Created in Dublin while Sam Jury was in residency at IMMA, All Things Being Equal is a film which explores an intimate event, depicting the repetitive movements of a figure in confinement, beleaguered by water. The work was made from a single shot – filming through one event (the water) to get to another (the moving head), but finding no obvious union. Visually, All Things Being Equal is stripped bare, borrowing from the sparse aesthetic of Samuel Beckett, where naming and style detract from the essential, and negate the potential to manipulate the flow of narrative time. For this purpose, context is without reference, gender unknown and identity removed as the head is shaved. For Beckett both camera and screen embodied ways to perceive and be perceived and his later use of the ‘intrusive camera’ suggested there is no ‘flight from perceivedness’ and, by extension, the paradox of being and not being.

Commenting on the work Jury stated “I’m often pulled back to Beckett’s comment on his work Film where he talks about a ‘flight from perceivedness’, and I think this is so resonant for the age we live in now. Where there is no escape from the camera or the screen that reflects us”.

All Things Being Equal is a part of the IMMA Collection.