Down on Me (1981)

Overview

John dances with the camera and lets himself get carried away by the device, which works at one frame per second and spins its way on the end of a fishing line while he makes it go up and down from rooftops and bridges. Throughout this time, the camera points from above at John, who is on the ground and raises his head to look back at the camera, and turns with it. “Camera hoisting” by Stephen Niblock, a friend of John’s. Various locations were used, which were edited in-camera, and there were two recording sessions separated by an interval of one year; the first was outdoors and the second indoors (stairwells), recorded with exposures, with which occasional abstract vortices were created.