Something Beautiful

SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL is a short film exploring Wittgenstein’s thought experiment, “The Beetle in a Box”. Wittgenstein supposed that our minds (by analogy, boxes) carry the concept or notion of a beetle. However, no one can see into someone else’s box. There might be an identical, a different, or no beetle at all in the other’s box. The beetle as such becomes constructed and constituted via the language game; comprehension is achieved through communication and exchange that allows for the beetle to become consensus. SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL asks how a word – “beautiful” – is used, floats in-between minds, and gets attached in our society and offers the explanation that beauty is between the eyes of the beholders, onlookers, spectators. What do we agree upon? What is “beauty” put upon? Would something beautiful exist without humans creating and nurturing the term?

An experimental short film by Sarah-Tabea Sammel and Eric Kerr.