On the 7th November at 6pm, at the Plymouth Art’s Centre, Luke Fowler (2012 turner Prize nominee) and Caroline Mawdsley; the Curator of Programmes gave an open Q&A on Fowlers practice and cinematic influences. Before Fowler moved to the Bread and Roses; Ebrignton Street for a collaborative performance alongside Richard Youngs.
In the talk, Fowler began by outlining the mediums his practice consisted of, these included; film, photography, sound and installation. His career began at Gordonstone College in Dundie, where he applied to study in the Time-based art department, after refusal Fowler took the second best choice of the Printmaking department. Which began to seem beneficial as his tutor’s partner Steven Partridge, encouraged Fowlers interest in Video and Installation. He spoke about his experiment with video beginning with the schizophrenic atmosphere of making music and night and art within the day. His fellow peers told him that he should choose between the two. His disregarded this remark and stated that his work explores non musicians of the amateur sonically minded artists. He believes sound art has a pontinance, and some of his pieces bring categories together.
Further exploring the limits of documentary film-making, through countercultural figures, and often making complex layered portraits of these. Therefore hoping to retell history and revealing conflict, his piece is currently on show within the Art Centres window gallery; The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott. Within most of his videos he works with a handheld 16mm camera, filming predominantly in domestic places, stating that video art doesn’t have to be like what Roy Douglas does. Explaining that seeing the genesis of the practice being a turn away of the use of the camera, looking at late 80’s early 90’s research based practices alike Black Audio Film Collective. This was very crucial to him,, as he noted that there was no history of experimental film in Glasgow. He used the example of Margerie Tate, who lived in Hockney, and has only just been discovered.
His interest in structural film making came from the point of exclusion, from the text books at art school. He enjoys the exploration of the relationship to free cinema through personal documentaries on 16mm camera’s. He believes Documentary motivates as a catalyst to work against. Using comprehensive knowledge of traditional documentary he can see heritage as he tells people about his life. Working against the idea that Documentary has been corrupted by formulas and pressures, that is now moved into something that has lost its strength and has become criticised over the past 40 years.
A comment which really resinated with me during his talk was when Fowler stated ‘Artists are no more less free than anyone else… they still have to make a living.’ When asked the question does it matter if people watch his video’s. I feel this is an important point which Fowler made, as although we would like to make work we aren’t fully free in our expressions of our practice as we still need for it to get coverage, or grants for us to be able to fund and continue our practice.
He believes each film is a challenge for him to make a new invention and a personal challenge for him to do something in a new way. A Grammar For Listening was a dialogue making a negotiation with their instrument of microphone and his instrument a Bolex. Within this piece it’s a concentration of the hsaring of sounds, using and indelible mark on the representation of reality. The link here is the collaboration, and the challenges of new people, not hte video’s.
He spoke about how thing’s happen in the most odd ways, for example how he ended up collaborating with Toshiya Tsunoda. It began when Fowler was the driver for Tsunoda, Fowler offered to drive Tsunoda round Scotland in the exchange of being allowed to film. On their journeys they would speak about film, art and music. Tsunoda gave Fowler a CD with his address on it, and it wasn’t until Fowler was asked to go to Yokohama a year later, he made the connection to the address and decided to write to Tsunoda, and Tsunoda wrote back, saying how surprised he was that Fowler would be in his home town, as he thought he was just a driver. Tsunoda’s work also looks at investigation of place and documentation of this. Also touching on how our subjectivity colours our impression of a place. He made snapshots that had no relevance to musicality, narrowing to looking at phenomena’s and how they come about. asking the question is there any such thing as an intrinsic mark permanent to a place or was it down to social and environmental factors?
Furthermore, within his practice he doesn’t set out to make comprehensive portraits, he looks at arguments that fascinate or relate to him and delves into those chapters that are often neglected by aspects of culture. He see’s film is more about self education. For him especially, he never went to uni, but he was educated through his family. As in Dundee there was more emphasis on art history and research than making physical practice. His films are more autodidactic and deal with the question of image and the archive.
Fowler went on to talk about how you present your work, believing you must have meticulous instructions of what you want ‘otherwise they do the ‘shitest’ productions of your work.’ He see’s himself as the custodial car taker of his work, and therefore how it is shown. IF people want to show his pieces and don’t have the equipment he will try and work it out with them. This stems from the fact he really cares for the audience and how the work is shown, so that they have the bets context to see the work, that way they see the work in the best possible way.
When displaying his films, he looks at disrupting the conventional mode of viewing cinema, which is passive through a screen, it’s pre-recorder and alterable of conditions within the room. He wanted to do something that fucked with the transposable space. Like moving screens, lights that go on and off, sounds that change, as your presence, your air, changed the way the room is being perceived. In relation to his exhibition at Plymouth Arts Center, The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott, he commented that if he had known they had cinema, this is where his piece would have been shown as he felt it seemed displaced where it was.
Often his work things further about the audience, using the example of a book he was reading about American subcultural studies by Thomas Steel, he asks what is intrinsic to the sensors about adult education and social perfectness, and how do you grab the attention of someone who is working all day and then have to go to and evening class. He resolves this issue by making a connection to what they’re living and how their apply his work to their life. Caroline asked Fowler how he considers the audience when viewing his pieces, as people will look at a paining for two seconds how does he get them to sit and watch a film of about 6o minutes. In reply to this Fowler questions that someone wouldn’t question sitting for hours watching Madman or breaking Bad, so he doesn’t feel as if he’s taking away their time. Stating he doesn’t really care if people watch his film or not.
He addressed my question, would the experience be different if the film was seen as a one off? By mentioning that people find distractions inmost things, yet only the dedicated viewers would pay to see it twice, yet if they were seeing a film in the cinema they would regard it as different. Overall, I found the talk very interesting, and although it were partially scripted, Fowler spoke genuinely about his work, and his concepts. Later in the evening after his performance I asked him about the talk, and the way it was set out, he mentioned he didn’t know what it was going to be set up like, as the setup of the space made me feel it was more of a performance installation, he said this was not intentional and that, he didn’t specifically want it to be seen in this way.
Artist As Curator 