Techlife News

AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD EXPERIMENT IN ‘SPACESHIP EARTH’

-

During lockdown, have you taken a moment to appreciate that at least you’re not quarantine­d with eight free-thinking adventurer­s in a terrarium of depleting oxygen levels?

Matt Wolf’s documentar­y “Spaceship Earth” provides some illuminati­ng context to our shutin days by going back to the early 1990s to study the Biosphere II, that quixotic endeavor in the Arizona desert in which eight men and women sealed themselves off in a 3-acre complex. The whole affair, of dubious scientific benefit but

high public interest, had the look and feel of science fiction, right down to the “Star Trek”like jumpsuits and the Buckminste­r Fullerinsp­ired architectu­re.

The goal of Biosphere II (Earth they considered the first Biosphere) was to create a selfsustai­ning colony that could be replicated on other planets and prepare this one for global-warming disaster. It was a lifeboat and laboratory in one; a fanciful ark for a fallen world.

The legacy of the biosphere is, fittingly, mostly as a strange time capsule. It quickly made headlines and then fizzled in scandal and disinteres­t, a grand experiment that seemed of the future until it receded into the past. Wolf’s film, straightfo­rward but compassion­ate, doesn’t necessaril­y challenge that understand­ing of Biosphere II. But it affectiona­tely documents the heady people and ambitious ideas that fueled its creation, relating an almost too-perfect metaphor for our feeble -- and perhaps doomed -- efforts to escape our own self-destructiv­e nature. In previous films, Wolf has shown a penchant for brilliant, bizarre Americans in pursuit of transcende­nce. In 2008’s “Wild Combinatio­n,” he profiled the avant-garde musician Arthur Russell. In his previous film, “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project,” he mined the archives and story of a woman who slavishly recorded TV news on VCRS for decades. He makes sober movies about eccentrics who are — often admirably so — out there.

“Spaceship Earth” brings a boat load of new specimens. Foremost among them is John Allen, the leader of the group that would, before embarking on the biosphere, co-found the experiment­al theater troupe Theater of

All Possibilit­ies. The group, forged in ’60s San Francisco, would move on to more elaborate performati­ve works. They started a ranch. They build a ship, named it the Heraclitus, and sailed it around the world. In Kathmandu, they built a hotel.

How did they afford this all? They had a billionair­e backer in Ed Bass, scion of a Texas oil

 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ?? Spaceship Earth | Official Trailer
Spaceship Earth | Official Trailer
 ??  ??
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States