The video focuses on a closed door in a completely dark space, lit only by the faint glow seeping in from the room behind it. Amid the rhythmic fluttering of a moth’s wings and the creaking of the door, the door swings open and shut repeatedly at high speed.
The frames that make up the video seem still under construction: partial digital images, marked by visual glitches and an unfinished rendering of light — what is known as image noise.
Suddenly, when a character flings the door open and briefly peers beyond it, the image quality soars: every detail becomes perfectly visible, the light from the room floods the darkness of the night.
The character is left breathless, and quickly hides, closing the door behind him. In that moment, the image breaks apart again, slowly starting to take shape only to dissolve once more, making it impossible to hold on to that moment of clarity — an intuition, a door briefly thrown open — and fully grasp it.
The root of being is shrouded in darkness, while the ways of being are fully illuminated; we do not know the meaning of existence, nor why we are given being rather than nothingness, but we can endlessly debate the modes of existence and the ways of living.
V. Jankélévitch, La Mort, Paris, Éditions Flammarion, 1977
Sound Credits:
Door opening and closing 2,7 by JakLocke on Freesound
Me gasping by bfdifan1405 on Freesound