Obstruction

Compiling short video sequences from documentary filmmakers, journalists and video activists including Peter Vaughan, John Flynn, Pip Starr, Russell Hawkins, Kim Beamish, John Hughes, Izzy, SKA TV and Paul O’Connor
(Undercurrents), Riley highlights the potential hazards of their work. Obstruction details the physical frustration involved in gathering evidence: the intervention of law enforcement and figures of authority or the recurring use of the hand to cover the camera’s lens, thereby obscuring our vision.

The staccato bursts of movement and blurred point-of-view in Obstruction challenge the notion of a centralised, transcendent eye/I behind the camera. Riley’s camera is a witness to the ways in which evidence is mediated and subject to the whim of external forces outside the filmmaker’s control. All the media artists featured in Obstruction have experienced physical disruptions in their search for proof. Prevented from continuing to record particular events and activities, Riley questions whether the public’s right-to-know is overruled by the right to privacy on behalf of the individual or corporation.