Willie Doherty: Non-Specific Threat
Willie Doherty’s Non-Specific Threat, 2004, is a simple and powerful single channel, video projection. The camera moves in a circular tracking shot around a tough looking baldheaded man with a gold chain around his neck and a denim jacket. The mise-en-scène appears to be a derelict warehouse. It’s the kind of place which might be chosen for the purposes of torture and/or murder. As the camera tracks slowly around this threatening presence a male voiceover, disembodied from the central figure, makes a series of cryptic statements punctuated by pregnant pauses. For example:
I will be anything you want me to be
You create me
I am unknowable
I am everything that you desire
I am forbidden
I am inside you
I am self-contained
There will be no music
I am your victim
Doherty lives in Northern Ireland and until the peace process his work often referred to what the British government like to refer to euphemistically as the “troubles”, meaning the civil war between Catholics and Protestants. Since the peace process Doherty’s work is more focused on what he refers to as “non-specific threat”, a notion that has a great deal of relevance to the current “war on terror” that is motivated to a significant extent by politicians’ desire to gain more power by infecting their populations with fear. For an interview with Doherty regarding this particular work go to YouTube.
