I have been dabbling in video a little lately and I have produced these two short films thus far. I have other ones I am working on, but I thought I would post these for now because they are more-or-less finished. They are each three minutes long and show a very still scene from nature, accompanied by somewhat of a dismal droning sound. In these pieces my aims are a few: Firstly it is to touch on the theme of the sublime and the proposition set forth by Kant, that the sublime was something that provokes both joy and some kind of terror, or, as I describe it as, angst. There is this overwhelming feeling when we see certain things, whether a painting, the ocean, the horizon, great colors of the sky, mountains; all these things that produce this feeling of joy and angst, as if our bodies and souls are filled with a gaping wonder and this need for instantaneous knowledge of the thing when we see it. Yet it does not come. The grandiose awe of the phenomena makes our spirits squirm. That is something I try to touch on in these videos: there is a peaceful and pastoral scene, yet at the same time there is something that makes the viewing feel tense. Which leads to the next objective: Waiting. There are these passages of open sky within the frames, the image of the infinite, nothing and yet everything all at once, and where the heavens meet the earth. The idea being that there is this longing for the things which lay beyond, and there is this tense waiting and watching, for something to happen, for everything to happen, which in itself holds a beauty, yet is still susceptible to an angst and doubt. The films end without anything seemingly happening, yet what you are watching is everything happening. The world existing in space and in infinity. So simple and yet so complex; and in conjunction, the lens of the camera serves as a metaphor, or parallel rather, of the human eye, and how something so small can perceive so much.
(Headphones help the viewing experience)
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