Robyn Maree Pickens
(DPAG Rear Window)
AS ‘‘New World Order’’ can refer to Cold War and contemporary antigovernment conspiracies, in addition to the world reshaping impact of Covid19, and chickens seemingly symbolise everything from maternal love to happiness, moral fortitude, and curiosity, Hayden Fowler (and yes, let us observe his surname) has created a video work that lampoons the absurd. Excluding Covid19 of course. But why am I talking about chickens? They are one of three subjects in New World Order, alongside a blasted stand of somewhat artificiallooking trees and the artist’s deployment of a particular mode of transitioning from scene to scene. The latter becomes a subject through the emergence of a frame reminiscent of film contact sheets that subsequently turns into movement (from right to left, up or down). Frame and movement become one, which in the context of the film introduces a complementary element of surveillance.
Essentially, one entity, chickens, which have been overlaid with diverging anthropomorphic symbolism are surveilled via the frame/movement modality as they strut, fly, or squawk through the desolate trees. To heighten the absurdity, the chickens Fowler selected (and trained) are rare heritage breeds. At the beginning of the film, a brood of white chickens emerge onebyone from a burrow at the base of a tree, and walk around the edge of a small pool of water. Their movements appear nervous, and hurried. The only sounds are squawks modified and distorted to resemble warning alarms.