In the new film Make It New John, Irish-born artist Duncan Campbell takes on the persona of John Delorean, the realization of the DMC-12 and the Belfast plant where the car super car was built.

The film, which runs just under one hour, is on exhibition at the Artists Space in New York City through May 1. Make It New John was screened to London and Glaswgow audiences in late fall, but this is the first opportunity to view it stateside. Campbell, who is based in Glasgow, was in New York City for the March opening.

“John Delorean’s life story really sort of fascinated me,” he said. “That’s a major thread of the film. You can extricate the mythology that surrounded him, this person who stuck it to the bureaucratic culture and went on his own stand for the little guy and the consumer. He had sort of a maverick management style at GM. His life story is kind of Shakespearean; it’s a real rags to riches story.”

The imaginative sculpture of the Delorean still piques the psyche – with a two year production run that eroded in 1981 and so does the drama the man, who rose up the ranks at Chrysler and GM before forging out on his own. Both the object and the man have become a symbol for the 1980s American culture.

What casts an interesting element on Campbell’s perspective is his read on the Delorean manufacturing process. The factory was operational in the midst of Nothern Ireland, and employed both Catholics and Protestants — a rarity in those times. “With the factory being in Belfast, that’s another sort of paradox building this in the middle of the trouble,” he said. “The perspective you get in Britain and Ireland is that its’ not so much the car as a consumer object. It’s got to do with the factory and the climate it created. It was massively funded by the British government. There was a lot of accusations of fraud and embezzlement.”

Campbell filmed some of the scenes himself and drew bits and piece from archival footage including out takes of interviews. He’s on the fence about his interpretation of Delorean. “He’s a decisive character. People seem to like him or loathe him. I’m somewhere in the middle.”

Unlike most who have taken on the Delorean story who’ve been automotive writers, Campbell is uniquely qualified. He has recently shown at the Museum Moderne Kunst, Vienna; The Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh aand the Tate Britain, London. In 2008 he was the recipient of the Art Basel Bâloise Prize as well as the renowned Paul Hamlyn Award. In an earlier film, Bernadette, he took on the young Northern Irish socialist Bernadette Devlin.

But the Delorean DMC-12 ultimately takes on a character of its own. “Of course all the Back to the Future stuff is unavoidable,” he said.

The film was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and is part of a series of upcoming events including Duncan Campbell in conversation with Thomas Beard Fri. March 12. For more information check out Artists Space.

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