Mothlight

Essence of lepidoptera re-created between two strips of clear mylar tape: an anima animation. What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black. “Brakhage made ‘Mothlight’ without a camera. He just pasted mothwings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through the printing machine.” – Jonas Mekas “‘Mothlight’ is a paradoxical preservation of pieces of dead moths in the eternal medium of light (which is life and draws the moth to death); so it flutters through its very disintegration. This abstract of flight captures matter’s struggle to assume its proper form; the death of the moth does not cancel its nature, which on the filmstrip asserts itself. ‘Mothlight’ is on one level a parable of death and resurrection, but most really concerns the persistence of the essential form, image, and motion of being.” – Ken Kelman