Harahan, Seamus
The video works of Seamus Harahan are characterised by their prolonged takes, candid view points and gritty CCTV-style footage. Using a hand held camera, Harahan explores the urban environment in all its incidental and occasionally brutal detail. Cold Open (Version 1) (2014) is a video montage made up of six sequences from a larger series filmed in north Belfast over the course of a year. During one of the sequences, the soundtrack of a couple discussing the husband’s drinking habits is accompanied by apparently unconnected visuals of rain-soaked branches. Later, a group of teenage boys are observed play-fighting. In the final sequence, a group of young people are shown gathered around a pram. Harahan, who is interested in what he calls the ‘dislocation of the familiar’, often uses music to achieve this sense of displacement. In Cold Open, his musical sources range from traditional Gaelic to heavy metal and drum and bass.
- Artwork Details: running time: 13 minutes 28seconds
- Edition: Unique
- Material description: Single channel video
- Credit line: © the artist.
- Theme:
- Medium: Film and Audio Visual
- Accession number: ACC1/2016