Summanus Butterfly
Cheng Ran
程然
Production date
2010
Object Detail
Media
video
Measurements
4 min 22 sec
Notes
Dreams are omnipresent in Cheng Ran’s imagery, which often suggests the blurred liminal moments between waking and sleeping. Summanus Butterfly (2010) was shot on a mobile phone. The artist woke to find that a butterfly had become trapped between the window pane and curtain, fluttering helplessly. Summanus was a Roman deity of equal rank with Jupiter, the god of the nocturnal heavens, and of thunder and lightning in the night sky. The reference suggests the significance of singular, apparently random, natural events, and evokes the ‘Butterfly Effect’ of Chaos Theory, which speculated that a butterfly flapping its wings in South America might affect the weather in Manhattan — or in Hangzhou. Cheng Ran stretched the video from a few seconds to five minutes of silent fluttering, the fragile insect casting the shadows of its desperate struggle. We think of its short life cycle, and then, inevitably, of our own fleeting moment in the light.
Accession number
2011.022