The Men who fell from Sky

Men falling from a plane during the landing approach: what at first sounds like a lurid headline is something that Stuke pursues with artistic means. Blurring is part of the multi-year project THE MEN WHO FELL FROM SKY, which the artist began in 2014 and has been working on until this day. Stuke drives to the approach corridors of Heathrow Airport in London, where for decades persons - mostly young men from the Global South - have been falling from the wells of the landing gear. Karen Stuke meticulously researched individual fates, retracing them in photographs. She takes pictures of airplanes in the sky over London. Of course, they are not and cannot be documentary, because the artist was not present the moment the horrible event occurred. She took the pictures afterwards, making sure that she got the right types of aircraft and the correct flight numbers. Half fiction, half fact. The fates of the men falling from planes are of interest to the photo artist because she wants to empathise with and understand the despair what the men must have felt before setting off on the life-endangering journey. But by using blurring, Stuke’s approach of not only carpeting the aircraft but also visiting original locations like streets, pavements, or a freshly filled grave does not turn into cheap sensationalism catering to our voyeurism. Her artistic reconstruction is instead concerned with maintaining a respectful distance that makes empathy possible. -------- Text by Peter Stohler, from the book: "Storytelling", GrimmWelt Kassel, 2020, they were going to exhibit the work but canceled because of Covid 19. At that time it was planned as an installation with sound and marks on the ground, live tracking of planes ect. The series will be expanded to include further cases, not only the London ones. There are several other cases.