A Case for “Mere” Recording

Ryan Ermacora and Jessica Johnson’s Empire Valley (2018) opens with a wide-angle shot of a boulder surrounded by an imperfect circle of gravel, and then long dry grasses, pale green brush, and the easy swells of an arid landscape. The feet of two extremely prepared day trekkers, sporting knee-high boots with big buckles, make their way onto the screen. They follow the prescribed path that circles the monolith in the familiar manner of those who take themselves to unfamiliar places simply to look around. One gets low with her bulky DSLR to capture a vantage of this seemingly unremarkable stone; the other gently fingers the surface of its unseen other side, and soon, the photographer reaches her hand out to do it, too.

Though its pseudo-museological framing is never explained in the film, this stone in fact unremarkable: though it’s difficult to see, its surface is marked with petroglyphs likely carved by the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem people. In 1925, the gold prospector H.S. Brown noticed the markings and set out to raise funds to have the stone relocated over the grave of the Mohawk poet Pauline Johnson, whose work he deeply admired. When his efforts failed, the chair of the Vancouver Park Board stepped in and had the stone placed in an “Indian Village” in Stanley Park, alongside various totem poles, house posts, and other Indigenous art objects. There,