["New York Close Up"]
["Bryan Zanisnik Goes To The Meadowlands"]
[Meadowlands, New Jersey]
I love this idea of this landscape that's constantly evolving
but also devolving.
A lot of the train lines have been ripped apart by Hurricane Sandy.
So there's new areas of devastation on top of other devastations.
[SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING]
[SOUND OF STAPLE GUN TRIGGERING]
I was photographing things I was finding along the way
like these needles that were dumped from what looks like a hospital.
Signpost markers from train lines.
And this here is this old operator's cabin that was next to a turn bridge.
It was where the operator watched for trains coming
and it's since been abandoned for many decades.
--But I'll just go this far anyway because it's kind of ruined.
Looks like one of my installations, doesn't it?
So that there in the distance is Snake Hill
and it's actually the only natural elevation in the Meadowlands.
So it becomes this sort of strange emblem of New Jersey.
In the nineteenth century, landscape painters from all across the U.S.
would come to paint it
because it was considered one of the most beautiful
rock out-croppings in the Northeast.
In the twentieth century, it was considered one of the ugliest marks
on the New Jersey landscape.
[GPS NAVIGATION] "Turn right onto Meadowlands Parkway."
The Meadowlands was always kind of this transitional zone
between the suburbs and the city.
Like, you travel through it, but that was it.
It just felt like this completely unchartered,
unknown territory.
I think of the Meadowlands as
the unconsciousness of New York City.
The unwanted, or the forgotten,
or the disgusted of Manhattan
comes here.
I was drawn by just this, like, endless curiosity that
behind the next patch of reeds
there was something amazing.
Generally there wasn't,
and maybe that's also what really drew me:
That it's so much of the same thing
again and again and again.
It's kind of monumental in its nothingness.
[Brooklyn Museum]
See these are all the reeds.
That's why I collect reeds.
And they're everywhere.
I kind of think of building one my installations
as if I'm constructing a stream-of-consciousness sentence.
That not every word leads into the next,
but there's an overall mood
or feeling being constructed.
And in a similar way, I feel that exists out here.
This landscape is very stream of consciousness for me.
[SOUND OF STAPLE GUN TRIGGERING]
The way it dots from reeds,
to water,
to public, to private,
to polluted,
to gated, and preserved;
that it really just feels disconnected.
It's a landscape that just allows me entire complete freedom.
That all the rules of civilization are discarded here.
This idea of having this freedom to explore
I think is something I would want
people to gain out of my work, as well;
that, when you go see the piece at the Brooklyn Museum,
"Meadowlands Picaresque,"
it's kind of the same play and exploration I have out here.
I kind of fantasize that my viewer is having a similar experience
walking through one of my installations.
I grew up in a place that was so suburban.
Everything was very familiar and chartered.
You know, all the houses had numbers
and were the same distance apart,
and there were only a few stores in town
and everyone knew what they were.
Everything was kind of defined.
And this felt like a place that no one ever bothered to mark or map.
And I've always seeked out something a little more undefinable.
When someone asks me if I still live in New Jersey,
I say, almost in embarrassment,
"Oh no, of course not."
"I live in New York City."
You know, and a big proud grin appears across my face.
So then I think, "Oh, am I ashamed of New Jersey?"
But then I go back here all the time
and make so much work about it,
so there's maybe...
maybe there's some...
ambivalence?
Because I think, "Well I love it,"
"but I kind of hate it,"
"and maybe I’d like to forget it..."
But I can't, because that's where I'm from.
No matter how many times I visit,
I never understand it completely.
And I may never understand it,
but that's what holds my attention.