‘ZVIZDAL’ BRINGS CHERNOBYL TO HOUSTON
What is it like to till the land in the shadow of the world’s greatest nuclear power plant disaster? To call the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone your home? That’s the focus of “Zvizdal (Chernobyl — so far so close),” an innovative cinematic play that will be performed in Houston at DiverseWorks as the last stop of its North American tour.
“Zvizdal” is a unique melding between the documentary film and a live-action performance. It was filmed over five years at the farm of Pétro and Nadi, who refused to leave the Zone when all of their neighbors evacuated.
Despite the possible danger, they quietly continue to operate their farm, raising crops and animals. Footage of the couple and the beautiful, deserted landscape that surrounds them is projected on a 20-foot screen, with an audience sitting on both sides in custom-built risers.
Beneath the screen are three expertly crafted models on rotating pedestals that show the farm and the surrounding area at different seasons throughout the year. An actor controls the pedestals and miniature cameras attached to the models, as well as adding visual effects of the footage.
“It’s such an interesting and unusual piece,” says Xandra Eden, executive director and chief curator at DiverseWorks. “You get to see the interplay between documentary and live audience.”
A world of landscapes
“Zvizdal,” named for a town in Ukraine near Chernobyl, comes from the Belgian art collective Berlin. They have a long history of creations that show the juxtaposition between places and the people who live there. In 2005, they created a seven-screen production called “Iqaluit” that examined the capital city the Inuit built in the territory Canada ceded to them, Nunavit, in 1999. Another piece, “Bonanza,” explored a desolate mining town in Colorado, and also used a mixture of screens and miniatures.
The combination of live model manipulation and film is clever, but the thing that really sets Berlin’s projects apart is the group’s ability to capture beautiful footage of these areas that the members have chosen to highlight. When the world hears “Chernobyl,” people might picture an irradiated wasteland, but through Berlin’s camera we come to see a life and a home.
“It’s a dangerous place they were supposed to leave, but it’s also their home, so they stay and can’t imagine being anywhere else,” says Eden. “They’re surrounded by this invisible danger without really knowing what that danger could mean for them.”
Local relevance
“Zvizdal” is particularly relevant to Houston. Though our city has seen nothing like the Chernobyl accident, our city is not all that safe from something terrible. During Hurricane Harvey, a toxic cloud was released from an Arkema plant in Crosby after flooding damaged the refrigeration system.
The area around the plant had to be evacuated for the safety of the residents, and chief executive Richard Rowe and plant manager Leslie Comardelle were indicted on a charge of reckless emission of an air contaminant this past August. It’s not hard to imagine families who have lived and worked in the area since the 19th century wanting to live as Pétro and Nadi do if they still could.
“I think when Harvey happened, we saw the danger all around us, how fragile these places are and the damage that they could do,” says Eden. “They could catch fire, explode or leak toxic chemicals into the air and water. We know that, but we move on because it would be impossible to live here otherwise. It’s very hard to tear people away from the land they call home.”