Michael John Whelan
Video Installation
Film
Photography
Objects
Paper & Sound
Info
News
Frontier
Now the shadows I measure
An echo and a shadow
Mercer
Baribal
The sun shone on the
nothing new

Reprieve
A Perfect Circle
Assembly
Kindred
Clearing
Since
The Memoirs of a Madman
And penance is the play
Cathedral
An echo and a shadow
2013
single channel video, colour, silent
12:00 min
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Nine individual segments record a captive bred polar bear in the Berlin Zoo. Whelan recorded each segment at 320 frames per second on a high-speed camera, significantly slowing down the already minimal movements of the largest living species of terrestrial predator to a series of reductive gestures. The visual deceleration achieved through the slow motion brings the viewer into an abnormal temporal relationship with the animal, creating both a tension and a moment of shared experience. When exhibited the sections are looped seamlessly to give the impression that they continue in an infinite cycle.