'Commingled Containers (1997)' is a purely visceral experience. His first photographic work in years, Stan Brakhage produced the film on the eve of bladder cancer surgery, and it served as an eleventh-hour tribute – a "last testament," he wrote – to the magnificent natural world of which he was constantly in awe. Brakhage described the film as "an envisionment of the fleeting complexity of worldly phenomenon." But he didn't view the world as we ordinary people did. The natural environment captured by Brakhage's camera is almost entirely alien – solid materials appear to flex and flow like liquids, light seems to materialise into swirling bubbles. The images were apparently captured by filming the refracted light in water and plastic/glass containers, the purpose being to persuade the viewer to perceive light in a different manner to that which he is accustomed (this was a major theme in much of Brakhage's work; for example, the feature-length 'The Text of Light (1974)' was shot entirely through a glass ashtray). The end result is a breathtaking montage of exotic visuals, which at times seem to resemble deep-sea jellyfish pulsating sluggishly through the black ocean. By capturing and focusing on those brief, fleeting moments, Brakhage shows us something that's before our own eyes, but that we've never seen before.
Review of Comingled Containers
