UNDER COVER (1996)
single channel video, 11 min

I often use a documentary approach of life around me as part of the imagery I work with. Many of my single channel videos, such as Under Cover incorporates an, often, unsuspecting public as subject and unaware collaborator. The video traffics in the pleasure of voyeurism and onlooker consciousness.

For an exhibition at GALERIE CHRISTINE KOENIG in 2002, Allan deSouza wrote about Under Cover:

S. E. Barnet's videos burrow beneath the ordinary to reveal discomfort, absurdity and, sometimes, the downright silly. Re enacting the everyday but often gendered and private such as applying make up (Making Up), or dressing and undressing(Under Cover and Shrug), Barnet brings these all too familiar gestures into public and voyeuristic observation (the paradox being that they are gestures of both camouflage and ostentatious display, the sleights of body and eye that constitute social interaction). We want to look away, perhaps a little embarrassed at our desire to keep watching, but are simultaneously eager for further revelation.

Allan deSouza
May 2002