of Smaller Things, 2019

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Artist Statement, Movement of a Still-life

An antithetical contradiction. That made the problem interesting—creating a moving still-life. And the subject—a jar of pickled insects—it doesn’t get more still than that. I began composing music, abandoning the first attempt. The second resulted in the foundation for the piece. Listening to the music, I made visual notes while immersing in the subject—shooting video and exploring technical avenues. Working intuitively is appealing to me. Some types of surrealism works this way—with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series. I certainly had preconceived goals, but if something more interesting emerged, I followed that. At first, the cadence of the music was difficult to relate to movement. Most of the video produced was never used for that reason. Planned coincidence provided unexpected relationships between the beating of the moth’s wings and the audio’s rhythm. From there a common story emerged—a cliché—immolation of a moth.

The hands-on approach to time dilation was appealing—the stop motion of the insects and candle. The fire (match strikes) were all time remapped and applied as graphic transitions. The entire motion graphic is one of continuous time compression and expansion resulting in the suspension of disbelief.

The title, ‘of Smaller Things’ is derived from the moth’s symbolism. A god of smaller things. There’s much to the insect’s form and meaning. ‘The God of Small Things’ is a novel by Indian writer Arundhati Roy [ An activist who writes and speaks on issues concerning the environment, non-violence and also on human rights. ]. The is a story is about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the ‘Love Laws’ that lay down, ‘who should be loved, and how. And how much.’ The book explores how the small things affect people’s behavior and their lives. Pappachi’s moth becomes an eerie symbol of fear and unhappiness. When something bad happens the moth lands on a heart. When safe or more loved the moth lets go for a while.

“In the chapter The God of Small Things, Ammu has a dream of a man who holds her by the light of a lamp—‘If he touched her, he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her, he couldn’t leave.’ Part of her dream, are the people in her life and the sea that is black; the man can swim with one hand and she can too, with both her hands. She stands with him in the dream, but who is he?—The God of Small Things or other things? The cheerful man in her dream with footprints leaves none on the shore, as he swims out. Ammu wakes up from her dream and realizes she was happy in the dream.”

There’s also an interesting relationship between the moth as a god, and the ancient Canaanite god of death and the underworld, Mot. The moth demonstrates its faith and determination at the risk of loosing its life. The moth is ever-vigilant in following its path of light. This serves as a moral to keeping our own vigilance, and not falling victim of blind faith.

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