David Nye defines landscapes as “humanly modified places where people live.” He posits that an anti-landscape is landscape’s inversion: “An anti-landscape is a man-modified space that once served as infrastructure for collective existence but that has ceased to do so.” The West Lake Landfill is an anti-landscape: a landscape rendered the opposite of ‘productive’ by a legacy of contamination, extraction, and war. Here we see the echo of consumption, a modified infrastructure built to manage the unforeseen consequences of trash and war waste. The complex system of valves and tubes enables the underground fire to ‘breathe’, imbuing it with a fetid and cacophonous semblance of life. The meaning of the sign posted “Non-native road” remains elusive, a coded lexicon of those who manage the infrastructure. Its presence reminds us of the importance of language in discussing toxicity—“subsurface smoldering event” has different connotations than, say, “underground fire dangerously close to nuclear waste.” What is native to this place, and what is not? This land is home to untold stories. When it was a family farm (from the 18th century into the 20th), ploughs turned up indigenous artifacts that attracted the attention of archaeologists. The land transitioned into a quarry, then a landfill, though it is still bordered by the homesites of descendants of its earliest settler-colonialist farmers. It is even home to a vineyard and winery, where the view and the odors are incongruously paired with sweet Missouri wines. The presence of an anti-landscape in the midst of what was once (and occasionally still is—grapes are grown here) ‘productive’ heightens the bitter sense of contrast.
David Nye defines landscapes as “humanly modified places where people live.” He posits that an anti-landscape is landscape’s inversion: “An anti-landscape is a man-modified space that once served as infrastructure for collective existence but that has ceased to do so.” The West Lake Landfill is an anti-landscape: a landscape rendered the opposite of ‘productive’ by a legacy of contamination, extraction, and war. Here we see the echo of consumption, a modified infrastructure built to manage the unforeseen consequences of trash and war waste. The complex system of valves and tubes enables the underground fire to ‘breathe’, imbuing it with a fetid and cacophonous semblance of life. The meaning of the sign posted “Non-native road” remains elusive, a coded lexicon of those who manage the infrastructure. Its presence reminds us of the importance of language in discussing toxicity—“subsurface smoldering event” has different connotations than, say, “underground fire dangerously close to nuclear waste.” What is native to this place, and what is not? This land is home to untold stories. When it was a family farm (from the 18th century into the 20th), ploughs turned up indigenous artifacts that attracted the attention of archaeologists. The land transitioned into a quarry, then a landfill, though it is still bordered by the homesites of descendants of its earliest settler-colonialist farmers. It is even home to a vineyard and winery, where the view and the odors are incongruously paired with sweet Missouri wines. The presence of an anti-landscape in the midst of what was once (and occasionally still is—grapes are grown here) ‘productive’ heightens the bitter sense of contrast.