the ground is so profound, and even more pronounced in the presence of a crumbling architecture made from the very material it stands upon. While the place now provokes feelings of danger, it also carries its own charm and abounds with the nature of successional growth (aspen, ailanthus, knotweed).  As you move to the edges, the vegetation is taller, more diverse (maple, locust, sycamore), and even further out to the edges of the urban-domestic cherrys, japanese maples and crabapples. This site is a vault of memories for Paterson, now remaking itself with multi-ethnic restaurants, artist lofts and historical centers.  The industrial and geologic relics, the gradient of growth throughout it, and the new home it supplies to the wild (we saw groundhogs on 3 separate occasions) of post industrial habitat and creative potentials for public space, are powerful agents in the evolution of this riparian edge.

I anticipate that this territory will continue its evolution for the next decade or so, awaiting the funds for redevelopment.  I expect the industrial pollutants are now trapped underground, beneath the cracking pavement and crumbling buildings, slowly seeping into the river. I hope this condition will hinder or delay the complete removal of material from the ground so as not to rapidly expose hazardous elements, but to also allow for the memory of this place to evolve with it.

Proposal Update

    As a student of landscape architecture, the Wild pervades the development of my work.  Embedded in the creative process is a wild sensibility, one of divergent and experimental means coupled with a discrete, narrowing precision.  The unrestrained design practice rejects preconcieved outcomes and provides the release for unexpected development through the agency of imagination and material engagement. Built landscape works designed for the unfolding of unrealizable wilds lend an analogous agency to the landscape and a potential imagination to the visitors and participants in its making.  Wildness exisits within us and we exist in the Wild.
    The Wild, a term so deeply embedded in the American imagination, owes its ideation to its European descendants, particularly in their conception and travel to the New World.  For centuries the European landscape has been defined by the taming and cultivation of the land, even in its most remote and pristine locations.  Europeans have been on the search for the unknowable Wild for centuries, visiting the New World and traveling their own continent in hopes of acquainting themselves with the images and profound experiences offered by the Romantic notions of nature: the Beautiful, the Picturesque and the Sublime.  While the Wild has been sought out in remote locations and designated to bounded wilderness entities, we have all too often forgotten the wild of our everyday lives.
    In the tradition of The Grand Tour and the European quest for Picturesque and Sublime natures, I propose to travel to Europe in search of a reconfiguration of the Wild, not one of separateness from the everyday, but one deeply embedded in the concept and construction of cities and familiar landscapes or territories. 
    The trip will be organized into journeys at three locations chosen by the range of wild they possess: the post-Franco wild of Barcelona’s abounding contemporary landscape architectural works, the post-industrial wild of Lille, France, and the archipelagic wild of the Inner Hebrides of the Scottish Isles.  One-two week stays will provide me with the opportunity for an American/ Thoreauvian experience of walking, exploring the Wild through the repeated wandering of an expressed homebase.  Starting each day with a walk, the journeys will be arranged on a gradient from the highly structured to the widely amorphous. 
    In Barcelona I will start with multiple destinations in mind, structuring my movement in an orderly manner from image to image, design to design, garden to garden.  Will the wild occur in the movement through the city, between destinations, or in the careful consideration of landscape interventions? 
    In Lille, my travel will be structured around a single destination, Parc Henri Matisse, where a 1 acre and 7 meter high section of the park is partitioned off from the public to the wild development of flora and fauna.  Everyday will start with a departure from my residence and an arrival at the park, providing an opportunity to wander the city in a different manner each day, revisiting and experiencing afresh the familiar and the new of the city. 
    In the Inner Hebrides my travel will be open-ended, based on word of mouth with travelers and residents, local maps, advertised destinations, and chance encounters with opportunities for movement.  The travel will be unrestrained and divergent, starting and ending in the same location, but completely open to the events of the day in its movements and chance destinations.
    Throughout the journey I will engage in a pre-plannned and consistent representational technique documenting the difference of each wild through a regular approach in imaging.  This technique will be based in photographic and written annotation which will be completed en route.  (see example)  Additionally, each location will call for its own unique response and representation, granting a material agency to the particularities of each landscape and city.  This work will at times be based on found material (sound, video, objects), temporary installation, collaging of maps and postcards, drawings and sketches, timelines and writings.  Through these documents, I will explore the range of possibilities the Wild has to offer in the logic and freedom of my movement, representational methodology and language, and landscape potentials.  With an eye to the Wild, I will propose a new definition, one based on a relationship to travel and habitation, moving and representing, a reconfiguration of wildness through its origins and its futures.

Travel Mode

Barcelona- Place to Place, Image to Image, Design to Design

Lille- Home to Park, Unknown or repeated way

Scottish Islands- Unknown Way, Unknown Destination, word of mouth

The Wild is Particularly So.... Photo Annotations/ Philly/Iteration1

Trying to find a semi-systematic approach to documentation-research-representation of wild in place.  This here is very anthropological in an experiential way.  Want to be able to do these in situ 1-4 a day.  Photograph and take notes, then translate that each night to these images.  May require a portable printer to print out photoworks and annotate on top by hand.  Because the hand work is better. Fact.  We will see if that is possible. Would be excellent.  Wednesday I will try a new approach- probably going to the same place.  Friday perhaps I will  take a different walk to school and try another approach.  Or Saturday or Sunday I will go on a no direction-no destination walk and try it out then.  Maybe all three.  We shall see. ... Just kidding, these are due on Friday.

Count down to submission:  4 days! Ack

An American Search for the European Wild

Updated writeup...

I've been thinking about the origins of the Wild from the perspective of an American visiting Europe.  While a term so deeply embedded in the American imagination, the Wild owes its ideation to its European descendants, particularly in their conception and travel to the New World.  Centuries have passed since the general conception of European nature has been tied to the taming and cultivation of the land, even in its remotest and pristine locations.  In the Swiss Alps, the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald.   Europeans have been on the search for the Wild for centuries, visiting the New World and traveling their own continent in hopes of experiencing the profound experiences offered by the Romantic notions of nature: the Beautiful, the Picturesque and the Sublime. “Among the first of these visitors was Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, who spent 5 months of the winter of 1791-92 in the US. Traveling in the wilderness of northern New York, he reported that ‘a sort of delirium’ seized him when, to his delight, he found an absence of roads, towns, laws, and kings... "in vain does the imagination try to roam at large midst [Europe’s] cultivated plains... but in this deserted region the soul delights to bury and lose itself amidst boundless forests... to mix and confound... with the wild sublimities of Nature''”.

In the tradition of The Grand Tour and European quests for Picturesque and Sublime natures, I propose to travel to Europe in search of a reconfiguration of the Wild.  The journey will be organized into a single transect moving through three urban to rural conditions: from the post-Franco wild of Barcelona’s contemporary architectural works, to the post-industrial wild of Lille, France, to the archipelagic wild of the Scottish islands.  The travel will be anchored in these three general locations, providing a temporary habitation for 1-2 weeks in order to provide me with the opportunity for Thoreauvian experience of walking and experiencing the wild through the ongoing process of open wandering from an anchored location.  Each day will start with a walk.  The destinations will be arranged on a gradient from the highly structured to the wonderously divergent wild.  In Barcelona I will start with multiple destinations in mind, structuring my movement in an orderly manner from image to image, design to design, garden to garden.  In Lille, my travel will be structured around a single destination, Parc Henri Matisse, (where a 4 acre section of the park is partitioned off from the public to the wild development of flora and fauna.  Everyday will start with a departure from my domus and an arrival at the park, providing me with the opportunity to wander the city in a different manner each day.  In the Scottish Isles my travel will be open-ended, based on word of mouth with travelers and residents, local maps and advertised destinations, and chance encounters with opportunities for movement.  The travel here will be open-ended and divergent, starting and ending in the same location, but completely open to the events of the day in its movements and destinations.

Throughout the journey I will be keeping a pre-plannned and consistent representational technique documenting the difference of each wild through a consistent approach in imaging.  This technique will be based in photographic collage and annotation which will be completed en route.  Additionally, each location will call for its own unique response and representation: this will at times be based on found material, temporary installation, collaging of maps and postcards, drawings and sketches, timelines and writings.

notes on conversation

New musings:

1. follow 2 transects, moving through 3 urban-to-rural conditions with different conceptions of wild (sublime wilderness, post-industrial wild, urban condition with wild contemporary projects). 3 countries each (see above) (for sake of the proposal- only 1 transect)

2. Each place gets it's own mode of transportation/ interaction/ representation/ experimentation

3. There is a consistent representational technique (pre-planned) that occurs through all places

4. Within each stopping point the movement will be unplanned.  I will go to places based on word of mouth with local maps/tools with a Thoreauvean walking sensibility. wandering, circling, revisiting places for 1 week.

5.  Locations for travel (transect 1)
Scottish Islands (to be determinded)
Lille, France
Barcelona, Spain

semi-updated ponderings on proposal

I'm thinking about the origins of the Wild from the perspective of an American visiting Europe.  While a term so deeply embedded in the American imagination, the Wild owes its ideation  to its European descendants, particularly in their conception of the New World.  “Among the first of these visitors was Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, who spent 5 months of the winter of 1791-92 in the US. Traveling in the wilderness of northern New York, he reported that ‘a sort of delirium’ seized him when, to his delight, he found an absence of roads, towns, laws, and kings... in vain does the imagination try to roam at large midst [Europe’s] cultivated plains... but in this deserted region the soul delights to bury and lose itself amidst boundless forests... to mix and confound... with the wild sublimities of Nature’” (Nash, 49). Centuries have past since the general conception of European nature has been tied to the taming and cultivation of the land.  In the Swiss alps, the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald (Shoumatoff, 101 via Wikipedia).

Europeans have been on the search for the Wild for centuries, visiting the New World and traveling their own continent in hopes of experiencing the profound experiences offered by the beautiful, the picturesque and the sublime.  In the tradition of The Grand Tour, with an American/ Thoreauvian walking twist, I propose to travel to Europe in search of the Wild.  What are the European intellectual precedents for the Wild.... there are of course the Romantic landscape ideals "The Beautiful"  "The Picturesque" and "The Sublime" lying on a linear continuum going somewhere from pastoral to craggy to awe-inspiring scenery.  The key here is the image, the imaging, and the viewing.  While these images all inspire a type of emotive reaction, they are constitutionally framed, visual experiences and representations.  However they require a movement, a travel, a change between places, views, and experiences.

What type of imaging might be inspired by a contemporary search for the European wild?  Moving from image to image, construct to construct, famous/influential/popular landscapes and gardens, historic landscapes that carry the Romantic notions of B, P+S (possibly those included on the traditional tours) as well as identified contemporary projects that hold the potential for a new reconfiguration of the Wild.  These landscapes have all been depicted and represented in some form, broadcast to a large public audience through photographs, written accounts and theoretical ponderings, drawings, etc. But I have never experienced them beyond the page or the screen or the explanation. I will visit these sites with an eye for the wild. (Wild keeping an open mind to what that may be).

The working idea is to travel to these places in a linear/circular sequence.  Image to image is planned: Bomarzo, Stowe, Igualada Cemetery, Parc Henri Matisse, etc. These projects will be documented, photographed, drawn, written, recorded, walked through, toured, possibly I will spend the day there.  Where are these projects positioned in regards to the wild, in regards to the garden?  How do they embody a European or Romantic notion of wild, of B, P+S?  The wandering, the Thoreauvian approach will take place in the journey to and between these places. The wild of this trip in the methodological sense will happen in the process of the journey: the walk, the train ride, the drive, the flight.  In plotting a route, where will I go, what will I find. Will the experience of the city, the suburbs, the rural be inflected with a sense of wander in the everyday, a de Certeau(ian) experience to be reproduced and mapped- collaged, drawn, annotated, instructed, photographed, written, intervened upon, as a means to open up the potentials and future for the exploration of the Wild, the unknowable, the designable. Keeping this in mind, I will move through the city, the country, the continent with an eye for the wild in the approach of the wild... ie: maintaining a divergent/ ecological unfolding and potentiality in my wandering and imaging.

How do I maintain an open mind in regards to searching for the wild.  Maybe I start with a preliminary definition gathered from the readings of great American and European landscape writers and designers: Thoreau, Cronon, Corner, Nash, Snyder, Clement etc.  This preliminary definition will hopefully evolve over the course of my travels in an attempt to experience, travel, and discover the unknowable of the wild.  This is were discoveries will be made in the everyday landscape and city.