Marcia Farquhar’s 12 Shooters is an in-depth document of Farquhar’s collaborative 12 Shooters project (2007) – a showreel of 13 short films, each directed by a different artist-filmmaker, and each derived from a different work from the past 12 years of Farquhar’s practice. These re-imagined performances include monologues, visitations, walking tours, upside-down exorcisms, a Humpty Dumpty seance, and her famous life-size Punch & Judy show. In all cases, Farquhar gave a pre-arranged performance for camera, and all editorial control to the respective filmmakers.

This cloth-bound volume contains a foreword by Stuart Brisley, essays by Peter Suchin, Tony Grisoni, Mark Harris and Alice Maude-Roxby, and extensive notes on the work by Marcia Farquhar, co-producer J. Maizlish and the various collaborating ‘shooters’: Zoë Brown, Bruce + Marshall, Jem Finer, Judith Goddard, Dryden Goodwin, Andrew Kötting, Trine Lise Nedreaas, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Uriel Orlow, Tom Paine, Sarah Pucill, Tal Sterngast and Gary Stevens.

ABOUT 12 SHOOTERS

12 Shooters incorporates 13 short-films by 13 different filmmakers, each a reconfiguration of a once-live work from the last 12 years of Marcia Farquhar’s practice. In each case, Farquhar and the respective ‘shooter’ together chose which work was to be revisited, and in what manner. Farquhar then dedicated her performance to their camera on an appointed day, handing all directorial and editorial control to the filmmaker.

The result is an inspired and continually surprising series of short films, wildly disparate in tone and form. Part conceptual artwork, part retrospective and part group show, Farquhar’s 12 Shooters sheds a bright light on the nature of collaboration, on the problem of documentation that is endemic to transient art forms, and on the extraordinarily varied work of this important artist.

12 Shooters premiered at the South London Gallery on the 7th of November 2007. It was funded by Arts Council England, co-produced by J. Maizlish and filmed in England, Ireland, Spain and Germany. Screenings are preceded by a brief in-person introduction by Farquhar, including two short mini-performances intended to reiterate the difference between the live and the recorded performance.