DUNCAN CAMPBELL

The work of the Irish film and video artist Duncan Campbell represents a critical and intelligent analysis of documentary strategies. Frequently utilizing images from photo and film archives as well as (computer) graphs, split images, and other ‘classic’ techniques of the experimental film genre, Campbell’s creative interpretations of history are tough to analyse and seemingly interwoven with the personality of the author. Although the three presented audiovisual documents highlight different approaches in Campbell’s work, the disintegration of meaning(s) remains the common theme in this triptych.

O Joan, no ...
2006, video, 12’, colour, English spoken

Conceived as the first chapter in a longer film, O Joan, no ... seems very promising, but never really gets off to a true start. The viewer is confronted with darkness and a silent voice-over: black abstract images intersected by flashes of light – coming from street and theatre lights, but also from a cigarette for instance – and sounds similar to growls, wails, sighs, or laughter. O Joan, no ... pays tribute to the Irish author and playwright Samuel Beckett who described his own oeuvre as ‘a stain on silence’.

Falls burns Malone Fiddles
2003, video, 30’, colour, English spoken

In this film the off-screen narrator (the Scottish actor Ewen Bremmer, also known for his part in Trainspotting) seems to be at the end of his tether: his feverish monologue wavers between frustration, fury, perplexity, and resignedness. Resolved to understand what lies ahead of him and determined not to interpret the past wrongly, he confusedly reflects upon language, light, or time: a stream of consciousness replete with metaphors, repetitive despite the lack of actual congruity, based on sociological theories, and leaning towards a personal analysis of ‘history’ (both the utilized narrative technique as well as the title of Falls burns Malone Fiddles refer to Malone die, a short novel by Samuel Beckett, and also the name of a character in that novel). The screen direction manifestly exposes the historical aspect. Campbell probed the archives of local photography clubs in Belfast, which results in a rhythmic sequence of stills, intersected by long, black cuts. Seventies’ amateur shots of Northern Irish teens, 20 year olds, and thirtysomethings, working-class housing blocks on the outskirts, and details such as scars on a body form a portrait of what it was like to grow up in Northern Ireland during the troubles. Avoiding nostalgia and eschewing nihilism, Campbell places drawings over the image (barbed wire and walls), or traces the contours of buildings with (computer) graphs.

Make it fall, Bernadette
2008, video, 37’, colour, English spoken

Campbell’s most recent film is an experimental portrait, free from documentary conventions, of Bernadette Devlin, the Northern Irish militant and political activist who, at 21, was elected to the British Lower House in the late sixties. The work further explores the feeling of disorientation which the Irish filmmaker presented in his earlier work. Composed entirely out of archival material – lacking commentary and clearly defined context - Make it fall, Bernadette links a fascination with the functioning of recent history to a sceptical attitude towards documentary ‘reality’.
Campbell chooses a fragmented editing with many black cuts. These seem to function as black holes, or memory gaps. Bernadette opens with black and white footage of the protagonist’s hands, feet, eyes, or arms; a fragmented study of the body and a very intimate portrait. This sequence is suppressed over the course of the film. Adopting an almost ‘documentary’ approach, using fragments of interviews and speeches, Campbell presents a militant woman, willing to fight for her existence to the end. By introducing frame over frame and split screen techniques he abandons traditional documentary standards, which leads to a liberated, poetic reflection.