Dawn of man- a new approach

Dawn of Man- a new approach!
2006
DVD 9:30 min

In the fictitious documentary “Dawn of Man- a New Approach” I am staging the first discovery of the ball by an apelike human around 2 million years ago. The movie has been collaboration with the finish media artist Sari Palosaari that has guided me in the camera work and editing assistance trough this project. It is myself in the costume by the way! It was designed by my brother Uli Westphal that is working as visual artist in Berlin.
Balls are cultural artifacts that reach far back in time and were at hand when man started to play. In my documentary we become witnesses of the moment when the enlightened Homo habilis becomes the Homo ludens, the “Playing human”.
The movie has been largely inspired by the beginning sequences of Stanley Kubricks, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Kubrick´s version we are apelike beings, living in hostile environment constantly in fear of darkness, starvation and predators. We witness the man-apes igniting spark toward humanity as our ancestor learns to use a skeleton bone as weapon. It always made me feel uncomfortable that the rise of humanity began with a weapon. In my movie wanted to make a new approach to this story. What if the first real human discovery was a ball, first of snow and later in a modified form made of tree branches? Out of curiosity and playful research our ancestor made an innovation that has never left him since-, and throughout time has been passed to us.

Dense matter

Dense matter
2006
Light table, selection of balls

I was growing up influenced by my parents that had a strong interest in higher mathematics, physics, nature and art. During my childhood my inner world was always filled with terms originating these fields. The ball in its various forms and shapes forms for me a kind of nucleus around which visual memories revolves. The shape of a ball or sphere somewhat attracts associations to biological topics and narratives of the microcosm and its molecular world.
In one of my early childhood memories I remember myself lying in an IKEA ball sea and ruminating about abstracts ideas of molecules, dense matter and black holes. The title “Dense matter”, originates from physics, matter is anything that has both mass and volume (takes up space). Somehow it playfully popped in my head and stuck. During the last several years I have tried to collect as many unique ball specimens as possible, and have assembled over 1300 individual items. Why balls have been made?We like the smooth surface and the eye pleasing shape- coupled with an irresistible impulse of kicking it into the landscape or smashing it against the wall.
With a recorded history of at least 5000 years the ball is the earliest toy known to men. Along active games the most highly developed global played ones are played with balls and there is a great amount of them. The selected items on this table are inviting you to brainstorm and find a narrative element