John Smith:

Hotel Diaries

Hotel Diaries (2001–7) is a colour film with sound, comprised of seven individual films made over six years in the hotels of six different countries by the British artist and filmmaker John Smith. The series of video recordings take the form of a ‘video diary’, relating everything from Smith’s personal experiences to conflicts in the Middle East.

Each section of Hotel Diaries plays on chance and coincidence, using the hotel rooms in which Smith stayed as a kind of found film set. The rooms and contents provide triggers for Smith’s narratives, often relating the personal circumstances of the artist’s trip to major world events. For instance Smith has described the impetus for the first film originating from a random, uncanny event in a hotel in Ireland.

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John Smith is a British film and video artist known for his playful subversion of documentary imagery. Drawing upon the raw material of everyday life his films, in his words, ‘rework and transform reality, exploring and exposing the language and manipulative power of cinema’.