Descent
2002
8’ 7”16mm film transferred to digital media

Descent shows the view from a camera being lowered from an 800 ft crane, down the side of a building at Canary Wharf, London. Emerging slowly through thick fog, the scene is gradually revealed as being upside down. Movement also seems to become inverted as buildings move past the camera and it is hard to tell if it is they or the camera that is moving; and time is turned on its head with icy tower blocks under construction appearing like archeological relics. Finally the ground comes down from above with the full weight of gravity. Time concertinas; the present moment slowed down in the midst of a fall, or extended as a whole life flashes by. Suspended between past and present there is a moment that encapsulates both, before collision with the ground.