A two-minute curiosity, an exercise in illumination — Time Life Volume 15. Monument to a Period of Time in Which I Lived is a fascinating look at temporary space. As a candle burns down to the end of its wick, we see a variety of pages from a diverse collection of books flash behind it, all with a candle at the center. Part meditation, part ceremony, part time keeping — interpretation of this short film is up to the audience. With bated breath, we watch what so few dare to attempt to create: a simple action made utterly transfixing.
As the slow, dwindling wick is softly coaxed to ash by the flame — as images all around flow quickly, burned into our retinas more than consciously processed — we’re reminded that the media we consume throughout our lives and the world we take in are at once momentous and momentary. Mungo Thomson’s fifteenth stop-motion piece (presented in NYFF’s Currents Program 2: Afterimages) reminded me of a simple truth: for the rest of time, you will be marinated in love.
I was able to converse with Thomson on his ambitious creative project; we spoke of the essential practice of creating stop-motion projects, the treasure troves of literature that inspired the flashes of images accompanying the candle wick, and the lifecycle of light.
Bella Vega: Why did this film feel essential to be made? Where did the idea come from?
Mungo Thomson: This film is the fifteenth entry into my Time Life series, an ongoing suite of stop-motion animations, each composed of thousands of still images sourced from reference books and visual encyclopedias. I decided to make a work tracking a candle burning down because I see its melting as a visual metaphor for the waning days of analog media.
BV: How did you curate the book pages with the candle flame? Was there any rhyme or reason?
MT: I took images of candles from an array of books on candles and candle-making, home decor and entertaining, and religion and magic; the Time-Life books that give the series its name; Gerhard Richter’s book Atlas; Sarah Charlesworth catalogues; and behind-the-scenes books on the making of Barry Lyndon, Game of Thrones, and other dramas set before the advent of electricity. By drawing on these sources, I make reference to art, design, and media more broadly.
BV: What is your favorite usage of a candle: divine in worship, like on an altar for a saint; divine in prayer, like an intention of good fortune for someone you love; used in a ritual; or providing light to a home/space?
MT: I like to use candles to watch time passing.
BV: What was the filming process like for this?
MT: Making this and the other Time Life films requires scanning thousands of books, then meticulously editing together images taken from them so that they flicker by at a pace that matches that of the highest-speed book scanner. The images also need to come together to follow a set logic — in this case, they track the temporal progression of a candle burning. The soundtrack came at the end. I found an ASMR recording of vinyl crackle on YouTube that fit perfectly with the idea of proximity to the analog through the digital.
BV: How do you feel that Volume 15 fits into the NYFF Currents theme it is placed in?
MT: The theme of “Afterimages” is perfectly applicable to Volume 15: the film is a condensation of the imagistic residues of candles that once burned brightly but now have burned out.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
