LUKE FOWLER

Artist-in-Residence, Spring 2013

Dartmouth College

THE POOR STOCKINGER

and extracts from the

TWO-FRAME FILM ARCHIVE

LUKE FOWLER

Artist-in-Residence, Spring 2013

THE POOR STOCKINGER

and extracts from the

TWO-FRAME FILM ARCHIVE

April 2 – May 5, 2013

Jaffe-Friede Gallery

Hopkins Center for the Arts

Dartmouth College

This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the William B. Jaffe Memorial Fund and the Matthew Wysocki Memorial Fund

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Zurich (Robert and Ute), 2008C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6 cmed.2/3+1 apCourtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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L’Istituzione Blue-Black Negative, 2010C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6 cmed.AP 1/3Courtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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Alasdair, Hogmanay, Clouston Street, 2009C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6ed.1/6+2 apCourtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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A Grammar of Moving, 2010C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6 cm unframeded.1/6+2 apCourtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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Rotating Sine (for Eric), 2011C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6 cmed.2/6+2 apCourtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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Light and Heavy Industry, NYC, 2009C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6 cmed.1/6+2 apCourtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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Just Leaving (Odd Harmonics), 2010C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6 cmed.1/6+2 apCourtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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Arcades Project (Iain and Neil), 2008C-Type Print64.6 x 64.6 cm unframeded.1/6+2 apCourtesy of the Artist, and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

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promising easy access to the “real person,” Fowler’s portraits of these two men show them as different kinds of actors in a social environment, each negotiating in his own way with the camera. This calls to mind Laing’s own argument that identity cannot be extricated from interpersonal existence. “My experience and my action occur in a social field of reciprocal influence and interaction,” Laing observes in The Politics of Experience. “I experience myself, identifiable as Ronald Laing by myself and others, as experienced by and acted upon by others.”2

Painted or photographed portraits are often situated within landscapes, forming the negative space that surrounds the person’s image. The individual is pictured both emerging from the landscape, and existing in distinction from it. The land-scape is both where we come from, and what we work against. Likewise, in Fowler’s film portraits contain views of the worlds around their subject, whether natural or built. Fowler supple-ments the archival elements of All Divided Selves with new foot-age of the places Laing worked and lived; Bogman Palmjaguar includes eccentrically angled shots of the misty heath where its subject dwells, edited with a playful geometry that mirrors the idiosyncratic logic of Palmjaguar’s thought. The Poor Stockinger pairs the sounds of artist Cerith Wyn Evans reading from E. P. Thompson’s diaries about teaching adult education classes on labor history with shots taken in the the towns where the classes took place. The result bears comparison to works like Masao Adachi’s AKA Serial Killer (1969), Straub-Huillet’s Too Early, Too Late (1982), or James Benning’s Landscape Suicide (1987), in which historical writings are used to draw out the hidden struggles that have taken place in seemingly tranquil locations.

The distinctions between portrait and landscape col-

lapse in Fowler’s three-film cycle A Grammar for Listening, cre-ated in collaboration with sound artists Eric La Casa, Lee Patterson and Toshiya Tsunoda. Fowler has called the three parts “meta-portraits of these people as both individuals and artists;”3 each film pairs a composition by one of the collabo-rators made from field recordings with images of nature and architecture shot by Fowler, juxtaposing sound and image in ways that avoid obvious correlation. In a similar vein, the works in his Tenement Films series—Anna, Helen, David and Lester—picture a set of Fowler’s neighbors through visiting four apart-ments in the same building, architecturally identical but differ-ently furnished. With none of the inhabitants at home, Fowler’s camera scans these intimate spaces for impressions of his neigh-bors’ everyday lives.

Fowler punctuates the Tenement Films with shots of him-self captured in a mirror, Bolex in hand. Similar sequences are found elsewhere in his work, momentary self-portraits that serve as signatures. They also point to one of Fowler’s major concerns: that of filmmaking as a fundamentally intersubjec-tive art.

—Ed Halter

1 “Luke Fowler in Conversation with Stuart Comer,” in Luke Fowler, eds. Beatrix Ruf, Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich-Obrist (Zürich: JRP|Ringier, 2009), p. 32.

2 R.D. Laing, “Persons and Experience,” The Politics of Experience (New York: Ballantine, 1967), p. 24. Laing and Palmjaguar also share a rejection of standard medical definitions of mental illness, as Palmjaguar refuses the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia given to him by doctors.

3 Luke Fowler in conversation with Christoph Cox, “Sound Cinema,” The X Initiative Yearbook (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2011), p. 74.

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Pages 22–31: Still images from The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the deluded followers of Joanna Southcott, 2012HD video, surround soundDuration 61 minsCommissioned by The Hepworth Wakefield, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Film and Video Umbrella, through the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award: Commission to Collect.Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow.

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Luke Fowler (b. 1978, Glasgow) is an artist, filmmaker, and musician based in Glasgow. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary filmmaking. Working with archival footage, photography and sound. Fowler’s filmic collages have featured portraits of controversial figures including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, English composer Cornelius Cardew, and Marxist Historian EP Thompson.

Fowler studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, from 1996–2000. He was nominated for The Turner Prize in 2012, and received the inaugural Derek Jarman Award in 2008.

Fowler has exhibited and shown his films internationally, with recent screenings at: Film Museum, Vienna; ICA London; Glasgow Film Festival; and Berlin Film Festival (all 2012). Selected solo exhibitions include those at: The Hepworth, Wakefield (2012); Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2012); CCS Bard Galleries, New York (2011); Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2011); Serpentine Gallery, London (2009); and The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2009); Fowler has participated in numerous group exhibitions including: the Turner Prize, Tate Britain (2012); and the British Art Show 7, Nottingham Contemporary; The Hayward Gallery, London; Tramway, Glasgow; Plymouth Arts Centre (2010–11). In addition to participating in shows at: Secession, Vienna; CAC, Bretigny; Barbican Art Gallery and Tate Modern, London; The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and New Museum, New York.

Ed Halter is a critic and curator living in New York. He is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, and recently co-curated the film and video program for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. He teaches at Bard College, and his writing has appeared in Artforum, frieze, Mousse, the Village Voice and elsewhere.

Front, inside front and back covers, stills from The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the deluded followers of Joanna Southcott, 2012HD video, surround soundDuration 61 minsCommissioned by The Hepworth Wakefield, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Film and Video Umbrella, through the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award: Commission to Collect.Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow.

Studio Art Exhibition ProgramGerald Auten, DirectorSenior Lecturer in Studio ArtHB 6081 Dartmouth CollegeHanover, New Hampshire 03755603 646 3651

Virginia Beahan Senior Lecturer in Studio ArtMary-Thérèse Braun Department AdministratorBrenda Garand Professor of Studio ArtLouise Hamlin George Frederick Jewett Professor of Studio Art Karolina Kawiaka Senior Lecturer in Studio ArtJohn Kemp Lee Adjunct Assistant Professor of Studio Art Brian Miller Senior Lecturer in Studio ArtSoo Sunny Park Associate Professor of Studio ArtColleen Randall Professor of Studio Art and Chair of Studio ArtEnrico Riley Assistant Professor of Studio ArtEsmé Thompson Professor of Studio ArtJohn D. Wilson Senior Lecturer in Studio Art

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