I’ve been excessively busy for the past month or so, with a lot of emotional upheaval taking place as a result of being made redundant (a case of being forced to leave just as I was about to walk away) so today I’ve had something of a crash and burn moment and have been very sleepy and a little tearful.
I was trying (and failing) to write this afternoon and an email came through from James about the Ship of Fools residency. He said he’d been having some really positive feedback on the videos we made together earlier this month, which reminded me that I ought to post them on here.
Watching these videos back today, I suddenly feel the pathos in them with twice the intensity that I did previously. I’m pretty sure that as a person who once felt inclined to jump from a high place and float into the abyss, I will always stay haunted by the possibility. Part of my psyche always somehow wants to keep it available as an option…… just in case. And I guess its that part of my psyche that drove me to want to make these videos.
I would love to hear some thoughts and feedback on them, if anyone has some…..
Jump – Part 2
I’ve just returned from a hectic, whistle-stop weekend in London. I went with the duel purpose of looking for somewhere to live and also participating in a residency project with The Vacuum Cleaner http://bit.ly/BK3jp about mental health. While the residency yielded two interesting little videos with a lot of worthwhile discussion, the house hunt ended with two cancelled viewings and a wild goose chase around Archway…… something tells me that looking for somewhere to live in London may require a little tenacity…….
I applied to take part in Ship of Fools http://bit.ly/mMbv2O because I hoped it might help me to start developing some of the ideas that I generate through writing in more visual ways. In particular I’ve retained a morbid fascination with Internet Suicides that originated way before I started this blog. Its odd that it has never really seemed appropriate to write about any of the suicides I have read so much about in any of my posts. I still can’t really articulate what it is about these sad, lonely, yet very public deaths that I find so compelling. Its certainly a very difficult subject to broach, given that most people simply dismiss it as attention seeking or as being too perverse to be worthy of attention.
So I came up with a proposal to document a jump. Fortunately this didn’t require ME to jump off a building (I’ve not had any suicidal thoughts for ages) instead me and James crafted a fairly ingenious low-fi contraption made out of sponges, cardboard and cable ties that would allow a camera phone to make the 17 story drop from the top of his tower block completely intact and still recording video footage. You can see the resulting videos here http://bit.ly/mk6Mis
My favorite part of these films is the hesitation just before the fall. Its powerful to think of making a decision and overcoming that moment where fear threatens to override the wish to jump into oblivion. Obviously we have slowed the footage down to about 10% of its original speed giving the whole thing an air of melancholic detachment.
James and I hope to develop this work somehow, probably first and foremost by just making a lot more videos of ‘jumps’ and seeing which random combinations of falling and spinning create the most interesting video.
