Between 2016-17, composer Michael Nyman and I collaborated on a massive multi-screen installation for The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. The idea was to produce a mash-up of the raw unedited Mexican footage by Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov, Eduard Tissé (1930- 1932) with Michael’s music. The experimental restoration of the combined sounds and images would extend alongside José Clemente Orozco’s The Epic of American Civilization (1932-1934), a large, multi-panel horizontal mural at Dartmouth College, and inhabit the Hermitage’s Jordan “Kerensky” Staircase, where Eisenstein had filmed for October (1928). The weight of the enterprise was its undoing. The one “object” realised was the 2-screen Idols Behind Altars composed of footage used by Jay Leyda for his marvellous Eisenstein’s Mexican Film, Episodes for Study (1955-1957). The music and films evoked a new language of non-editing, that is each spoke back and forth to one another revitalising the enchantments captured by Eisenstein. The overall effect conveys the vivid curiosity and sense of wonder witnessed by the filmmakers as they sculpted moving images into a portrait of early-1930s Mexico. The new music composed and performed in 2026 by DJ Spooky is just that, a joyous new reunion invigorating the authentic sights and sounds witnessed by Eisenstein.

Bruce Posner