Roadside Picnic in Peruíbe: Homage to the Strugatskys

The Strugatsky brothers, Arkady and Boris, were masters of literary political satire. Like their Science Fiction contemporary, Philip K Dick, they weren’t so much interested  in hard-tech gizmos or space travel, as interrogating the paranoid alienating character of modern industrial societies. Theirs was a time of cold wars, secret police, despotic bureaucracies, deformed language, and impending social and environmental collapse. One of the Strugatskys more well-known works is  Roadside Picnic (1977). I have no idea whether the artist above read the novel, but it is possible. A discourse on the unknown and the toxic legacies of industrialisation and nuclear catastrophe, Roadside Picnic was one of the inspirations for Andrei Tarkovsky’s mesmeric film Stalker (1979). At the narrative centre is the mysterious, forbidden, and highly radioactive ZONE. Bordered by derelict and abandoned settlements, it contains artefacts imbued with strange and magical powers. Undeterred by its life-threatening dangers, ‘stalkers’ venture out into the zone to reclaim the coveted treasures left by aliens who whilst traveling across the universe, stopped for a ‘picnic’ on planet earth and left their rubbish behind. According to the pictured scene, appropriately painted on a roadside wall, something similar happened in Peruíbe on the south coast of São Paulo. A generic Area 51 ET species has landed on the beach for a BBQ. They sunbathe, gaze at the sea, revel in the Atlantic rain forest, and chat to the local Tupi Guarani, a pictorial confirmation of first contact.