Geographical monument
By Mikella Tyler
Embedded Files
Monuments pose a formative narrative about the places in which they are located—this is true for the monuments of New York, as war statues and feminized ideals scattered across busy street-blocks create a history, defining what should be remembered through narrow representations. From public facing memorials and statued figures, the history of New York is conveyed by male heroes and politicians, as well as ideas around freedom and justice, with a meager handful of monuments dedicated to the pivotal women of times past. All the while, a more representative narrative can be memorialized through the proposals of new monuments; works that consider history as more than male, white, and imperialist, and female as more than the gender of subordination, liberty, and land. The concept for this monument proposal is to memorialize the land of New York City as land, not untamed, for humans, or female. But indicative of the transformative geographical history of Lenapehoking and then New York City, the land was changed, and this should be recognized.
What cannot be understated is the significance of what societies remember. Whether this be through literary records of past events, or uncovered and reconstructed archeological findings—we begin to commemorate items and ideas of the past again, in current manifestations. An example of remembering is embodied in the various, yet unreasonably homogenous monuments and memorials of New York City. Through the formations of committees, funds, and organizations, the topic of diversification in representation for monuments throughout the city has been increasingly campaigned and agreed upon. The calls for new monuments, public spaces, and works of art ring throughout the city of New York.
Relatively contemporary in comparison to the ancient history of monument building and public art, New York does however lean into the stylistic choices from the ancient world to convey messages of authority, power, and democracy (as with many other US cities). To understand the monuments of NYC, it is beneficial to look back to stories of antiquity. The particularly interesting cases regard who, what, and how figures and thus ideas are represented. Scholarship often asserts that women and ideas of femininity depicted in ancient art are under represented, lacking diversity, and have little agency over their histories and memorialization. Additionally, land has been anthropomorphized as female, with intentions of drawing connections to fertility in some cases, and antagonism, and even exploitation in others. Such connections can be seen throughout artistic representations, dating back to the ancient world. In ancient Greece, reliefs and sculpture depicted female deities and goddesses to represent regional lands. The personifications of cities and islands were embodied as feminine, in accordance to the feminine gender of the words for city and island.[1] The history of gendering land as female through artistic representation can be seen through the works of ancient society, as well as current monuments standing in New York City.
Credit: Mikella Tyler.
For this monument, land shall be used to pay homage to land. This choice is not based on the feminine associate with typical portrayals, or a way to circumvent the use of women and femininity in a monument. Instead, this monument lends to other intersectional feminist ideology—of rethinking history, recognizing human pitfalls and burdens, reclaiming ideas about land usage and productivity, and facilitating conversations through unconventional means of representation. Thinking about ecological heritage, this land monument uses plants originating from the Northeastern US—wetland grasses, juniper brush, brackish algae, to indicate the deep history of the region’s environment.
The land bridge would be an ambitious ~five-hundred feet stretching across Newtown Creek and ranging from four to eight feet in width. The wetland layer would average three feet high, the algae base would be six inches at its most narrow, and the structural support would be repurposed iron pillars and wooden pier pillars. The plants growing from the wetland vary in heigh—some a few inches, the brush over a foot high. Following the meandering quality of a wetland, the bridge shape would curve and flow in the crossing of the creek. As for public use, the access points on both sides would be a fully stable and secure, allowing people to venture out on the structure up until land remains. The first thirty-or-so feet of each side will be the ‘permanent’ portion. It will look like a wetland of NYC area ecology, teeming with grasses and vegetation of light green and yellow, that dips and flows seamlessly into the water. Then, over the course of ten days, portions from the middle outwards will be sinking into the water. This process will look like the ecology is sinking, falling apart, or deteriorating from the reality of NYC polluted environment now. After the ten days, the access points will remain, as well as some of the structural support. Through documentation, the disappearance of this monument can survive with digital records, personal recollection, and an archival process that uniquely anticipates the temporality of the work.
Credit: Mikella Tyler.
The monument allows for accessibility to a changing environment, mirrored in the propose area of Queens and Greenpoint which are facing ever increasing alterations and development. The influx of projects underway, like luxury apartment complexes and fast-casual restaurants, was part of the decision making process for the site of this monument. Noting the rapidly changing socio-cultural environment these two areas face, as well as the ecological changes with developing land, the monument can juxtapose gentrification through representing ecological land. The geography of Brooklyn/Queens has been ever changing, and more so in recent years. Newtown Creek undergoes changes from human industrial practices, two waterfront skyscrapers are under construction in Greenpoint, and the one-hundred million dollar park of Hunters Point Queens opened in 2018 (with plenty of other projects in the works). An aim of the project is to involve the communities of Hunters Point and Greenpoint. Looking at pre-development Hunters Point, the public space had narrow footpaths through the wildly vegetated coastline and direct access to the river, things taken into account in the design process. As the project is accepted and goes underway, community liaisons from both Hunters Point and Greenpoint would direct the accessibility for the work, considering hours of permitted use, reservations required or not, days open—attempting to include and prioritize the people of the neighborhoods which the monument has the privilege to bridge. Another reason for proposing a temporary monument is to moderate constant traffic and attention to the area.
Credit: Mikella Tyler.
This monument hopes to understand and represent the changing lands of New York City, considering ecology, environments, and geography that’s historically forgotten and overlooked. Thinking about abruptly changing geographies, the work demonstrates the actions of use, pollution, and deteriorating over a ten day process. In considering everything for this monument, a name has yet to be chosen. Possibly this could be chosen by the neighbors where it is located. Or maybe the Lenape word for island, mënatink, a reference to both precolonial ecology and the words of ancient Greece that feminize land. Also something like nostos, Greek for “return home,” a literary theme in ancient epics of a hero coming back from sea. While the name is undecided, the monument remembers land with a bridge to connect to the geographically changing past, and to comment on rapid continually changing futures.
[1] Smith, A. C. Chapter Nine. Masculine People In Feminine Places: The Body Politic At Home And Abroad. Polis and Personification in Classical Athenian Art, 2011, 91-108.
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