Gravity
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Production Company: Person FilmsDirector: Michael Haussman
Editor: Chris Etheredge
A study of gravity’s effect on human emotion, told through five high definition video sequences filmed at 2,000 frames per second. Each of the five subjects is filmed in slow motion, defying gravity, floating upward, then descending downward, bottoming out in gravity’s clutch; yet each person is magically stationary. They do not move an inch. All that moves is their skin, cellulite, muscles, bones, and expression, creating a disturbing yet beautiful shift in body mass and emotion. Even the background stays perplexingly still. The total effect is that of a moving painting.
This slow motion study reveals the shocking effects of gravity upon our body. What is normally missed in the blink of an eye, is poetically recorded in extreme slow motion, as gravity takes hold and pulls the body down to earth, causing the body mass and facial expression to sag downward, with a weariness, as if the subject has suddenly aged thirty years. It appears like a special effect, the force ripples from the legs up, turning the body wrinkled and saggy, with a worn, older face that is defeated and depressed. Then the exact opposite effect and emotion overcomes the subject, as they are made weightless and set free. We observe the body becoming youthful, rejoicing in it’s expression and flawless skin texture, as it soars away from the earth. All physical and emotional expressions seem to float effortlessly upward in a positive, beautiful direction.
The lighting and color palette is created by a strong heavenly top light, used by Renaissance masters, which dramatically exposes the flesh as if it were moving brush strokes and re-emphasizes the relation with the heavens, gravity and sheer weight of the world. This emotional shift from optimistic youth to depressed older age provokes a very strong, emotional effect.
Press
Gravity was chosen by LA Weekly as one of “10 Great Artworks at Art Platform Los Angeles Art Fair 2012″:
“This dispatch from the ugly/sexy aesthetic wing of modern art comes courtesy of video-centric Young Projects Gallery, which presented a series of large-scale video pieces distributed throughout the fair. Considering his career as a commercial, video, and fashion editorial director, it is perhaps not surprising that Haussman would utilize both cutting-edge software and his up-close look at bodyimage obsession to create this super-creepy video work that transforms footage of a model jumping on a trampoline into an unsettling meditation on the effects of gravity {and by extension, the ravages of aging } on the female body.”
LA Weekly, 12 October 2012