Empires of Tin

By Jem Cohen

HOMELAND SECURITY, WALL STREET, 2007

THE SECOND BEFORE HE TELLS ME I’D BETTER PUT THE CAMERA AWAY.

I DO NOT TELL HIM THAT I’M MAKING A FILM SOMEHOW INSPIRED BY JOSEPH ROTH’S THE RADETZKY MARCH, A 1933 NOVEL ABOUT THE END OF THE HABSBURG EMPIRE. NOR DO I TELL HIM ABOUT VIC CHESNUTT’S SONG, DISTORTION, IN WHICH HE SINGS: “HISTORY IS A DAISY CHAIN OF LIES, HUMANS LOVE DISTORTION… CIVILIZATION IS COSTUMED REVELRY, CULTURE BY COERCION.”

I DON’T TAP HIM, OR THE MAN ON THE PHONE, OR THE KID ON THE STAIRS, ON THE SHOULDER AND REMIND THEM THAT IN JUST A FEW MONTHS LEHMAN BROTHERS WILL DECLARE BANKRUPTCY AND WASHINGTON MUTUAL WILL FOLLOW SUIT BECOMING THE GREATEST BANK FAILURE IN U.S. FINANCIAL HISTORY. I DON’T SUGGEST THAT THE ENORMOUS FLAG THAT HAS COVERED THE ENTIRE FACADE OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE SINCE AUTUMN OF 2001 MAY BE A BAD IDEA GIVEN THAT IT WOULD MAKE A GREAT TARGET FROM OUTER SPACE, OR THAT I BELIEVE WE SHOULD ALL THINK MORE ABOUT WORLD WAR ONE, OR THAT THE MILITARY/SCIENTIFIC TERM FOR THE MOMENT IN WHICH DUSK GIVES WAY TO DARKNESS IS EVENING’S CIVIL TWILIGHT.

I GET THIS SHOT, TAKE THE CAMERA FROM MY EYE, AND MOVE ON.

Jem Cohen, NYC

“Back then, before the Great War… it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a person lived or died. If a life was snuffed out from the host of the living, another life did not instantly replace it and make people forget the deceased. Instead, a gap remained where he had been, and both the near and distant witnesses of his demise fell silent whenever they saw this gap. If a fire devoured a house in a row of houses in a street, the charred site remained empty for a long time. For the bricklayers worked slowly and leisurely, and when the closest neighbors as well as casual passersby looked at the empty lot, they remembered the shape and walls of the vanished house. That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.” – Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

Jem Cohen is a filmmaker whose works include Chain, Instrument and Lost Book Found. He plans to begin placing the double anchor symbol {+} on his work as a reminder and a spark. He hopes that others might do the same.

His new work Evening’s Civil Twilight in Empires of Tin is now available in a very handsome dvd edition from Constellation Records.