We also recognize in the film a degree zero, sui generis work which established a new visual language to represent landscapes and the built environment, and within them our human attempts to grapple with the spiritual ambiguities of a post-urban, post-industrial condition. Like MetahavenвЂ™s Digital Tarkovsky project, which uses TarkovskyвЂ™s films and cinematic methods as a prism for critiquing technology and human perception, here Tarkovsky and his 1979 film serve as an entry point for discussion of post-industrial aesthetics and environments.

StalkerвЂ™s oneiric representations of post-industrial landscapes, however, are arguably far more complex and nuanced than the imitators which followed, and they speak to loftier concepts and emotions. This imagery simultaneously inaugurated and transcended a so-called вЂњruin pornвЂќ aesthetic that similarly features industrial ruins, abandonment, architectural decay, and urban failure. Stalker вЂ™s characters move through poetically-charged landscapes of industrial ruins and resurgent nature, with TarkovskyвЂ™s camera often lingering on abandoned artifacts and apparently contaminated landscapes. With Stalker, Tarkovsky also originated a post-Soviet and post-industrial genre of photography which seeks to document sites of decay and abandonment, today widely consumed on the internet and in magazines and glossy photo books. In many ways we are still trying to be TarkovskyвЂ™s contemporaries. Tarkovsky radically advanced artistic representations of the post-industrial, while updating and complicating existing aesthetic tropes. Among those elements which are essential to Stalker вЂ™s identity and reputation are the depictions of post-industrial landscapes and environments. Stalker вЂ™s mesmerizing imagery and slowly unfolding cinematography continues to inspire artists and filmmakers. Its philosophical meditations and spiritual themes seem as relevant as ever. The film, celebrating its fortieth anniversary this April, still retains the power to mystify and confound contemporary audiences.

As Andrei TarkovskyвЂ™s seminal film Stalker marks its 40-year anniversary this year, architect and urban planner Ryan Madson reflects on the aesthetics of the post-industrial and looks at how the film can help us speculate about a world in which the human condition is increasingly circumscribed.ДЄndrei TarkovskyвЂ™s Stalker (1979) is as enigmatic as it is visually arresting.

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