Cow and Flies
"Cows and Flies" traces lines between imposed individuation and mapmaking, in the broadest sense of flattening, and establishing or contesting boundaries: how rich social lives and shared places are fragmented and stripped of information, context and complexity, in order to be instrumentalized, branded and easily consumed.
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Jack HoganDirector
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Jack HoganWriter
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Jack HoganProducer
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Project Type:Experimental, Short
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Runtime:25 minutes 12 seconds
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Completion Date:February 15, 2021
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Country of Origin:Ireland
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:4K
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
Jack Hogan (*1986, Waterford, Ireland) makes moving image art that focuses on the rich sociality of everyday life, foregrounding friendship and what constitutes good shared lives beyond the nuclear family.
Jack won the Arts Council Ireland Next Generation Award in 2023 and the New Irish Creative Film Award in 2020, selected by a panel comprising Gerard Bryne, Steph von Beauvais and Ulrich Wegenast. They participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2021–22 and 2022–23. They recently exhibited in the The Whitney Museum, Athens Biennale, The Fifth AIM Biennial at Bronx Museum of the Arts, and "Everything is common" at Artists Space in New York. Jack recently screened films at Documenta Fifteen, Spectacle Theater New York, New York University, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin, Starling Limerick, Zurich University of the Arts, Ballhaus Ost Berlin, and Hybrid Biennale, Hellerau. They had a solo exhibition, entitled “Riddley Walker,” at P.E. Gallery in Taipei City in 2023.
I left my career as an architect in 2012—after working for SANAA in Tokyo for three years—in an attempt to divest from corporate dependence and tacit adoption of clients’ ideologies. My touchstone since then is a desire to feel entwined with other lives and places—in and of the world—instead of individuated subjects. Without family money, my departure has led to a sometimes precarious existence, but also freedom and possibility.
Visiting the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico in 2017, and reading their writings, marked an essential shift in my artistic development. Their refusal to split mind and body—the impossibility on which western intellectual life is predicated—was a revelation, coupled with their refusal to identify themselves or to draw a border around their struggle. Subcomandante Marcos writes: “And, so that they would understand what we wanted, we began to create in our own lands what we wanted. … Our own laws let books, medicine, laughter, sweets, and toys flourish.”
I am interested in processes of social construction, their codes and aggressions. I want to tell stories that are not about heroes with beautiful weapons, but fellowship, companionship, camaraderie and the dispossessed viewer who needs a moment of respite, fun and fortitude.
I try to make moving images that are not easily translated to or from language, but use words as another material with their own weight. My favorite art does not tie itself up neatly in a bow, with a pre-chewed message ready for digestion, but can be riddles that reward time, attention, and repeated engagement.
My commitment to maintaining collaborative and sociopolitical practices, alongside my solo endeavors, is reflected in my membership in collectives, including "Lensbased," founded by Hito Steyerl, and Kara Walker’s "Memorials Monuments Memories" group, as well as my involvement in grassroots mutual aid networks and solidarity kitchens. I am also committed to working between rural and urban contexts. The interdependence between the two, as well as between the local and the global, is present in all my projects.