Short Films about Learning
2015
Video Installation
Edition of 3 plus AP
A commission by Belfast Exposed Photography, 2015 Thanks to the original Belfast Exposed Photographers Mervyn Smyth, Sean McKernan, Gerry Casey, Seamus Loughran and all other contributing photographers. Copyright of the original archive material remains with these photographers and with Belfast Exposed. Thanks to Professor Paul Bloom, Yale University. Short Films about Learning is funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council and the Department for Social Development.
“Hanna opens up the archive to a range of embodied experiences that render the images avenues into a more ethical, universal experience of human suffering and conflict. More than this, he holds the archive up as a mirror. The more we hear the lecturer’s messages of human psychology, the more we see ourselves in the people and events before us. ‘This is about the self’, states the voice in the tenth second of the first film. By the time those first three words are repeated a split-second later, a set of relationships has been established between images and text that extends to include the viewer. Whatever ‘this is about’, it is clearly not about the past.”
Gander, Catherine. (catalogue essay) Michael Hanna, 'Short Films about Learning'. March 2015
Connolly, Maeve. Profile - Michael Hanna. Art Monthly. June 2020