Anxiety - Stay in the Light
Concept, Preformance, and music scoring done by the Artist: Mostafa Darwish
Video Performance: Mostafa Darwish
Video Editing and Animation : Mostafa Darwish
Music composing and scoring: Mostafa Darwish September 2019
I developed a fear of the dark as well as a nervous habit of biting my fingernails to cope with anxiety and panic triggers caused by a variety of circumstances, such as family abuse, environmental and societal difficulties. As I grew older, my phobias took different forms, though my habit of nail-biting remained.
The video displays the accumulation of fingernail clipping that I have gathered over the course of three years in stop-motion a single nail is added to a white bowl, with one photograph at a time, progressing in time with self-composed music in a naturally lit room. The video was captured in one day from noon until nightfall. As the sunlight fades through the evening and darkness takes over, there is a single artificial light source on the bowl, the nails are trailing like footsteps out and away from the bowl and out of frame. In the final frames, darkness takes over and the viewer sees nothing but pitch black.
In the video, each music note is with its frame shot of the sequential moving pictures. The music I composed are made with progressions of notes from certain chords, scales/notes and frequency that can trigger the feeling of unease. When I was younger, when night comes, I despised sleeping in the dark. As I always slept alone in my own bed, a source of light was always above me where I cling to for comfort. Just like insects seeking and searching for light, wherever light is, the bugs will get attracted to.