Videos
Taxi III – Stand up and Cry Like a Man selected by YouTube Play from over 23 000 videos entries.
The first Biennial of Creative Video at the Guggenheim YouTube Play was developed by YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum, in collaboration with HP and Intel. The aim of the collaboration was to recognise the ever expanding realm of digital art and its remarkable practitioners. The final 25 videos and their creators, selected by the Jury from over 23 000, were celebrated in exhibition at the Guggenheim.
New York Times (excerpt from the arts section 22 October 2010)
Taxi III Stand up and cry like a man (2007) (3.32min)
Through bombardment and repetition stories are told by different taxi drivers of their experience of surviving paramilitary attacks 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.
Taxi I Partyin (2007) (11.41min) (2.08min edit)
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. As a taxi driver I attached a HDV camera to the dashboard and customers agreed to be filmed until they reached their destination. The camera sits on the dashboard switched to auto directed by the incidental journey. The camera operates according to the moving light changes that occur as a result of the car moving through the subject’s drive. The car movement acts like a dolly with two purposes: a taxi journey and a movement device. Both subject and camera act without my direction; action and direction is dictated by chance. The legacy of the ‘troubles’ is captured in ‘Taxi I Partyin’ as a means of escapism. The subject’s openness identifies the cultural nuances holding a warmth that is key to survival.
Taxi II New Years Day, 5am (2007) (6.12min) (1.15 min edit)
This film tells a story just after the event, recounting the previous passage of the drug dealing UFF paramilitary.
28th October 1995, (2010) (95 min) (18 min edit)
28th October 1993 Contains upsetting content please read before deciding to view.
28th October 1993 (Video) tells the traumatic story of Gerard aged 22 and Rory aged 18 who were shot in their home, in front of their sister Roisin, on her 11 th birthday, on 28 th October 1993, in a rural hamlet in Northern Ireland. The area was known as part of the ‘murder triangle’ where many innocent civilians were brutally shot in their homes in front of their families. The story is told by the Cairns family who still reside in the home where the boys were shot by Loyalist paramilitaries. Those involved in the murders were never brought to justice.
In ‘Home’, each member of the Cairns family tells how they found the scene of the murders of Gerard and Rory, from their living room where the boys were shot. ‘Healing’ addresses the attempt to heal and survive despite the ongoing pain of this traumatic loss. ‘Justice’ reveals all the levels of injustice that the Cairns family had to suffer since, in attempting to bring, all involved in the murders, to Justice, which still has not happened.