Leap After The Great Ecstasy, 2011

Multi-channel video installation, aspect ratio 16:9 and 4:3, 17 min 45 sec, stereo sound

Series of photographs, c-type prints from 5x4 negative, various sizes

Leap after The Great Ecstasy (2011) observes a range of physical and psychological situations in the quest for a brief moment of perfection. Based around an annual worldcup event and set on the world’s largest natural skijump, Leap was filmed in the high alpine valley of Engelberg, Switzerland.

Inspired by Werner Herzog’s film ‘The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner’ (1974), the film charts the intense preparations for the event, both in terms of the physicality of the site and the individuals involved. Hence while the film observes in great detail those elements that contribute to the construction of a large scale event, at its core it is concerned with the psychology of perfection, the obsessive focus required to attain ten seconds of human flight, to briefly defy gravitational pull.

Alongside the video-work, there is a series of photographs that looks at the site, portraying the location like a character. Here the mixed light, fading daylight merging with glowing floodlight, speaks of the tensions and connections between nature and artifice, between the extraordinary and the everyday.