Can an image move? Or is not an image precisely that which only appears at the very end, as a kind of condensation of its movement? Condensation would then mean it is moving ever more slowly towards a final standstill. The figures in mythology were once movement. When we awoke, they became figures. Every imagination is like a deprivation. Only in the heavens can the gods and goddesses still draw near and recede again, as if in a dance. Lilith, once the moon goddess in the sky, was a mighty and beautiful movement between the Earth and the Sun. She waxed and waned. But who still looks to the heavens when it comes to images?

A friend is attempting to make a film out of something Simone Weil wrote. In the text, she is dancing, and he tries to translate that into images. Each image is a “still” derived from the movement, which makes it imaginable. Now he wants to bring them back into movement. Each image is given a number. “What if we were to only take number eight?” Things vary a bit, but the images don’t move. They become paler and paler. Is there a heaven somewhere where images move again? Move from within themselves and not from our imaginations, in which we have trapped them?

At the end of her prologue to Brücken zum Übernatürlichen [Bridges to the Supernatural], Simone Weil writes: “And yet, deep within me, a part of me cannot help but think, trembling and shaking with fear, that he might love me after all.” A heaven opens up!

Translation Laura Liska