A Visual Journey into the Mind of Jean-Claude Van Damme

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Belgian martial arts legend Jean-Claude Van Damme on the eve of the release of JVCD, the brilliantly self-aware movie about his turbulent life thus far. Van Damme has a rather particular way of expressing his unique brand of wisdom -- of waxing philosophical about his ongoing quest for an absolute truth, of recounting his battles against the demons that haunt our world. But certain interviews can’t be adequately conveyed by mere transcription.

So I asked video artist John Fitzgerald to capture Van Damme’s special brand of science, to assist him in telling audiences his personal narrative, by going inside the very head of the Muscles from Brussels. I gave him five hours to finish the piece, equipped only with sound bites from the phone interview, some photos of Van Damme taken off the web, and Fitzgerald’s own eerie, ultra high definition Bolivian cloud images. The result is an audiovisual journey deep inside the mind of the man behind those deceivingly simple letters: J.C.V.D.