Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans

ABSTRACT The film/installation, Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans, is an inquiry into the philosophical and spiritual implications of being. It is an examination of perception, language, and objects and their relationship to being. All we can know is that we exist, and primarily we exist as if asleep. Only intermittently, do we open our eyes and see the world. These moments of awareness make up the frames of the film. The film has many influences, including phenomenology, which attempts to understand the world through perception of the lived moment. James Joyce's interpretation of beauty and aesthetic arrest, as well as the construction of one of his most inaccessible works, Finnegans Wake, has also played a part. Like that work, the film is circular and without end. Another important inspiration has been the work of the anti-artists and Dadaists, especially Marcel Duchamp. Anti-art leads to the acknowledgement that art is everywhere and is anything that evokes Joyce's aesthetic arrest, a spiritual reaction that links art to divinity and Nirvana. Art is not so much created as it is revealed to the beholder. The installation of the film continues that theme, as the filmmaker periodically enters the gallery while filming and adds new video to the work. The film also demonstrates that to experience aesthetic arrest, one must abandon preconceived notions to see with new eyes, and it encourages others to do the same