What Does Darkness Visible Mean
Darkness Visible Pdf
This body of work examines our relationship with nature and is split into two sections: Verse I and Verse II. It seeks to illustrate the frail residue of the contemporary wilderness.
Verse I
In reaction to our media-led sensory anaesthetisation, and worn by the inadequacy of late political rhetoric, I have constructed a forest built from accumulated memory and the ghosts of trees. Having spent a period of two Winters visiting public spaces in central London, this work inverts decorative Arcadian layout in an attempt to restore a sense of the natural in the cultivated, somewhat synthetic city ‘wilderness’ spaces.
The city park offers an escape valve – a window leading the weary city dweller to reconstructed, consumable nature. Although the essence of these spaces can appear pseudo-natural, some of these great trees actually predate the infrastructure of the city, and despite their accommodated appearance have witnessed centuries of human endeavour.
These works provide an emotive and atmospheric lament for that deeply ingrained aspect of the human psyche, our deeply held association with the primeval forest as spiritual home, which is lost, but which, in contemplating these visual idylls can be exhumed. These works act as a plaintive call for that which can be regenerated.
Verse II
Turner was moved by what he called “The weather in our souls”. He could see the universe in a rainstorm. My search for emblematic last points of light within ensuing darkness on ocean currents
involved long periods of contemplation on the complexities of nature from a familiar vantage point.
Finding company in the words of Thoreau during his retreat to the American wilderness of Walden:
All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle, which is taking place every instant.
The framing of the camera helped to reduce the ‘noise’ of distraction while still portraying the swirling wild morass of life, indecision, strife, entrapment and the possibility of change. Deep swirling chaos with shafts of enlightenment impress one with a disarming sense of frailty. In the face of this awesome power we are left nurturing a tender hope for light within the ensuing darkness.
Through the production of these works has come a synthesis between reality and abstraction distilled through darkness. Contemplation is brought to bear upon mournful sensory visions of restored primordial beauty.
One recognises the possibility of slowing down, and discovers the still small voice of calm that in the darkness may yet be visible.
— Nicholas Hughes
Darkness Visible Film
Darkness Visible Important Quotes 1. “In Paris on a chilly evening late in October of 1985 I first became fully aware that the struggle with the disorder in my mind—a struggle which had engaged me for several months—might have a fatal outcome.” (Chapter 1, Page 3). Lyrical eloquence and lucid self examination are not features of depression. Thought processes, William Styron tells us in Darkness Visible, become muddied in the “grey drizzle of horror.” Recounting the story of his mental illness, Styron recalls his “torpid indifference” to a dinner party arranged by his wife, at which friends “politely ignore” his “catatonic muteness. This led to his lecture at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1989 about depression, which he expanded into a book-length memoir called Darkness Visible in 1990. In October 1985, Styron received the Prix Mondial Cino del Duca award in Paris. In conclusion, in Darkness Visible, we have a truly remarkable book about a subject which is so sensitive that it sparked off such a furious debate when originally published; which despite being so summarily contested and rejected has nevertheless remained continuously in print for over thirty-five years which has been a the center of probably.