Kerry Skarbakka falls

June 16, 2005 6:08 PM

Kerry Skarbakka falls
posted by mexican (27 comments total)

These are wonderful, eerie, dream-like photographs that give me visceral reactions to his depictions of falling. How did he DO that?

Kerry Skarbakka's images of his mother's brain cancer are profoundly moving and his biography is inspiring. I wish him well.
posted by nickyskye at 6:48 PM on June 16, 2005

How does he do it? I assume there's no photoshoppery involved, since the point seems to be the verity of capturing actual falls. But surely the guy's got some back problems by now, no?

Anyway, an interesting artist, thanks, mexican.
posted by soyjoy at 7:21 PM on June 16, 2005

How does he do it? I assume there's no photoshoppery involved, since the point seems to be the verity of capturing actual falls. But surely the guy's got some back problems by now, no?

This Yahoo News Story has this info:

"Collaborating photographers snapped away as Kerry Skarbakka fell more than 30 times from the five-story Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday. The photographs will be retouched to erase the pulleys and wires that kept Skarbakka from hitting the pavement.

Skarbakka, 34, said he started thinking about falling after watching on television as workers jumped to their deaths from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, he says he sees falling as a metaphor for life."

Mexican, this is a great post, and I hope that every single other Mefi poster takes a lesson from it -- news can be the inspiration for a great post, without actually being the post itself. Thanks so much for posting this.
posted by anastasiav at 7:26 PM on June 16, 2005

Awww, anastasiav, you had to go and ruin my little fantasy with cold hard facts. I just hope you're happy, you... you... empiricist!


Still a fascinating artist, though.
posted by soyjoy at 7:47 PM on June 16, 2005

I like the concept but I wish he'd thought through the lenses and shutter speeds better. For instance, I really liked this image, but to me, because of the blurring in his arms and the positioning of the camera, it looks like poor photoshopping.
posted by cyphill at 7:57 PM on June 16, 2005

My personal favorite. It really gives me a sense of impending disaster.
posted by obvious at 8:33 PM on June 16, 2005

Thanks for the Yahoo news story about how Kerry accomplishes some of his falls. A pity others, more literal-minded, could not comprehend his vision.

Three of my neighbors in NYC were in the the South Tower or at its base on 9/11 and saw many people who fell or jumped and their lives have, understandably, changed in a number of ways because of surviving that.

There is something about the falling, being in limbo between here and there, that is for me a powerful life metaphor.
posted by nickyskye at 8:36 PM on June 16, 2005

I think I could have appreciated it more had he not referenced September 11th as some sort of event needing "artistic response." There is something about that that puts me off a bit.
The pic's themselves are pretty cool. Even if they are photoshopped. (They would need to be or he would only have one pic)
posted by a3matrix at 8:45 PM on June 16, 2005

ah, I see Kerry has a page with an artist's statement about his photographs of falling:
"Philosopher Martin Heideggar described human existence as a process of perpetual falling, and it is the responsibility of each individual to catch ourselves from our own uncertainty. This unsettling prognosis of life informs my present body of work. I continually return to questions regarding the nature of control and its effects on this perceived responsibility, since beyond the basic laws that govern and maintain our equilibrium, we live in a world that constantly tests our stability in various other forms. War and rumors of war, issues of security, effects of globalization, and the politics of identity are external gravities turned inward, serving to further threaten the precarious balance of self, exaggerating negative feelings of control."
posted by nickyskye at 8:53 PM on June 16, 2005

"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, he says he sees falling as a metaphor for life.

Translation: "I am a puerile attention whore."
posted by Floach at 9:04 PM on June 16, 2005

Certainly attention getting, and visceral--who can view the images without getting that queasy feeling of freefall in their stomach?

But there is nothing new under the sun. Yves Klein's iconic Leap into the Void made the same point 40 plus years ago.

Respect to the bruises though; I'm sure it's not easy. But is it art?
posted by Admiral Haddock at 9:16 PM on June 16, 2005

I saw this news story first. I liked the concept and the AP photo but thought the how dare you take inspiration from my tragedy attitudes and go paint a bowl of fruit or something quotes were a bit gratuitous. And while I don't think that I'll be adding Skarbakka to my list of favorite photographers I thought the variety of motivations and compositions for the falling works were interesting.

As to whether the images are art or not, I guess I'll have to defer to Floach.
posted by mexican at 10:00 PM on June 16, 2005

Thanks Admiral, always loved that Yves Klein photograph but it has a sort of Peter Pan quality that Kerry's images do not in their falling. I do think falling works as a sort of life metaphor, the way the Tibetan word "bardo" means limbo, between here and there.

Why would Kerry's work not be art?
posted by nickyskye at 10:25 PM on June 16, 2005

Funny, I was just reading about this on Steve Gilliard's blog earlier today.

You do NOT want to ask Steve Gilliard's opinion of him:

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/06/mocking-dead.html

Gilliard can be funny sometimes, and sometimes he can just rant (like all of us can), and I can see how, as a New Yorker, this could piss him off, so ... I dunno what.

Interesting photos though.
posted by Relay at 10:39 PM on June 16, 2005

anastasiav writes "Mexican, this is a great post, and I hope that every single other Mefi poster takes a lesson from it"

See, I kind of disagree with this. Don't get me wrong, I love the photography and the background story. But the thing is, it was pure freakin' chance that I even came inside on this one - I clicked the wrong link. Why wouldn't I have explored it anyway? Because the FPP tells me fucking nothing whatsoever about what it's supposed to be.

If you think obscure and opaque are the qualities of a great FPP then fine. But I would usually just scoot past because there's a ton of stuff that gets posted to this site and I'm usually not going to waste my time exploring on the vague chance that I will like or enjoy or be moved by or be freaked out by whatever the hell it is that the poster has decided to hide behind a veil of impenetrability.
Don't be taking this too much to heart mexican, as I say, I love the content. And in fact, I get more annoyed (well, not really even to that level of emotion) by the assumptive crowd who expect every person on the planet to know who some obscure semi-celebrity politician is when posting newsfilterish twaddle. But I just glide on by. Shame if there was ever any decent content in those posts too.
/rant
/derail
posted by peacay at 1:19 AM on June 17, 2005

Well, I think it's great. Why is everyone so quick to jump on him as puerile, attention-seeking, or whatever? His photos a) are striking and evocative to look and, and b) have a certain poignancy to them. He uses some art jargon, but I've seen far worse from people who still manage to make good art.

Gilliard's rant assumes, wrongly, that Skarbakka was e.g. 'mimicking' and 'mocking' the WTC jumpers. It seems to me like he was just decided to make some art because of what those images - as well as other sources - made him think. Also, sure, the FPP was pretty ambiguous and might have been laid out more clearly, but I clicked through to one of the images and then went further so I don't really have any complaints that way, either.

In short, damn and blast all you haters. It's such a waste of time when people start blaring kneejerk accusations and snipes about something it's quite possible to take as cool.
posted by Drexen at 4:27 AM on June 17, 2005

Yves Klein had been there and done that.
posted by TimothyMason at 4:29 AM on June 17, 2005

I think I could have appreciated it more had he not referenced September 11th as some sort of event needing "artistic response."

Right, artists should never respond to tragic events with art, because.... *waits*

Translation: "I am a puerile attention whore."

Translation: I am an idiot who responds to everything in life with puerile snarking.

Or, what Drexen said.

TimothyMason: Is the thread too long to read?

Thanks for the post, mexican. (Though I do feel a bit as Peacay does about the format -- I too passed it by several times before happening to click on it.)
posted by languagehat at 6:44 AM on June 17, 2005

I think I could have appreciated it more had he not referenced September 11th as some sort of event needing "artistic response."

I agree with this. To put my earlier, sillier comment in a more serious vein, my initial appraisal of what kind of an artist he was - one who had mastered the physical art of falling to the point of being able to pose for pictures like this, in order to convey the universal visceral human fear of falling - was downsized once I read that it was a specific 9/11-based thing, and photoshopped to boot. Gilliard's rant is way over the top, but not without a kernel of truth. And languagehat, there's a difference between Picasso using paint to create Guernica and Picasso using a few drops of his own blood on the canvas to convey how tragic it was to him.

As to a3matrix's other comment ("They would need to be or he would only have one pic"), I disagree - I studied a lot of them closely before coming back here for my first comment and for a great many of them it is very believable that he could have escaped the situations without injury, often with a mattress or something just out of frame. Or even without. For example, while this is a great evocation of a kind of fall that can usually be counted on to knock teeth out of the head of those unprepared for it, I could see someone choreographing it and being ready to roll - so that he might get bruised but not seriously injured.

What made my previous, fantasy version of Kerry Skarbakka so intriguing was that he would be willing to risk injury in order to convey something so primal (and you know there are artists out there like that). The fact that he's doing this button-pushing art (especially this one) without any risk to his own body somehow makes him a lesser, cheaper artist for me - though still, as I said, somewhat intriguing.
posted by soyjoy at 7:46 AM on June 17, 2005

Soyjoy, he does risk injury. He does not always use safety cables/rigging for his jumps or falls. He relies on martial arts training to help him land fairly safely. But this article from the Chicago Reader (.pdf file) mentions that he has in fact been injured doing this: "a broken rib, a sprained ankle, and a thousand scrapes."

The Reader article is also good for filling in his background. The guy came from a pretty tormented Christian fundamentalist family. I think his work is great stuff - I enjoyed the chance to see him in action at the MCA the other day. (Semi-self link to my Flickr photos.)

NYC mayor Bloomberg's comments are probably completely uninformed. If you look at Skarbakka's work, very few of teh "falling" pictures involve buildings at all. It's not just about 9/11 - that just happens to be one particular resonance.
posted by dnash at 9:13 AM on June 17, 2005

I think it's unfair that everyone thinks this is just a response to september 11th. It seems to me that he got his idea from that event and then expanded on what he saw. Obviously, many of his connections with falling are not based on 9/11 at all, for instance his walking connections.

Let me put it this way: is Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" just a reaction to WW2? Would that be despicable to use the deaths of millions in order to create a dramatic blockbuster? I fell that just because an artist is inspired by a moment of pain or tragedy does not mean that he is exploiting that moment. Because Kerry expanded so much on the concept and fear of falling I think it's unfair to label this as a mere 9/11 exploitation piece.
posted by cyphill at 9:48 AM on June 17, 2005

he has in fact been injured doing this

OK, then he's back on my Great Artist list now.
posted by soyjoy at 9:57 AM on June 17, 2005

cool
posted by es_de_bah at 10:06 AM on June 17, 2005

The idea to conceptualize a fall was a good one: I would be scared if no one reacted artistically to 9/11. Oh how the media reacted, yet how many associates did I/you converse in-depth about it? For me, only one in person... it was a profound grieving process. As cyphill said, mining WWII for meaningful insight is not seen as cheap, which should be more hallowed ground. I guess its a question of timeliness, as if some are struggling even now, possibly agitated by political overtones.
Having said that, I can see how people call foul because the execution of the pictures doesn't suggest the 9/11 concept, its as if he tagged the concept on afterwards to gain credibility. For instance, the hoaky home environment, nature/cave scene, others suggest happenstance slapstick more than a metaphor for life. The devil is in the details. A little more development of this concept pointed at its inspiration might flush get better reviews.
Having said that, good show.
posted by uni verse at 10:20 AM on June 17, 2005

..should be 'flush it out and get better reviews.'
PS.. why do people have to hurt themselves to get our respect?
posted by uni verse at 10:21 AM on June 17, 2005

uni verse: In case you're asking me - They don't. They only have to risk it. And that's only for those whose art is so strongly based on the concept of danger, mortality, transgression, etc.
posted by soyjoy at 11:04 AM on June 17, 2005

Kerry Skarbakka apologizes
posted by soyjoy at 8:03 AM on June 20, 2005