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Unfinished
2010
Video installation (colour, sound)
Dimensions: 15' Variable dimensions
Reference: ACF0964
Edition: 2/6
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The camera explores the interiors of large warehouses in a sequence of slow pans and static images. Accompanying the sequence is an account by an anonymous man who speaks English with an Irish accent relating the harrowing experience of being taken hostage and held captive in a similar place. The narration begins to fragment and splits as the two video sequences alternate images of the empty warehouse interiors and the man struggling to piece together a version of his ordeal. Disturbingly poetic in tone, the narration delves into human subjectivity to explore its desperation and fear. The temporal gap between the two sequences produces a level of uncertainty and doubt about the authenticity of what the spectator sees and hears. This ambiguity only increases as the act of storytelling is revealed to be as uncertain and fallible as human memory itself. Doherty leaves the narration unfinished, perhaps because there is no end to this human trauma or perhaps because it shows up how the televised documentaries that appear on our screens every day reduce terror to the level of spectacle: ‘I imagined my own video message... The chance to let the world know I was still alive. I saw the submissive position of my body as I read the statement, flanked by two masked men.’

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