GOVERNMENT CUT FREESTYLE
Digital color video transferred from 16 mm film silent, 9 min. 20 sec., 1998
Young people take turns jumping off a pier in South Pointe Park in Miami Beach into Government Cut, the artificial waterway that connects Biscayne Bay to the Atlantic Ocean. The artist shot most of the footage so the divers’ bodies remain tightly constricted within the frame, with the result that the camera bobs and sways gently as they plummet through the air, each time arching over the horizon line. Combined with the film’s slow-motion pacing and the steady, undulating rhythm with which the scenes unfold, Friedman’s camerawork elicits a hypnotic, swooning effect. As in a dream, the viewer experiences a quasi-kinesthetic sensation even as one’s body remains more or less fixed in place.