Photograph courtesy of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection–St. Louis at the University of Missouri–St. Louis
When artist Phil Bosch (philbosch.com) moved from Holland to St. Louis for a two-month residency at The Luminary Center for the Arts late last year, she chose to study a surprisingly local subject: Pruitt-Igoe. (Coincidentally, a feature-length documentary titled The Pruitt-Igoe Myth from St. Louis director Chad Freidrichs is also in the works.) Yet that outsider perspective allowed Bosch to see the history of the infamous public-housing project anew in a 24-minute short film titled “Excavating Pruitt-Igoe.”
Coming from Holland, why did you choose to shoot a film about Pruitt-Igoe?
As an artist, I am drawn to lost or forgotten spaces in public memory. I like to investigate how our brains store memories… The more I studied the history of Pruitt-Igoe, the more I found the history from a bird’s-eye point of view—the architect and city planner, for example. But I found no story from within, from the point of view of people who actually had lived there.
What did you find in talking to former residents?
The negative aura of Pruitt-Igoe that dominates the thinking on these buildings is to be found all over the Internet, but it is never the same thing as when people tell their own story… Most people I spoke with were children at the time [they lived in Pruitt-Igoe], and childhood memories are very playful ones. For me, it has become a story of men as survivors—in spite of the horrible things that happened there. The whole spectrum is true, from a “living hell” to great groups of friends and neighbors.
The mainstream perception is quite different.
What I found intriguing is that the story of Pruitt-Igoe became a myth over the years: It started with architectural critic Charles Jencks’ declaration that the implosion of Pruitt-Igoe marked the death of Modernism. Then footage of the implosion was used in the cult film Koyaanisqatsi… I also find the fact that the site was never rebuilt—and now is overgrown by nature—part of the myth.
Do you feel like there’s more to excavate?
It feels to me like the tip of the iceberg. In the same way that history keeps evolving, this film keeps evolving.
