about the nature of darkness

The moral self-assurance of fairy tales is lost in the depths of the dark forest haunted by Manuel Knapp with his projection and recording equipment. He casts filigree white light, the strange calligraphic signals of a digital abstraction, into the existential darkness of a wintry forest landscape under a new moon; and by flashing a kind of writing on branches and tree trunks, he creates a cryptic choreography, a game of concealing and revealing.  
What may initially appear to be computer-generated images, or an electronic particle storm, is in reality just an unorthodox dance of light. It brings to mind snow flurries and swarms of insects, the thousand suns of the night sky, the glittering of water, and the abstract avant-garde of the 1920s, especially Viking Eggeling’s Diagonal-Symphonie. Everything here vibrates, floats, and shimmers: ascetic painting in motion.  
A light barrier is set up at the beginning: the illusion of a screen briefly split. After a few seconds’ delay, particles begin to fly in a precise, harsh circular dance of vertical and horizontal highlights. The black noise of the soundtrack has also emerged organically, as it were, as it consists of recordings of a storm rushing through the forest. Midway through the work and at its end, a kind of short circuit paralyzes the image and sound like an implosion – an acoustic shock originating in the cracking of a branch. The deep black of the night and the glaring white of the projected light are complemented by a hint of delicate natural color. de natura tenebrarum – about the nature of darkness appears at once abstract and figurative, microscopic and cosmic: a film that combines cave painting and futuristic writing.  
“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses,” we read at the beginning. This was first stated by medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas – and in so doing, he traced every insight back to concrete experience. (Stefan Grissemann) 

Translation: John Wojtowicz