Strandweaver

“Tarkovsky, adapting Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, created a Zone in which possibilities literally expanded, and slippery ideas of faith, guilt, and desire could be contemplated. Its opening poses two origins for the elusive region: a meteorite or aliens of the “cosmic abyss.” Not that it really matters; the Zone is a vessel for the fears, anxieties, and hopes of those who visit. Other Zone-like constructions with similarly obscure origins have emerged, like the pristine Area X in Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reachtrilogy and Alex Garland’s subsequent adaptation, 2018’s Annihilation. In those works, ecological beauty and horror coexist while time and space take on their own psychedelic properties, posing fundamental questions about the nature of life itself to its own group of travellers.”

“The collective spirit Kojima fosters reminds me of the writer and artist group known as the Dark Mountain project. Its 2009 manifesto Uncivilization writes of the need for figurative ‘bearers, sherpas, guides, fellow adventurers’ in a time of ecocide.”

“Ironically, ecological crisis and its rising death toll has imparted the Zone a new, twenty-first century lease of life. While Stalker and the Chernobyl disaster emerged during the throes of Soviet crisis and the regime’s declining power in the 1970s and ‘80s, the Southern Reach trilogy and Death Stranding function as spaces to reflect on nature’s death, humanity’s destructive potential, and, crucially, our resolve for survival. Crisis generates new questions where old knowledge fails; the Zone offers us a space to work through the tumult.”

“New routine / That I’ve learned / To understand and know”