It For Others

Produced for the Scottish pavillion at the 55th Biennale di Venezia (2013), the film won its author the Turner Prize (2014). Duncan Campbell’s It for Others is a reflection on the Imperialism of objects in contemporary society. Explicitly influenced by Les statues meurent aussi, the film upsets its structure: the linearity and narrative consequentiality of the essay film which inspired it, give way to a discourse that’s fragmentary, uncertain and at times disorienting on the construction of the value and meaning of consumer goods. The artist avails himself of a variety of different linguistic registers to guide us through reflections on the caesurae Colonialism provokes in the cultures it subjugates; there’s a performance by the Michael Clark Company which deals abstractly with the theme of exchanging goods; and scenes of domestic life and anthropomorphic ketchup bottles. In a highly commercialized time when every commodity is subject to the rules of the global market, not even art can consider itself immune from this phenomenon.