Duncan Campbell, Bernadette, 2008, 16 mm film transferred to Digi-Beta, b&w and colour, sound, 37 min, Filmstill Schenkung Bâloise-Gruppe und Basler Versicherung Osterrich, Courtesy Gallery HOTEL, London, © Duncan Campbell.

Duncan Campbell, Bernadette, 2008, 16 mm Film, transferiert auf Digibeta, S/W und Farbe, Ton / 16 mm film transferred to Digi-Beta, b&w and colour, sound, 37 min, Filmstill, Schenkung Baloise-Gruppe und Basler Versicherung Osterreich, Foto: MUMOK, Lisa Rastl, © Duncan Campbell.

Duncan Campbell, Bernadette, 2008, 16 mm film transferred to Digi-Beta, b&w and colour, sound, 37 min, Filmstill
Schenkung Bâloise-Gruppe und Basler Versicherung Osterrich, Courtesy Gallery HOTEL, London, © Duncan Campbell.

Duncan Campbell, Sigmar, 2008, Super 16 mm Film, Farbe, Ton / Super 16 mm film, colour, sound, 10 min, Filmstill
Schenkung Baloise-Gruppe und Basler Versicherung Osterreich, Courtesy Gallery HOTEL, London, © Duncan Campbell.

MUMOK
Museum
Moderner Kunst
Stiftung Ludwig Vienna
MuseumsQuartier
Museumsplatz 1
+ 43-1-525 00
Vienna
Duncan Campbell
Bernadette and Sigmar
June 26-September 2009

Duncan Campbell (*1972 in Dublin) is one of the two recipients of the Baloise Art Prize 2008, presented at Art Basel. His award-winning film Bernadette will now be shown together with Sigmar (also 2008) at the MUMOK Factory. Both films enter the MUMOK collection as a donation from the Bâloise group.

Bernadette (2008) is about the Irish civil-rights activist Bernadette Devlin, who was elected to the British parliament at the age of only 21 in 1969, becoming its youngest ever MP. Following her election promise — “I will take my seat and fight for your rights” — she broke with the traditional Irish republican tactic of abstentionism (the refusal to take up seats in the Westminster parliament) while at the same time continuing to take part in direct resistance to discrimination against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland. Among such agitation her active involvement in the "Bogside Riots" (1969) — one of the key confrontations at the start of the “Troubles” — earned her a prison sentence.

In his film Campbell uses documentary photographic and film material about Bernadette, which he often uses as it is, but for much of the film works it over or underlays it with a reflective, narrative voice. In subtle ways this voice again and again calls into doubt the possibility of authentic transference of information and raises the question of our self-awareness in relation to political and cultural history.

In a different form Sigmar (2008) also deals with the problematics of communication or the transmission of content. In contrast to Bernadette, Campbell here mostly works with abstract details from the paintings of the German painter Sigmar Polke and with fictious footage of everyday objects in his studio. These images are underlaid with scraps of a fictional conversation with the painter in German (“No! No! No! Not. Not. Not. Yes, really ... no!”), the content of which cannot be grasped.

Campbell’s work is created in the light of a reflection on the extent to which it is at all possible, and what it means, to relate history or tell stories. It is borne by the conviction that narration can only be subjective and that the documentary is also only “a peculiar form of fiction.” Yet the artist is convinced that history has to be told — too great is its importance for the present. What is necessary, however, is to understand it as a process and find ways of presenting it that allow us the experience of its complexity, its inherent contradictions and discontinuities, and to keep in mind the always fictional aspect of historiography. “I am striving for what Samuel Beckett terms ‘a form that accommodates the mess’” (Duncan Campbell).

The two films Bernadette and Sigmar, both of which are meticulously structured, although very different in appearance, are each in their separate ways portraits of a remarkable personality. For Campbell, however, they are primarily case studies, pegs on which to hang his reflections on the problematic of narration within the field of tension of authenticity and fiction. They oscillate between the documentary, subjective narration and critical reflection.

Alongside these two works the exhibition presents silk-screen prints that were produced in parallel to the films and which the artist calls “posters.”

Duncan Campbell at MUMOK, Foto: MUMOK, Lisa Rastl, 2009, © MUMOK.

Duncan Campbell, Bernadette, 2008, 16 mm film transferred to Digi-Beta, b&w and colour, sound, 37 min, Filmstill Schenkung Bâloise-Gruppe und Basler Versicherung Osterrich, Courtesy Gallery HOTEL, London, © Duncan Campbell.

Duncan Campbell, Film still from Bernadette.

Duncan Campbell, Same, no?, 2007, Screen print, 90.5 x 60.2 cm.

Kunstverein München
Galeriestraße 4
+ 49-(0)89-221 152
München
Duncan Campbell
24 January-8 March 2009

Duncan Campbell's film and videoworks assess the rethorics of youth and liberation movements as well as those of documentary aesthetics. Loosely combined resource material from film and photo archives as well as on-screen animation, fusing documentary with fictive, build the backdrop for portraits of people and social milieus.

Kunstverein München presents all of Duncan Campbell's recent films Bernadette (2008), Sigmar (2008) and Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2003) in one exhibition.

Falls Burn Malone Fiddles, a film about 1970s and 80s youth culture in Belfast, portraits a hopeless life, between council estates, clubs, alcohol and the street. The film is constructed from images of archives such as Belfast Exposed or Community Visual Image with a voiceover by actor Ewan Bremner who monologizes about the relationship between photography, reality, the individual and society: "Language being the only attribute proper to me. The only property I’m certain of, but would it not be just as proper to say that I am the property of language." Animated diagrams, geometrical shapes or protest symbols pretend to explain the presented as much as they penetrate as an alien body the pictures content.

Bernadette tells the story of the Northern Ireland Republican and Liberation activist Bernadette Devlin who in 1969, aged 21, became the youngest member of the Houses of Parliament. Campbell depicts contemporary history and its actors as well as the methods of their representation within the media. While critically analyzing documentary strategies, Campbell develops a very sensitive and subjective portrait of Bernadette Devlin.

“Documentary is a peculiar form of fiction. It has the appearance of verity grounded in many of the same formal conventions as fiction — narrative drive, linear plot, and closure. Yet, the relationship between author / subject / audience is rarely investigated in the same way as it is in meta-fiction.”

In his work Campbell not only questions documentary aspects of the genre documentary, but also in how far “real life” characters such as Bernadette Devlin are in our post-political and post-historical present fictitious characters themselves.

Duncan Campbell (*1972 in Dublin, Irland); solo exhibitions: 2008, ICA (London), ART Statements, Art Basel 38 (Basel) Hotel Gallery (London); 2006, Lux at Lounge (London); 2005, TART Contemporary (San Francisco); group exhibitions: 2008, Elisabeth Dee Gallery (New York); 2007, Museo D'Arte Donna Regina (Neapel); 2006, Tate Britain (London); 2004, Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt am Main), Manifesta 5 European Biennale of Contemporary Art (San Sebastian).

Duncan Campbell, Untitled, 2008, C-Print, 80 x 60 cm.

Duncan Campbell, Film still from Bernadette.

Bernadette is composed entirley of found footage which is presented without commentary or context. It links the state of being lost among representations of the past to one of obsessive, even sexual, enthrallment. The film opens with black and white footage of Bernadette's bare skin: her toes, her feet, her arms, her eyes. This extolling of the parts of the body is a cinematic version of the blason, an adoration of 'the beloved' which has migrated from its origins in French poetry to film (Jean Luc Godard's Le Mépris also opens with a scene of this sort, dedicated to Brigitte Bardot). This portrayal of the beloved is subsequently overturned and then almost forgotten in the rest of the film, which shows a firebrand of a woman, one who, after being prohibited from speaking in Parliament after Bloody Sunday, punched the Home Secretary (and later said her only regret was that she "didn't get him by the throat").

As the footage progresses it becomes clear that these excerpts are not given to the viewer so that a story might be learnt in the manner of a historical documentary. Rather, the viewer is confronted with simply more and more representations of Devlin, as an object of irrational attention; these images no longer appear to be under Campbell’s control, but rule over him illustrating the limitations of historical memory. Campbell adds: 'I wanted to faithfully represent Devlin, to do justice to her legacy. Yet I worked with mediated images of her and writings about her. What I produced can only ever be a selection of these representations, via my own obsessions and my desire to make winning art of her.

Duncan Campbell, Film still from Bernadette.