back

Film / variable / 4.07 min. loop / 2007

He

A crawling man; in vain he tries to get higher. Through this single course of action the way humans struggle with their limitations becomes manifest.
Inspired by Eadweard Muybridge and his pioneering work on capturing motion on film, He is an examination of the physical anthropology of crawling.  In the latter half of the 19th century Muybridge utilized stop motion photography to investigate equine locomotion. In particular he worked to settle the debate of whether all four hooves of a horse leave the ground simultaneously during a gallop; they do.

Wessels' looped video piece, He, is based on several photos from the book He was there, a work that plays with the nature of voyeurism, as the subject of the images is a real man observed and documented from afar in an Amsterdam park.