“The face is the other who asks me not to let him die alone, as if to do so were to become an accomplice in his death.” 

- Emmanuel Lévinas. 

 

Passage presents Amos Gebhardt’s ‘Lovers’, a large-scale, single-channel video work immersing the viewer in the swirling energy of horses as they negotiate consent and desire during the height of mating season. Hooves, flicking tails, and outstretched limbs form a deep and primal  choreography that Gebhardt reveals in languid motion. The horse’s face is given large-scale attention, painting a relational drama rarely visible to the human eye. 

 

Gebhardt’s cinematic use of screen grammar builds an intense way of looking - offering a hypnotic insight into the private language of horse.  The horses become protagonists immersed in their own highly charged dance, so that as viewers we might feel we are intruding on a world where our presence has become wholly decentred. 

 

Gebhardt’s gentle alienation of the human perspective offers an invitation to untether from an exceptionalist way of seeing. Gebhardt makes room for a much stranger, more primeval sense of perception, one in which our senses remind us of the intelligence of a world that exists across the species divide.

 

By focusing on the non-human, Gebhardt asks us to attune to a narrative that exists beyond our own singular perspective, one that reflects interdependence and connection across a more-than-human world. 

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Video Credits:

Artist Amos Gebhardt

Producer Selin Yaman

Cinematographer Jody Muston
Sound Design Jed Palmer

Editors Johanna Scott & Amos Gebhardt 

Colourist Martin Greer

Online Editor Ryan Brett

Sound recordist Steven Bond

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With special thanks to The Butchery, The Refinery, Panavision, Asia Swida, Adam Hunter, Dean Crichton, Karina Davies, Andrea Distefano, Sammie Jackson