Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Act 3, Scene 2: A Video

In response to the e-concept: Servarbugfolgen. 

While it is a common trope of Romantic literature to portray the individual mesmerised by an element of the natural landscape, after all in ‘wandering lonely as a cloud’ Wordsworth’s speaker does come across a field of ‘golden daffodils,’ — Steph’s e-concept to ‘servarbugfolgenate’ truly captures how in moments of isolation, particularly for individuals in living in the city, insects can completely spellbind one’s gaze, placing them into a ‘trance.’ This video, ‘Moths in Flight’ uses an extremely fast shutter speed — 7500 frame per second to capture the enigmatic nature of a moth’s movement, something which no matter how much we ‘servarbugfolgenate’ using our naked eye, cannot grasp. The limitations of our perception is exposed. No matter how long we sit and observe the more-than-human world, there will never be any solid ground to the claims of human essentialism. It takes only a blink to miss a crucial event.

The poem below expresses this rumination with much more eloquence:


MOTH IN APRIL

Can I concentrate, can I
Let my eyes and mind settle
On the bug

That has settled on the wood
Knob of the canvas
Garden chair?

The moth has to be thinking.
Its moth face frowns.
The hair-feelers, black-tipped, stand level.

It jumps and flies and I have
No words to describe its pin-jag track.
It flies away from the knob and back,

My fuzzy likeness,
My brother, seizing me with melancholy—
I’m on edge, is it the coffee

And not enough sleep?
Is it the sense of all I cannot see
And cannot feel, and will die without knowing?

by Alicia Ostriker

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=35371
 

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