Taxi Trilogy

From 1997 until 2007 I raised funds for art work driving a taxi in Northern Ireland. The experience proved an anthropological setting, forming research for Taxi Trilogy. These videos explore the repercussions of the ‘Troubles’ within the intimate space of the taxi.

Taxi I Partyin’ (11.41min)
Clients narrate and perform themselves within the parameters of their journey. As they are filmed from the dashboard the outside looks back at them as if from the windscreen itself. These people resonate an image of their social and cultural existence within the intimacy of the taxi.

Taxi II New Years Day 5am, 2007 (6.12min)
This film tells a story just after the event, recounting the previous passage of the drug dealing UFF paramilitary.

Taxi III Stand Up and Cry Like a Man (3.32min)
Through bombardment and repetition stories are told by different taxi drivers of their experience of surviving paramilitary attack during the 80s and 90s in Northern Ireland. The work relies on the past to point to the future of current violence by depicting the scars that penetrate today.

Lisa Byrne 2007

Also see piece by Xavier Zapata Taxi Trilogy