Falling Man [1] – The Gaze Of The World
4 mars 2008, 14:57, par Tlön
A man was dangling there, above the street, upside down. He wore a business suit, one leg bent up, arms at his sides. A safety harness was barely visible, emerging from his trousers at the straightened leg and fastened to the decorative rail of the viaduc.
She’s heard of him, a performance artist known as Falling Man. He’d appeared several times in the last week, unannounced, in various parts of the city, suspended from one or another structure, always upside down, wearing a suit, a tie and dress shoes. He brought it back, of course, those stark moments in the burning towers when people fell or were forced to jump. He’d been seen dandling from a balcony in a hotel atrium and police had escorted him out of a concert hall and two or three apartment buildings with terraces or accessible rooftops.
Traffic was barely moving now. There were people shouting up at him, outraged at the spectacle, the puppetry of human desperation, a body’s last fleet breath and what it held. It held the gaze of the world, she thought. There was the awful openness of it, something we’d not seen, the single falling figure that trails a collective dread, body come down among us all. And now, she thought, this little theater piece, disturbing enough to stop traffic and send her back into the terminal.
– DeLILLO, Don (2007). Falling Man, New York: Scribner, p. 33
» Voir aussi Man, Falling (infra)
» JUNOD, Tom (2003). «The Falling Man», Esquire, septembre.
» Photographies de Lyle Owerko
» «The Falling Man», article Wikipedia (anglais)
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