Four Motion Studies

1974, 13:24 min, b&w, sound

These formal yet visceral exercises explore subjective point of view and motion as psychological metaphors. Shot with a hand-held camera at Coney Island, these studies are experienced by the viewer through Palestine's eyes and with his movement. He writes, "The perceiver is in as much danger, as much in the drama of the sequence as I am." He takes the viewer on three amusement park rides, each experienced with an increasing frenzy, as the camera rises and falls and spins. Each study becomes more abstract, conveying a vertiginous sense of hurtling, uncontrolled, into space. In the fourth and last study, Palestine transforms the moving landscape into a pure, abstract study of motion.