Emerging from installation and performance, intensely physical, emotional and life-affirming, Derek Ogbourne’s video works are concerned in the broadest sense with a vision of the sensation of being, the persistence of will, with expelled organic energy capturing what it is like to be human in its rawest sense, the inexhaustible physical world becoming latent on the surface of the screen. Thus an enacted fight represented through breathlessness and close ups of that supposed window to the self, the eye-pupil, speaks about the struggle of life, the chance encounter of a bird singing at dawn is captured in its fragility, a frail old woman singing a religious hymn postpones her fate through song, the rainy surface of a road at night becomes a metaphor for a despair that is beautiful in its intensity, a being emerges from shimmering and grinding darkness to capture a ray of light, faces that are at once scared and excited remind us about the fine line between fear and exhilaration, play and danger.

Having used ccd (surveillance camera) since 96 as an extension of his own body, Ogbourne’s video work often views the world from close up, intensity being concentrated within a mode of action. While many pieces are shot in black and white in what seems a scientific experiment, their irreducibly human quality is manifested in their delicate roughness, in their sheer fragility, in their sheer immediacy, in their imperfection. Rather than discarding the trace of the shaky hand, of video as a medium, the detritus of the image is often left attesting to the subjectivity of human vision, to a vulnerable truth.

In Gravity and others, Ogbourne explores narrative and our familiarity of the given exploited genre, a new avenue for him. A development from previous work in as far as it is tightly edited and based on cinematic experience, a continuation in as far as the intensely physical still dominates, Gravity and others, re-creates the ‘classic’ pivotal point within the thriller film genre, re-shooting and using the form of the close-up ‘cliff-hanger type’ falling sequence (ie. close up hand on rock or building, fall, caught, slip, rope fray, ripping of clothes, treading on hands … ), building a tight narrative where the impression is of a large number of characters on the verge of falling but always saved. With this piece, the narrative represents the mass in downward motion, good and bad protagonists being brackets to and containing the action. A genre (thriller) within a classic moment (hanging off, saved by a hand) within a practice (mise en shot) caught in a never ending action sequence, the filmic nightmare, the imaginary spark or force field that bonds us with our salvation. Gravity and others, immerses the viewer in an obsessive fracture, a splicing of close-ups and extreme close-ups, cuts frantically oscillating in time and space, a metaphor for the nightmare scenario of displaced human securities, trust and our overwhelming social need.

Published in Sharjah International Biennial, 2003 (art catalogue) & Gymnasion, Bregenzer Kunstverein, 2002 (art catalogue)