An illustrated ABC of the fall

The Keystone Cops tumble down in Mack Sennett movies. Bowling game in uniform. The fall is inseparable from the burlesque cinema. Chaplin falls a little; Keaton does a lot (at least twenty times in The Cameraman, 1928). We can classify these falls, make out their nature, but at the end, we all know they exist to be laugh at. Yet the same does not apply to falling artists, from Yves Klein to Sam Taylor-Wood, Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy or Bas Jan Ader. Is it an interrogation on universal gravity? A metaphor of general collapse? Or real decline? Are they showing us the body vulnerability? Do they belong to a pure esthetical choice? The answers overlap each other and remain unresolved. Images roll, leading to vertigo!

Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux is an artist. His last publication Twist tropiques (éditions Yellow Now/Loevenbruck) gather critical texts. Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux is teaching at Villa Arson in Nice, France. He has been invited to the BAL LAB on a proposal from Cécile Mainardi writer in residence at Le BAL.