Remastering Eden 
A collaboration between Robert Gerard Pietrusko and Courtney Stephens

What if humans used the media archive to resurrect former ecologies? Scientists now estimate that human-induced climate change was underway by the mid-19th century. This means that the entire history of non-fiction cinema, regardless of its original intent, has also been a documentation of our changing biosphere. As film scholar Jennifer Peterson has noted, the early documentarists who filmed frogs and glaciers thought that they were capturing elements of an ever-renewing world, but within these recordings we now find evidence of extinct species, fleeting ecological niches, and not-yet-spoiled landscapes. The Room is not about these lost ecologies but about future world-building through the evidence they offer.

The nature footage that appears in The Room was drawn from mid to late 20th century Soviet archives, and includes 16mm documentary footage, early video, and computer graphics. In its marginalia—from color palette, to set design, to pixel resolution—it reveals the many micro-eras of 20th century media. Artifacts of a vanished state, the films presented visions of a future that never came, with nature and humans harmoniously entangled. The Room uses these collected moments of natural, and sometimes hyper-natural, beauty to resurrect a fallen planet through the magic of cinema. It is through these magical properties that the video promises some kind of remastered Eden. Fitting, as the Eden story has always been about framing nature for human consumption, and losing it irrevocably. 

The Room is a feature from Robert Gerard Pietrusko’s new cassette, Elegiya, out now on Room40.

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24 JUL 2021 - FACT Magazine