Stirrings Still
Video 3’20”
2020
The video I propose is a collage of insects from the collection I’ve assembled over time while moving from one place to another. The decorative result of the carcasses of these small beings, together with images of insects intent on exploring, eating and reproducing, recalls the frenetic energy of human beings going about their regular routine. Today our capacity for movement has suddenly stopped, cornering us into fixity and therefore into thought. The title is borrowed from Samuel Beckett’s final prose piece, Stirrings Still, which contains a summa of his poetics: repetition, waiting, the search for a way to “finish.” Man, for all that he may walk, always finds himself in the same place. Nature, in spite of everything, carries on in its evolution and fixity at the same time. The perfection and the horror that these insects inspire always make me contemplate just how much things depend on the observer’s point of view. In the end we will discover that, for the natural world, we are the true virus. In Beckett, the main character, too, abruptly finds himself “outside.” He begins to wander in a meadow where has never been before. In vain does he seek to find traces of it in his memory… Until he comes to a standstill, like our involuntary situation: Continue or stop? Proceed or abandon the path? One way or the other, according to Beckett, the important thing is to finish.
