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I want to break free of gravity
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Photography: Simon Faithfull
I want to break free SINCE childhood, Simon Faithfull has had a problem with gravity. Why could flies crawl across the ceiling when his feet always stayed firmly earthbound? This fascination never waned. Now an artist, his recent work revolves around his attempts to escape gravity’s relentless grip. Gravity Sucks, an exhibition at the British Film Institute in London from 17 July to 20 September, showcases all seven of Faithfull’s attempts. He admits that his first “Escape Vehicles” – including a miniature rocket-powered chair and a boiler suit attached to 50 helium balloons – were “complete heroic failures, or actually not even heroic, more like damp squibs”. But this is his point – Faithfull is interested in the pathos inherent in so many human attempts to escape gravity. Flying is a common fascination for many of us, he says, but drawings of Victorian flying machines and the stories of Icarus and Franz Reichelt, the tailor who jumped to his death from the Eiffel Tower in 1912 to demonstrate his home-made parachute, seem simultaneously absurdly comic and pathetic. Escape Vehicle #2 (pictured) is a re-imagining of an etching that Faithfull saw as a teenager as he leafed through a book about early flying machines. “I remember it very clearly – it was a ridiculous illustration of a man in a top hat and tails flying through the air, sitting in a wicker bath chair which was very elegantly tied to nine geese with looping ribbons.” The matchstick chair invites the viewer to imagine sitting in it while at the same time reminding them of the futility of the exercise. This same idea is explored in Faithfull’s surprisingly successful sixth attempt. In it, an office chair and a video camera were attached to a meteorological balloon which rose 30 kilometres into the atmosphere, above a disused windtunnel facility at Farnborough airport in Hampshire, UK. Jessica Griggs ■ Go to www.newscientist.com/article/dn17395 for the video footage of Escape Vehicle #6
18 July 2009 | NewScientist | 47
Photography: Simon Faithfull
I want to break free SINCE childhood, Simon Faithfull has had a problem with gravity. Why could flies crawl across the ceiling when his feet always stayed firmly earthbound? This fascination never waned. Now an artist, his recent work revolves around his attempts to escape gravity’s relentless grip. Gravity Sucks, an exhibition at the British Film Institute in London from 17 July to 20 September, showcases all seven of Faithfull’s attempts. He admits that his first “Escape Vehicles” – including a miniature rocket-powered chair and a boiler suit attached to 50 helium balloons – were “complete heroic failures, or actually not even heroic, more like damp squibs”. But this is his point – Faithfull is interested in the pathos inherent in so many human attempts to escape gravity. Flying is a common fascination for many of us, he says, but drawings of Victorian flying machines and the stories of Icarus and Franz Reichelt, the tailor who jumped to his death from the Eiffel Tower in 1912 to demonstrate his home-made parachute, seem simultaneously absurdly comic and pathetic. Escape Vehicle #2 (pictured) is a re-imagining of an etching that Faithfull saw as a teenager as he leafed through a book about early flying machines. “I remember it very clearly – it was a ridiculous illustration of a man in a top hat and tails flying through the air, sitting in a wicker bath chair which was very elegantly tied to nine geese with looping ribbons.” The matchstick chair invites the viewer to imagine sitting in it while at the same time reminding them of the futility of the exercise. This same idea is explored in Faithfull’s surprisingly successful sixth attempt. In it, an office chair and a video camera were attached to a meteorological balloon which rose 30 kilometres into the atmosphere, above a disused windtunnel facility at Farnborough airport in Hampshire, UK. Jessica Griggs ■ Go to www.newscientist.com/article/dn17395 for the video footage of Escape Vehicle #6
18 July 2009 | NewScientist | 47