James Ballantyne

Its Liminal Everyday

Half In Wood, Half In Iron

Garmisch

Paris

Andrei Tarkovsky - Stalker - A Phenomological Approach

The Zone

The Zone is a dangerous place that is said to have a set of distinct rules you must follow in order to stay alive. To navigate this space the main character has some nuts wrapped with bandages to which he throws with a deliberate randomness. The end goal is to reach the room within the zone where your deepest desires are said to come true.

The navigation of the zone is difficult. The pavements of travel are not visible. The stalker has an attentiveness towards the surroundings in order to move through the ephemeral space. The movement is difficult as questions of its random strategy fray the group.

To help understand the film I'm grouping the 3 characters into one vessel. The landscape is being viewed as a greater consciousness, perhaps a collective consciousness. For now it will be the vessel's consciousness. When the vessel travels the consciousness it does it with great difficulty.

The room represents the result of the unconscious self the whole aim is to photograph the unspoken, unrecognised aspects of the self. The journey is navigating the conscious self to reach the unconscious self. The journey is not clear. It's like a recipe for bread with no unit of measurements. Each nation around the world has its own idea of what bread is but each recipe for bread is different although the end result being bread. The instructions serve as a guide. It's with attentiveness to process by feeling can you make what you desire. The process of making bread serves as the act of trying to engage the unconscious through channelled conscious effort, the bread being the testament to the process of that.

Within trying to get the end result the channelled conscious effort of the vessel struggles with itself. It's conflicted with philosophical questions, desires and personal aspects all of which throw it out of the process of moving seamlessly throughout itself. Its own feeling contests itself but also drives itself through it. An intriguing paradox.

All images belong to https://film-grab.com/2012/07/31/stalker/