The Staircase is a 1998 video installation by Peter Land consisting of a double video projections on white screens within a dark space of variable dimensions, preferably painted deep blue.

The first projection, “The Universe”, shows a field of stars which gives viewers the impression they are moving into it. These computer-generated images recall the credit titles of certain science-fiction films. The slow rhythm of the movement gives the video a contemplative aspect.

The second projection is, like the installation itself, entitled “The Staircase”. Here, a male figure in classic attire (black trousers, white shirt, brown jacket) keeps falling down a staircase in slow motion. Like a modern-day Sisyphus, instead of eternally carrying a rock to the top of a mountain, he falls endlessly down the stairs, imprisoned in a perpetual movement.

The impression of infinity mainly stems from the editing, which alternates high- and low-angle, tight and loosely framed shots. This form of editing transforms what is in fact a succession of filmed falls into the illusion of an endless cascade. In addition, the slow motion accentuates the feeling of weightlessness, placing the main character in a world where the laws of physics are not the same as ours.

The sound track of the installation recalls the music of fun fairs and the sound of a hurdy gurdy. This musical choice seemingly transforms the character's fall into a fairground attraction, with slapstick, if not grotesque, overtones.

The fall is the main thread of the installation; it is present literally with the character's constant loss of equilibrium, but also figuratively as a metaphorical representation of the loss of foundations or personal guidelines. The fall is one of the most frequently used devices in comedy, notably in the films of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Traditionally, the fall or accident inevitably occurs to make the viewer laugh.

With The Staircase, Land eliminates the fictional plot used in film and keeps only the result, namely the fall. By showing it in a loop, he gives it an even more tragic meaning: what will become of the man if his life is only an infinite succession of falls? The human body is caught in the gears of a slapstick mechanism which is beyond him and from which he can no longer escape. “In the fall, there is a separation of mind and body, with the body taking over, reminded of the imperatives of the real, the tangible, what resists or slips away.”[1]

The artist stages himself in his videos and demonstrates a physical involvement which gives them aspects of performance. In France, the artist Pierrick Sorin has become famous for comparable videos where he shows himself in sketches mixing slapstick and despair.

The Staircase is part of a series of filmed performances begun in 1994, where Land is always the lone actor. In 1995, for example, he made Pink Space, where, disguised as a has-been entertainer, he keeps trying to sit on a bar stool but only manages to fall down. With Stepladder Blues, a 1996 video, he appears as a house painter trying to paint a ceiling with Wagnerian music playing in the background but continually falls from the stepladder.

In this installation, Land offers us a variation somewhere between tragedy and irony, between the search for the meaning of existence and the recognition of its absurdity. His concerns, he writes in a 1998 note on the work , “has broadly speaking been the relationship between the personal and the universal: The feeling of being a bacteria-like creature trying to make sense of and create some meaning and justification behind his/her existence in a vast and ever-expanding world where the individual may seem unimportant.”[2]

Laetitia Rouiller
Translation and adaptation: Miriam Rosen

[1] Françoise Parfait, Vidéo: un art contemporain (Paris: Editions du Regard, 2001), p. 200.
[2] 'Dear Reader – some notes about my work' in Peter Land (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2000).