Episode #249: Stan Douglas picks up where Miles Davis left off by creating the epic six-hour video "Luanda-Kinshasa" (2013). Inspired by his experience making pause button mixtapes in the early 1980s, Douglas imagined a recording that combined elements of Davis’s last studio album from the 1970s, "On the Corner," with Manu Dibango-inspired Afrobeat. "This is a very tenuous connection between two things," admits Douglas, but through polyphony he opens up history to alternate possibilities.

Stan Douglas reenacts historical moments of tension, connecting local histories to broader social movements of struggle and utopian aspiration. In the artist’s intricate works, time and place fold back onto themselves to create a parallax of both vision and narrative: multiple moments in history and geography are experienced by the viewer simultaneously and reconciled into a new story. Working at the forefront of new media technologies, Douglas’s works have taken the form of mobile apps, virtual reality simulations, live cinema, theatrical productions, and multi-channel video installations where the narrative alters continuously through recombinant editing software.

Learn more about the artist at:
https://art21.org/artist/stan-douglas/

CREDITS | Producer: Ian Forster, Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Wesley Miller. Editor: Morgan Riles. Camera: Greg Bartels & Johan Legraie. Sound: Keith Henderson. Artwork Courtesy: Stan Douglas & David Zwirner. Music: Big Mean Sound Machine. Special Thanks: Linda Chinfen & Wiels.

Art21 "Extended Play" is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; Art21 Contemporary Council, and by individual contributors.