Willie Doherty

b. 1959, Ireland

Three Potential Endings was shot on location in Dublin during the summer of 2008. The Dublin Docklands Development Authority originally commissioned the work as part of a project entitled Body City. However, the project fell victim to financial restructuring as a consequence of the economic downturn and was not realised. By that stage preparations to make the work were well advanced, so I decided to produce it independently. Ironically, the work presents a figure beset with the possibility of failure and uncertainty, and was conceived as a response to the shifting architectural landscape of contemporary Dublin.

The work is structured around three open-ended sequences involving a businessman who finds himself outside the familiar surroundings of the office. The work does not provide any explanation or rationale, but rather places the man in direct confrontation with the spaces he encounters. The figure appears to be both contained by the parameters of each space yet free to leave. The imperative of any potential narrative recedes and is replaced by an awareness of the vulnerability of the body in space.

Three Potential Endings extends the concerns of previous works, such as Closure (2005) and Passage (2006). These works developed out of an investigation into the spatial and socio-political conditions of specific urban locations, and deployed the intervention of the human figure to explore the dynamics of these spaces.

(Text: reading the city catalogue, 2009)