Grant Priest

CAN (2023)

8 min 25 sec (excerpt) of 28 min 30 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

Focusing on the isolating and competitive nature of mass-motoring, CAN questions the way the car and the camera support a cult of rugged individualism and unprincipled opportunism. Composed of a series of long-takes, simultaneously shot through the front and rear windows of a vehicle as it travels between spaces of surveillance, CAN situates the viewer in the position of an unwitting yet complicit passenger, taken for a ride.

CAN takes as its origin the utility of the camera and the road in the expropriation of time, history, and memory. In so doing, the work questions the way both apparatuses entrench patterns of wilful forgetfulness, manipulation, and exploitation.

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