Please join Smack Mellon for a screening of Nate Dorr’s experimental documentary Chemical Meadows (2025, TRT 20:00 min.), a film program held in conjunction with the concurrent exhibition Remains to be seen, guest curated by Pallavi Surana. The screening will be followed by a Q&A between Nate Dorr and Pallavi Surana.
Dorr filmed Chemical Meadows in the post-industrial wilderness of the New Jersey Meadowlands. This paradoxical space three miles from Manhattan, and more than half its size, is marred by landfills and chemical corporations yet consists of thriving wildlife. With a keen eye toward the discontinuities in the urban landscape, the director captures the otherwise unseen and invisible chemical legacies of the soils and waterways of the region through an experimental approach that links water chemistry and photochemistry. The film is the first part of the artist’s ongoing Water Qualities project.
Nate Dorr is an artist and filmmaker whose work examines the complicated landscapes of the late Anthropocene. Based in Brooklyn, lapsed neuroscientist, habitual wanderer of transitory pseudo-urban spaces.
Pallavi Surana is an arts writer and curator based in New York. She is currently working on projects with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and curator Cecilia Alemani. Previously, she has held positions at SculptureCenter and Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Flint, and St+India Foundation in India; as well as the Cookhouse Gallery and the Camden Arts Centre in London. Her writing has appeared in publications like Eflux Criticism, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper and Ocula, among others. Pallavi has been a visiting critic at various residencies around New York City, such as Pioneer Works, EFA Studios and NARS foundation, among others.
Image: Nate Dorr, Chemical Meadows (film still), 2025, experimental documentary film, TRT 20:00 min.