Brian Dailey
Jikai, 2013

Single channel video, 4 Minutes 55 Seconds.
Courtesy of Brian Dailey.

“Thus hath the candle singed the moth.”
—William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice    

Like the moth drawn to the light in this video’s hypnotic dance with death, we are all irresistibly attracted to danger despite knowing its potential for negative consequences. Making an allusion to Shakespeare’s line in The Merchant of Venice, the moth in Jikai is a metaphor for self-destruction and its fluttering around a light bulb is a meditation on societal disintegration.
The film is dedicated to the Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa, whose seminal work insightfully commented on contemporary societal issues. Jikai is in several private and museum collections; it was screened on multiple synchronized monitors on Times Square in New York City in February 2014 as a featured artist video in the Times Square Midnight Moment series.

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