All Divided Selves Film Analysis

In October of 2015, the RISD Museum showcased the work of two Turner Prize winning artists, Martin Boyce and Luke Fowler: Boyce’s work as a four-month exhibit of primarily sculpture and Fowler’s as a single screening of his film All Divided Selves. The two artists are contemporaries both living in Glasgow, but their similarities go beyond generation and nationality; they both present everyday reality in a way that makes us question our assumptions, while suggesting undertones of fear and anxiety and using motifs of Irish and Scottish folk culture. Despite these connections between the works of Boyce and Fowler, which could be explored further, Fowler’s film is an independent work that can stand alone within the context of British contemporary art. Following traditions of filmmaking in the latter half of the 20th century, All Divided Selves explores the dichotomies of how reality is filtered through the mind, while simultaneously involving and alienating the viewer. Filmed roughly in the style of a documentary, All Divided Selves is composed of archived clips of the psychiatrist R. D. Laing, the subject of the film, his pertinent contemporaries, and Luke Fowler’s original footage, edited by Fowler and overlaid …show more content…
What he accomplishes in All Divided Selves, however, is a blurring of the lines between opposing forces, mirrored by the ideas of R. D. Laing that he quotes throughout the film, through the juxtaposition of archived and original footage, unified by repeating motivic images and sounds, and perhaps most effectively, through the viewer’s own uncertainty about where he or she stands in relation to the film, and consequently, in relation to the concept of