Voom Portraits (2007)

Overview

Iconic artist and theater director Robert Wilson has created a series of video portraits of celebrities, ordinary people and animals called "VOOM Portraits." Known for his glacier-paced theatrical productions with Tom Waits and Lou Reed, Wilson's now bringing his aesthetic to a video format. The recent developments in HD technology have allowed Wilson to create something like a precise hybrid of still photography and motion pictures. Actors such as Brad Pitt (as a crazy person on the streets in the rain), Isabelle Huppert (as Greta Garbo), Steve Buscemi (as a mad butcher chewing gum on a variety show), Robert Downey Jr. (as a dreaming corpse in a Rembrandt painting), and Winona Ryder (as Winnie, the main female character in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, buried up to her neck in sand) were asked to “think of nothing" and move slowly and steadily to collaborate in Wilson's vision of who they might be.