Podcast
Tuesday 13 May 2025 | 19.30 - 22.15 hrs | LUX, Nijmegen | Radboud Reflects and LUX. See announcement.
Review
By Liesbeth Jansen
Scholar of culture László Munteán started by giving a short introduction about the documentary and its maker: Victor Kossakovsky was born in Saint Petersburg. He was originally trained as a cameraman, and you can see this in his films because images play a crucial role. When he became a filmmaker his interest was very much on the mundane aspects of everyday life. He is, for example, very much interested in the power of the gaze. In the course of his career, his focus on minor details of unimportant scenes shifted towards global dimensions. It became first transnational, then transcontinental and now even planetary. Architecton problematizes human-non human relations and interactions.
Meditation and message
After the movie, Munteán discussed it in further detail with moderator Liesbeth Jansen. What is its main message? Munteán said that it seems twofold: on the one hand, it is a meditation in which the camera and the filmmaker having a humble position in just following materials. And on the other hand, there is a critical tone and an environmentalist message which is important. But I found this a bit disappointing, because the conversation with the architect seemed a bit flat and superficial. This made it seem as if the message was reduced to ‘concrete is bad’. This goes especially for the scene after the interview with the architect: I found it very strange that the critique of concrete – a plea for less waste and environmental damage – was followed by a scene in which concrete was used to turn an earthquake struck town into a place of commemoration.
A sense of discomfort
Although the film is amazingly beautiful, it leaves me with a sense of discomfort, and this has everything to do with the topic of tonight, the difference between ruin and rubble: the film opens with Ukraine, with damaged buildings made of pre-fabricated concrete architecture, and then the camera moves to scenes of ancient times. This distinction between rubble that is too close to us in some extent, and the site of ancient temples is left in a dehistorized vacuum – I found that disturbing.