On September 11, 2001, humans jumped from the heights of the World Trade Center. Strangely, people leaping from skyscrapers had been filmed in The Game and Vanilla Sky. Rising above the steeples of superstition, skyscrapers symbolized modernity reaching for the starry skies, yet the Falling Man suggests not merely the horrors of terrorism, but the vertiginous conditions and cultural voids of postmillennial culture. The secular metropolis is facing skyscraper vertigo.

forthcoming 2011

Barry Vacker teaches media, cultural, and utopian theory at Temple University, Philadelphia. The author of many articles and book chapters, his recent publications include the text for Peter Granser's photography book Signs (Hatje Cantz 2008). Vacker's recent work with experimental media includes the first three volumes of the "Theory Zero" book series (Zero Conditions, Crashing Into the Vanishing Points, and Starry Skies Moving Away), as well as the documentary film Space Times Square (2007), which he wrote and directed. barryvacker.net

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