Sean Grattan

Sean Grattan works primarily with digital video, utilising cinematic devices to frame performances that privilege the exchange of ideas over emotionally driven narrative. Early work was largely free of dialogue, devised around uncomplicated elements and procedures that deconstructed plot-oriented action, challenging dominant conceptions of productivity and progress. With later work, script writing emerged as the foundation for Grattan’s videos, a process wherein academic research is merged with language and behaviours drawn from Western society and pop culture. The result is an analytical hybrid of theoretical discourse and conventional dramatic dialogue, a quasi-scholarly argument set within a movie-like framework. The actors become vessels for an amalgam of concepts, delivering socio-political exposition via distanciating gestures and vocal intonation, creating an awkward and sometimes humorous relationship between form and content.