Petrohaunts at Paradox

A film screening from Gosha Ananchev

Set in the Utah desert near Moab, “Petrohaunts at Paradox” is a landscape poem that meditates on the ways that fossil fuels have infused into our unconscious and shaped our understandings of time, nature, autonomy, and mobility. Shot entirely on Handycam, the nearly wordless short film takes the viewer through oil & gas fields, a half-dead ghost town, nature tourism hot spots, lithium prospecting sites, and deep time geologic strata. Part tourist gaze road movie, part sun-baked haunted research project.

Photos, maps, and notes from the project will be on display. Two short films by local filmmakers Jordy Brazo and Ben Balcom will support the petroculture-themed program for the evening. 

Gosha Ananchev (b. 1990) is a Milwaukee-based multidisciplinary artist with a background in critical human geography. Their work in video, photo, writing, and music addresses the entanglement of nature & culture, the everyday & the cosmic, the body & the mind. Ananchev's patient, observational style is a common thread throughout their work, shaped by their experience as an immigrant.