Abstract
The waste management crisis, a subset of the larger ecological crisis, is the subject which artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles addresses in her work. As part of the Art and Ecology movement, Ukeles calls attention to the byproducts of wanton production practices: the garbage, the waste, and the landfills where ephemeral consumer products eventually rest. As the Artist-in-Residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation, a position she has held since the mid-1970s, Ukeles worked on the renovation of the Fifty-ninth Street Marine transfer station in midtown Manhattan to create Flow City. She produced a public access space through which the public can walk and view the facility and its operations. The importance of Flow City is derived not only from the innovative collaboration it represents, but also from the implications of the Fresh Kills landfill site, the eventual repository of the waste stream that flows through Flow City.