Posted on 06/15/2005 8:40:03 PM PDT by Lorianne
Millions watched in horror as officer workers leapt from New York's World Trade Center Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Kerry Skarbakka was horrified, too, by the TV images but -- and he tries to be careful when he explains this -- he was also inspired.
The scene sparked a fascination with falling -- the fear, the freedom, the fate.
"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response,'' he said.
On Tuesday, the 34-year-old "performance photographer'' demonstrated his art by repeatedly plunging four stories from the roof of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, his arms and legs flailing.
A cable and harness prevented him from crashing, but Skarbakka's descent was swift, stunning dozens of passersby who paused outside the museum at 220 E. Chicago.
'Can you believe this?'
As he fell, four photographers on his team took pictures. Those images likely will join other shots of Skarbakka tumbling from train trestles, trees and down stairs.
"Falling is such a metaphor for life in general. Mentally, physically and emotionally, from day to day, we fall. Even walking is falling: You take a step, fall and catch yourself,'' said Skarbakka, who lives in New York but studied photography at Chicago's Columbia College.
On the morning of 9/11, Skarbakka watched on television as trapped World Trade Center workers jumped from the fiery towers.
"I thought to myself, 'There is something in this I need to understand.' And so I started working with issues of control and loss of control,'' he said.
'A new way to express himself'
While others shoot the photos, Skarbakka, who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Tennessee, manipulates them to create his art.
Watching Skarbakka fall Tuesday, a woman jogging by shouted to a friend, "Can you believe this?''
A man walking his dog smirked. "When he hits the ground, that'll be art -- a pile of bloody fingers,'' he said.
But Joan W. Herring, visiting from Marietta, Ga., said Skarbakka's efforts took her back to her youth -- "climbing a tree and looking up at the sky.''
"For artists today, everything two-dimensional has been done,'' said Herring, a retired homemaker. "The contemporary artist has to find a new way to express himself.''
'I'd like to try it'
Theresa Ehrhart, a Near North Side psychologist, called Skarbakka's performance "fascinating'' and "unnerving.''
"I'd like to try it myself -- if there was something underneath to catch me,'' she said.
Skarbakka, whom the influential magazine ArtReview has cited as one of the art world's top 10 young photographers, has broken a rib, sprained an ankle and "bruised all parts of my body'' in pursuit of his craft.
"I like the challenge of putting my body through something,'' said Skarbakka, whose martial arts training helps control his falls.
Anyway, he adds with a shrug, unlike the leapers on 9/11, "We heal.''
wow--four stories... w/a bungie cord... he's really experiencing what those office workers experienced on 9/11... this is as bad as Drew Barrymore getting ecstatic over going "poo" in the woods...
OK I'LL JUST THROW UP!
GODSPEED!
I would face my fears alone, instead of seeking my 15 minutes by defecating on the graves of those who died.
I didn't read anywhere that he has been doused in jet fuel, burned alive, choked on poisonous smoke, or known for sure that he was dead.
Now THAT would be a statement!
The day I ripped the quadricep in my leg, I wrote a poem!
Sheesh, were do they find these people and who uses the phrase 'artistic response', anyway?
Skarbakka, Chewies younger, artistic, and somewhat "special" brother.
It's a pity his art won't make an impression.
Pure BS. That's all.
How about pictures?
One SICK puppy!
pathetic
Wow. He's on another level. I'm just a dope. All I got out of 9/11 is that we were attacked by evil terrorists practicing "The Religion of Peace", and that we need to pay them back by eradicating them.
I stubbed my toe the other day, and my artistic response was to yell FU*K!
lol my feelings too
Maybe this idiot can remind us again why we actually need the Patriot act.
"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response,'' he said.
More blithering "art-speak" - today's modern artists ( I use the term loosely), are encouraged, trained, cajoled and sometimes downright demanded to "express" whatever thought or feelings that float through their transom, and because it's "art", it doesn't matter if it offends people - if anything, they'll say it's offensiveness makes it "better" "art" (and nets the artist press, the Holy Grail of the Moderne Artiste).
These dolts are so arrogant, that they think that they HAVE to express these feelings in ways that others HAVE to be involved, art to them is a narcissitic process: instead of trying to explore his feelings about 9-11 in a more mature, heartfelt manner that's also more PRIVATE, he makes a spectacle of it all, so above all else, no matter what the message is, or why he's doing it...
It's ALL ABOUT HIM.
People like this will never create high art - a true artist would seek to create a work that would transcend his own personal feelings and encompass the event, the people involved, the people who witnessed it, AND his own feelings.
The sculpture of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima is a perfect example.
This guy is a hack.
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