Pruit Igoe

2014

30:11 Runtime

Events, like the end of the frontier, are understood within the American landscape. And, hidden within images of that landscape are latent political ideologies. Yet, the biological insistence of landscape has the potential to overtake both events and ideology. Pruitt-Igoe is a video installation that traces the footprint of the last demolished building in the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St Louis. The destruction of this building is understood as the death of Modernist Architecture, as claimed by Robert Jenks. The film traces the footprint of the building through the urban forest that has grown up since the building's demolition in 1972 from dark into first light. The project emphasizes the production of the image, its relation to landscape, and the processes of historical forgetting.