One Million
Candelas,
January 2002
Video installation in the historic Paddington
Uniting Church, Sydney
Watching the night come over the ocean as a lighthouse casts
its beams across the sky has assumed for me something close
to a numinous experience. Undoubtedly, these rhythmic sweeps
of illumination and measured pulses of light resemble those
more instinctive cadences of living organisms; the passage
of breath, a beating heart, but the oceanic realm presages
deeper longings in the human spirit.
The appearance of a lighthouse is unmistakable, a silent
herald of treacherous conditions, an omnipotent presence
forming a bulwark against turbulent natural forces; it stands
solitary and steadfast in the face of all inclemency. These
are ominous even portentous characteristics for any building
and they carry tremendous symbolic meaning; the kind of meaning
engendered by places of worship and ritual communion, like
cathedrals, temples and shrines. To bring an image of a lighthouse
into this church seems a not unreasonable thing to do.
The ineluctable transit of day into night locates us in
time yet, observing a slow moving image requires concentration
and stillness, the kind of attention that can illuminate
awareness independent of time's flow such as through meditation
and prayer. Notions of equivalence between art and religion
often focus upon ideas about genesis and creative will where
inspiration becomes incarnate through imaginative form, but
what of redemption and reconciliation? Each is also present
in the transcendent moment.
Within these redemptive instances of knowing oneself better,
whether through art, religion or plain quotidian experience,
it is as though we are reconciled to our true identities
- enlightenment simply is consciousness. And so, the regular
turning of a lighthouse lantern becomes miraculous.
My title is taken from the scientific measurement candela,
which describes a unit of luminous intensity. It is a particularly
beautiful word and one that seemed to exert the necessary
resonance I wanted for this work.
Martin Sims, October 2001
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