Sublime Video Art by Taras Hrabowsky

Webster’s dictionary defines sublime simply as awe-inspiring. When I studied art, we learned sublime to mean something beyond this; more of a mixture of horror and beauty. This definition (as well as entropy) tripped me up. It is one thing to understand logically the definition, but to imagine it or see it in the world is quite another. Mostly what I think of as horrible are the terrible things we do to each other and I cannot for the life of me find these things beautiful.

Recently, I discovered a video by Taras Hrabowsky. He is a video artist based in Brooklyn who in addition to doing commercial effects work, projects videos onto buildings in various cities. The video that I can’t stop watching is Amalgamide Tide. It’s a visually arresting 4 minutes of unimaginably huge crowds of people surging and swirling, flying through a cerulean blue sky.  Clusters of people coming together and separating, their collective movement expresses the chaotic indifference and the exultation of being alive.

Amalgamide means to unite and that feeling is in there, but in this post 9/11 world, people flying through the sky has another meaning too. On his semi-dormant blog he describes it as “the euphoria of when things go wrong.”

To me, this is where art functions at its finest. Art can bridge ideas, emotions and reality in such a way where the indescribable becomes obvious. The terror and the beauty of inhabiting a body; it’s sublime.

You can see more of Taras Hrabowsky’s videos here.

Is there a film or video that moves you? We’d love to hear about it.