ART PREVIEW:Stan Douglas at Victoria Miro
Since the late ‘80s, Stan Douglas has created films, photographs, and installations that reexamine particular locations or past events. His works often take their points of departure in local settings, from which broader issues can be identified. Making frequent use of new as well as outdated technologies, Douglas appropriates existing Hollywood genres and borrows from classic literary works to examine the intersection of history and memory in evocative, mesmerising works.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Victoria Miro Archive
In 2008, Stan Douglas was invited to make a new work linked to Lisbon. Stan Douglas then decided to transpose the action of Joseph Conrad’s novel “The Secret Agent” (published in 1907 and the story is set in London in 1886 and deals with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country. The novel is said to have influenced the Unabomber (Theodore Kaczynski) who identified strongly with the character of the Professor), to the time just following upon the Revolution of 25/4/74 in Portugal as the historical context for his work. Various vicissitudes delayed the materialization of this project, until the David Zwirner Gallery made available the funds for its realization, and filming began on this feature-length work conceived as a cinematic installation. “The Secret Agent” was filmed in Lisbon in February and March 2015, with a large cast of Portuguese actors and produced by O Som e a Fúria. “The Secret Agent”, restages the plot of Joseph Conrad’s novel within the aftermath of Portugal’s carnation revolution, which overthrew Europe’s oldest dictatorship in April 1974. The period known as PREC (Revolutionary Process Underway) that followed stood in many ways outside dominant constructions of history itself, which at the time ran firmly along geopolitical contours demarcated by the Cold War. This feature-length film, lasting 52 minutes, is shown on screens set in two rows of three, facing each other. The ample space in which these are shown produces a sense of profound immersion in the viewer, alongside an apparent sense of control over the course of the action, since the viewer has access to various viewing positions to catch what is taking placing on the present, and even on our sense of futurity.
Info: Victoria Miro Gallery, 16 Wharf Road, London, Duration: 2/2-24/3/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.victoria-miro.com
