Fly (2019)
Whenever I look at a fly that occasionally infiltrates my walled-in life and, trapped, is zig-zagging at the ceiling around a lightbulb, I am equal parts amused by its alien ways, anxious of what I read as spasmodic movement of panic and irritated with the impassible communication lapse between the fly and I, and with fly’s stupidity, as I judge it. I open the window and watch the fly dart in a pattern I can’t relate to and find mildly unnerving: what ARE you doing? Just relax, pause—look, see, the window is just right there. Eventually with or without the help of swatting a T-shirt, rag or a piece of paper in the direction of the open window—the fly figures it out. Sometimes I forget, or I leave the fly and its darting, and find its corpse later on when vacuuming. The movements of the fly remind me of my own. I think I am moving, sometimes I assume it is ahead, but it of course isn’t because the ahead—isn’t. I know I am moving but definitely not forward, moving with a purpose I can’t fully claim to know, always with hope that I’ll find some kind of opening. I loop, spiral, take sharp turns, bounce, drawing all the pasts and presents into my choreography.