From 2008–2022, Jennifer Scappettone collaborated with choreographer/director Kathy Westwater and architect/designer Seung Jae Lee on multiple iterations of the performance work PARK, which explored the transformation of a notorious contemporary wastescape—that of Fresh Kills Landfill—from a site of trauma toward the possibility of a commons.
In February 2010 portions of PARK were presented in New York City at Dance Theater Workshop (now New York Live Arts) during Kathy Westwater's Studio Space Residency, featuring choreography and direction by Kathy Westwater; poetry and vocal concepts by Jennifer Scappettone; art direction by Seung Jae Lee; music by Sean Meehan and Toshimura Nakamura; and performances by Westwater, Abby Block, Rebecca Brooks, Phil Colosi, Rebecca Davis, Ursula Eagly, and Kazu Nakamura. A review of this showing by Thom Donovan appears here.
PARK at Fresh Kills was a site-specific interdisciplinary performance series developed by Westwater, Lee, and Scappettone over the course of several creative residencies at Fresh Kills Landfill, on Staten Island, New York, beginning in 2010. Collaborative fieldwork, rehearsals, and other processes of ideation were sponsored by iLAND, the Freshkills Park Alliance and the New York Department of Sanitation, the Millay Colony, and the Office of Recuperative Strategies, among various other funding and commissioning bodies, as well as through years of individual research by all parties. The work was presented on-site while Fresh Kills Landfill was still in operation on June 26, 2010 and on November 5, 2011. Tours of the Freshkills Park site (technically still closed to the public, and under the jurisdiction of the New York Department of Sanitation) introducing visitors to the site’s complex engineering, infrastructure, and ecology preceded these showings.
In the Fall of 2022, the exhibit of PARK ephemera at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art included the choral animation of Scappettone’s trash sestet on September 18, 2022. Scores from the project were again presented at Freshkills Park on November 5, 2022 and at Gibney Dance in Manhattan on December 8-11, 2022.
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Details of past presentations of the PARK cycle:
Personnel for the 2010 showing: Choreography/direction: Kathy Westwater; poetry & text scores: Jennifer Scappettone; art direction: Seung Jae Lee; performers: Maggie Bennett, Rebecca Brooks, Rebecca Davis, Ursula Eagly, Melissa Guerrero, Belinda He, Kazu Nakamura, Jeremy Phieffer, Jennifer Scappettone, Kathy Westwater, and Enrico Wey; paper dress/shirts: Jesse Alpern
Read responses to the 2010 showing by EJ McAdams and John Keene.
In 2011, the collaborators conducted a second, iLAND-supported residency at Fresh Kills, in collaboration with Freshkills Park and the New York Department of Sanitation, culminating in a public showing that was discussed at the iLAB Moving Into the Out There symposium at the New School in March 2012. See materials from this iteration at The Volta's special feature devoted to Trash. Another video excerpt appears here.
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PARK PDX was featured at Reed College's RAW: GEOGRAPHIES festival in March 2011.
PARK SCORES #3 was presented in the sculpture garden of the Pratt Institute in April 2013, sponsored by the Office of Recuperative Strategies.
Personnel for PARK at Pratt Institute: choreography & direction: KATHY WESTWATER poetry & text scores: JENNIFER SCAPPETTONE visual design: SEUNG-JAE LEE music: TAMIO SHIRAISHI & SEAN MEEHAN performance: ILONA BITO, HILARY CHAPMAN, BELINDA HE, TARA FENAMORE, PATRICK GALLAGHER, MELISSA GUERRERO, SEAN MEEHAN, TAMIO SHIRAISHI & KATHY WESTWATER
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Residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and at the Millay Colony in 2012 offered additional support to this work.
Research, process and field notes appear within Scappettone's lyrical essay "Garbage Arcadia: Digging for Choruses in Fresh Kills," first published in Terrain Vague: The Interstitial as Site, Concept, Intervention, ed. Patrick Barron and Manuela Mariani (Routledge, Fall 2013). A revised and expanded version of "A Garbage Arcadia" appears in The Republic of Exit 43.