Chemical Meadows – Film Screening and Conversation with Director Nate Dorr

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.