Ruth E. Lyons
Stalker ( Tarkovsky, 1979)
Tuesday 23rd August, 6.30pm
Studio 6, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios
Free entry, All welcome
This is the first in a series of monthly screenings of films selected by the artist studio members at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios. Each month, TBG+S will invite a different studio artist to choose a film that has a special significance for them in relation to their artistic practice.The first artist to be invited to take part in the series is Ruth E. Lyons, who is currently occupying a six-month Project studio at TBG+S
Ruth has selected the film ‘Stalker’ by Tarkovsky. The film and its particular relationship to landscape has been a source of inspiration to her in the formation of new sculptural works for her upcoming solo show ‘Islanded in a sea of stars’ which opens in The Lab this September. She will begin the screening with a short introduction to the film and its context within her work.
About ‘Stalker:’
Deep within the Zone, a bleak and devastated forbidden landscape, lies a mysterious room with the power to grant the deepest wishes of those strong enough to make the hazardous journey there.
Desperate to reach it, a scientist and a writer approach the Stalker, one of the few able to navi-gate the Zone’s menacing terrain, and begin a dangerous trek into the unknown.
Tarkovsky’ssecond foray into science fiction after ‘Solaris’ is a surreal and disturbing vision of the future. Hauntingly exploring man’s dreams and desires, and the consequences of realising them, STALKER, adapted from Arkady & Boris Strugatsky’s novel ‘Roadside Picnic’, has been described as one of the greatest science fiction films of all time.
ARTISTS’ INTRODUCTION
Stalker was shot in Russia1979, 7 years before the disaster at Chernobyl.
Some people say that Tarkovsky Foresaw the disaster with this film.
In the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster a concrete structure was built to house reactor 4 in a panicked rush to contain the spread of radioactive material.
Inside the concrete sarchophagus is a 200 tonne mound of nuclear material melted into the floor that has become known as the Elephant’s foot because of its shape.
Today 25 years on cracks are forming in the sarchophagus.
It is the daily task of the few workers still employed at the plant to pump water out of the reactor and away from the thing. Original estimates set the radioactive life of this material at 10,000 years. Today, scientists estimate it to be more like 1million.
Chernobyl was the biggest nuclear disaster in the world. The only other level 7 radioactive disaster happened at Fukoshima earlier this year.
Presently there is something like 200,000 tonnes of spent fuel in the world, the problem that governments responsible for this waste are now facing is: where to and how to store this material?
Longterm radioactive waste isolation systems are currently in early stages of development throughout the Northern hemisphere. Most European countries including Finland, Sweden, France and Switzerland are planning deep storage, mining cavernous tunnels below the water table. The nuclear respository planned for the UK is at Sellafield.
The US are developing Yukka mountain.
These stores have to be secure an impenetrable for a least 1 million years…
This time scale poses the question that I am most interested in. How to communicate to a society in the distant future that these are dangerous sites which should not be interfered with?
In 1981 the US government set up a team of semioticians, engineers, anthropologists, nuclear physicists, behavior scientists and others under the title ‘ Human Interference Task Force’ to come up with solutions to this problem, particularly in regard to the repository at Yucca Mountain.
Thomas Sebeok a semiotician and member of the Human Interference Task Force wrote a book “communication to span ten millenia’ in which he advocated the development of an Atomic priesthood who would be charged with relaying through myth and rituals the danger surrounding nuclear material and guarding the sites.
When all the proposed long term radio-active waste isolation units are completed there will be a nice scattering of these sites throughout the northern hemisphere.
Imagine then, some small inroads into the life time of these structures, something like 5000 years from now, a people begin to explore these sites, Local lore might say that these are sacred sites that should not be interfered with for fear of repercussions but the archaeologist or whoever it might be with his new logic believes that he knows better.
Perhaps then the fabled ‘Mummies curse’ that surrounded the pyramids and tombs of ancient Egypt is the cancerous growth that will befall the intrepid explorer.
