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++analysis 1
++analysis 2
++intervention 1
++intervention 2
++intervention 3
++models
++about
2003
instructors: Lisa Strausfeld, Ben Rubin, David Pysh
(The following text is based on my statement for my class presentation.)
(slide 1)
1. interface: highway--cemetery--nature
(movie: cut 20s)
Once Route 22 was a long long cut across the field. As a result, Lenape Park was cut open. That's the way highway meets nature--the highway wins and bites almost always.
But this cruelty happened decades ago. Today the scar of the injury remains, while the pain seems to be long gone, except for a few possible road kills.
(movie: ceme 15s)
Strangely, between Route 22 and Lenape Park, there's the Bnai Abraham Cemetery. In the noise of highway traffic, the cemetery lies quietly as if reminding this world that life and death are still close.
Nature is closer to us than we imagine, too. Yes, even physically. When we pass the nature, we pass it too quickly. (movie: c-city 9s) When we stop at Route 22, we stop at Target, The Wiz or Circuit City, which is next to Lenape Park.
(movie: experience 70s)
So maybe we need to slow it down a little, think about how the park is seldom our destination, even though it is a stone's throw away; and think about how death is an inevitable destination.
Lenape is a group of Native Americans, also known as Delaware Indians ("Lenape"). Abraham is the progenitor of the Hebrew people in the Bible ("Abraham"). Unlike the upright gravestones in some Christian cemeteries, the gravestones in Bnai Abraham are recumbent. Jewish law forbids cremation because it wants the body "to return to the earth in a natural way" ("November 1999"). A Chinese idiom describes the circle of life as "falling leaves settle on their roots." People die, are buried in the ground and decompose. Maybe death is a portal to another world, or just a way home--back to nature, again.
(slide 2)
2. the voice of the others
During the field trip to Route 22 on January 28, 2003, I visited the cemetery, but didn't make it to the park. So when I came back, I searched the internet and guess what, I found the web site of Lenape Park!
(show posters)
The web site is all about the nature I searched for at the gray, lifeless commercial strip on that cold afternoon. The site provides irregular updates on wildlife sightings in the park. A recent one was updated about a week before our visit ("Recent"):
Recent Wildlife Sightings
January 23, 2003:
The following were sighted at Lenape Park on 1/21/03:
(Species), (Count)
Carolina Wren (2)
Tree Sparrow (20)
Song Sparrow (5)
Red-bellied Woodpecker (3)
Junco (15)
Fox Sparrow (1)
Northern Cardinal (8)
Red-tailed Hawk (2)
RARE SIGHTING: On Monday, January 20, 2003, at about 0830 hrs, Dan observed a Peregrine Falcon flying across the area of the Rahway River dam.
The permeated commercial graphics at the site make it easy to forget the voice of the others--imagine, during daytime, the birds; and at night, the dead. Listen to the neighbors' dim voices. What do they have to say? What kind of message do they bring us--life and death? Urban and Suburban? Or "poetically dwelling" (Heidegger 60)?
(slide 3)
3. Intervention Proposal
3.1 database
+daytime shift--wildlife sightings in Lenape Park
+nighttime shift--biographies of the dead in Bnai Abraham Cemetery
3.2 flowing boundary marker
The seashore is the interface between oceans and continents. Day and night, ebb and flow, the two contend against each other and the border between them moves back and forth.
The contest between highway, cemetery and nature at Route 22 is not unlike that of ocean and continent, only slower. Every time one party wins, it pushes forward its border into its opponent's territory. On a latest aerial map from MapQuest.com, I found Circuit City and Target had claimed the land which used to be a part of the Bnai Abraham Cemetery.
Today when the commercial signs mark the edge between Route 22, Bnai Abraham and Lenape, we glorify our conquest of death and nature. But the success may not last forever--both Pompeii of two thousand years ago and advocates of sustainable development of today have told us so.
3.3 decentralized view
In an online posting on this website, Ellen Handler Spitz explains that a self-centered view is "developmentally early from a psychological viewpoint." An infant starts from a self-centered view, and "gradually grows up to be capable of more and more eccentric positions from which to view the self and others and the external and even the internal world."
Most of the time, we perceive the site through a car windshield. Road signs are designed in a simplistic style so that they are readable to a user in a fast-moving vehicle. It would be interesting to view the site from a different perspective. For example, from the park's point of view, the highway is a noisy, noxious, militant menace; from the cemetery's point of view, every living thing quiets down sooner or later.
"In 1976, the Jemal family co-founded the Wiz, an electronics chain known not only for its cheap prices but also for its ubiquitous slogan, 'Nobody beats the Wiz.'" (Bailey) These words sound sad and ironic now--it's such a coincidence that the Wiz, the current owner of the Flagship, the landmark of the site, filed bankruptcy last month.
+works cited+
"Abraham." Dictionary.com. 6 April 2003
<http://dictionary.reference.com/>.
Bailey, Holly. "Building A Mystery." Washington City Paper. 25-31 May 2001. 25 April 2003
<http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/
archives/cover/2001/print_cover0525.html>.
Heidegger, Martin. Elucidations of Hšlderlin's Poetry. Trans. Keith Hoeller. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2000.
"Lenape." Dictionary.com. 6 April 2003
<http://dictionary.reference.com/>.
"November 1999." Temple Beth Sholom. 6 April 2003
<http://www.uscj.org/ctvalley/manchestertbs/
November.html>.
"Recent Wildlife Sightings." Lenape Park Home Page. 6 April 2003
<http://hometown.aol.com/lenapepark1/sighting.html>.
Spitz, Ellen Handler. "p10." Online posting. 20 April 2003. 24 April 2003
<http://isengard.art.yale.edu/~yichunwu/
c_system/v_p10.html>.
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