Tina Helen

THREE MAN HIGH

HD VIDEO INSTALLATION (01’34″ LOOP), BOOK, 2014

In the Divine Comedy, Dante describes the monstrous size of a titan as taller than three Frislanders standing on one another fully stretched. Anthropometry as a methodology of measurement in order to define people racially and culturally by their physical features is often employed to categorize ‘the other’. In the obvious failure of diagnosing and categorizing any individual’s place in a local culture by their physical characteristics, the simplistic and foolish idea of identifying a culture by physical height seems as good as any. In Three Man High, the contemporary visual artists who performs the mindless job of labeling a community by their physical features, moreover teaching three full-grown Frisians to balance standing on top of each other, also balances precariously on the edge of culpability. Three Man High is a collaboration with visual artist Soren Thilo Funder.