Seamus Harahan

Seamus Harahan is an artist and filmmaker living in Belfast. His film
‘Holylands’ was made over the period of a year and a half from 2001 to 2003.
It was shot through the artist’s window and on the streets occupying a 20 yard
radius from his house. The title ‘Holylands’ is the name of his neighbourhood,
a district of the city that combines a transient student population with more
long-term residents. The film in part depicts these people, showing fragments
of their passage through this territory but firmly resists either a documentary
or narrative approach. It is possible to extrapolate a politics from this work but
one that is inflected with diffuse experiences of urban space, including the
sensory, the collective and the absurd. The film’s images are spliced together
with a soundtrack that includes hip-hop, traditional Irish and classical music to
provide a counterbalance to the images and enables them to work as abstract
sequences.
 
Seamus Harahan was born in London and lives and works in Belfast. Recent
exhibitions include The International Language, Belfast (2001), How Things
Turn Out, IMMA, Dublin (2002) and a solo show Holylands at Project, Temple
Bar, Dublin (2004).