Max Philipp Schmid

2005, 5 channel installation, loop ca. 7′ SD Pal / actor: Erwin Müller / sound: Knut Jensen & Max P. Schmid / camera: Thomas Isler / production: Stella Händler (freihaendler film produktion)

Five monitors lie on the floor, screens facing upwards. In images spread across the screens, the body of an old, reclining man can be seen. By manipulating the images through editing, the pictures are kept in an unstable condition. This instability is reflected in our perception of the figure of the old man. He seems to be suspended in a moment in which everything is precariously balanced. This moment is expanded and fanned out into various emotional settings. The facial expression oscillates between pride and fright, the victory pose is transformed into helplessness, the self-confident gestures begin to show signs of vulnerability. „The digital processing of the video images – pauses, slowing down, decomposing and dismantling – repeats processes to which older people are often exposed. It uses these processes to explain them at the same time.“

Annina Zimmermann in Regioartline

Attack on the Image
(…) „Free Fall“ is an audiovisual installation which visualizes situations in which a human being loses control. It is not the old man himself but rather the editorial manipulation which keeps the images in an instable condition. And lines are visible, over and over again, darting across the screen or leisurely wandering from one side of the screen to the other. The video image is made up of rows. The resulting layer effect provides a kind of metaphor for human beings, and in particular for older people, a metaphor of life and of fading away. We consist of fibers and we are dissectible into layers. This medical aspect appears again and again in the installation, but without over-straining the metaphor. The work comes across in a very modest way, points to individual processes without trying to over-expose them. It is never obtrusive, even when the aged body of the man is examined meticulously.

Simon Baur in the Basler Zeitung, 2. September 2005