Mothlight, Stan Brakhage’s Self-cremation: From Poetic Language to Use - Text 3
It must be noted that, for biological reasons, Brakhage developed special vision able to compensate weak normal vision. This addition of subjectivity to the way he looked at reality let him to establish his own representational code in which, through his vision, any object could be deconstructed, shown from different angles, with different colours and materials, in order to become completely unrecognisable in other people’s eyes. This representational principle in art had been shown quite well by Magritte, who, for his famous painting La trahison des images (1929), had painted a pipe and written beneath it “This is not a pipe” as a way of championing the idea that a painting depicting a pipe does not have the same qualities as the object itself. In the end, Brakhage’s work puts into images his personal representation of what he sees through his vision.
To do this, he uses film stock, which he compares to the surface of the brain, the image he produces being nervous system feedback. In addition, he defines himself as someone who is always looking at what is around him, to such an extent that ophthalmologists, he relates, “have never seen anyone with such rapid eye movements”. To conclude this brief analysis of his discourse, it is possible to see Brakhage’s vision as a device in its own right. The way he speaks of his ocular capabilities is, in fact, an example of his practice, of his way of creating and of using his physiological equipment to create subjective and fragmented representations. This amounts to saying that he makes cinematic practice organic to such a point that looking through the lens is no longer necessary. The filmmaker establishes a different connection to the world.
The Creative Process behind Mothlight
The goal of this second section is to shift from an analysis of Brakhage’s discourse to thinking more concretely about Mothlight by establishing more connections with the techniques, uses and devices which contributed to its making. Although the project’s inspiration was anecdotal, it enables us to better understand Brakhage’s choices around the various elements of his film, which follows the life of a large night moth, right up to its suicide caused by its obsession with the flame of a candle.
