We returned to Flushing Meadows Corona Park today and met with Jennifer for a walk to Willets Point, the site slated to turn into a mall. The area is nicknamed the “Iron Triangle,” and is home to a number of scrap yards, car repair businesses, even Tacquerias. There is no drainage there, so after the rain, the roads flood full of a dark sludge.
We talked about the ostensible ideology behind the World’s Fairs-of creating a multicultural, international utopia, and how the area and the park has become that, almost, as Jennifer commented “despite itself” because the neighborhood has claimed this former ash dump and made it for their own. Whenever we visit, we constantly observe people using the park, not as intended, but as they need/desire it.
We attempt to map out these relationships among time, sound, and space as a way to change our way of seeing the park- to shift perspectives to that of a mouse, a rat, a child, or a tree.
