Several Interruptions

Several Interruptions, which collages together online videos in which people are seen holding their breath underwater, is both interruption (as its name suggests) as well as documentary, in which the seemingly mundane and numerous has been made back into something unique and original.
Thomson & Craighead have personally chosen, from some 61,000 possible files on YouTube, videos which they have edited together into brief vignettes which interrupt each other sequentially (in time) and laterally (on-screen)…
Their chosen formal constraints (the sound-editing or the way the videos have been scraped from YouTube into another window) cleverly allow the viewer to lose themselves in the footage and engage in plenty of wide-ranging, open-ended symbolism brought out through the found imagery, from baptism to water boarding.
– Sarah Cook 2009