WEBVTT

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Stan Douglas: Hogan's Alley was always thought to be a 
place of vice, a place of urban blight,

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and so the city council always had it 
on their eye for a place to demolish.

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[Railroad crossing signal clanging]

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[whistling]

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[Jazz playing on radio]

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It got a reputation as being a Black neighborhood,

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even though really it was a mixed Black, 
Italian, and Chinese neighborhood,

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but it got that reputation from all the 
Black people that used to hang out here.

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I'm an artist, and history is one 
thing I use to make what I make.

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That white building is something 
called Vie's Chicken Shack,

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where a lot of jazz musicians used to 
go after playing downtown Vancouver.

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They weren't allowed to drink 
in the clubs where they played,

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so they'd come here to have chicken and to party.

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[Jazz playing]

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[Man] Hey, Roy.

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[Roy] How do, buddy?

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[Man] Heh heh heh. You back in town.

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[Roy] Just got back last night.

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[Stan Douglas] This is a piece of interactive 
storytelling you can download to your phone

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and actually play like a game.

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As best we could, we tried to make a historically 
accurate representation based on public record.

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Here's the Italian bootlegger.

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[Man humming]

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[Bell dings]

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Here was a Chinese brothel.

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[Woman] How much you pay your
girls?

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[Different woman] Hmm. I'm not
hiring.

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[Stan Douglas] I make my work so I can see it.

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One major function of art is to allow us to 
see things we think we know in a different way.

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[electronic music]

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My first job after high school was as an usher.

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My second job after high school was, um, as a DJ.

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I was the first guy to play 
hip-hop in, um--in Vancouver.

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I came to art late in life. I 
was more interested in theater.

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I realized early on that in Vancouver 
these TV shows were being made,

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these movies were being made,

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so I could use the apparatus of 
cinema and TV to make my work.

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[ambient music]

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[Indistinct chatter]

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The last 10 years or so, I've made these sort of 
very elaborate, very free remakes of other works.

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I was researching the post-War period in Vancouver 
and realized from the images I was seeing

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that Vancouver's part of this film noir world.

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[jazz music]

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In "Helen Lawrence," we're seeing two things 
simultaneously all the time,

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the actors onstage and the cinematic 
image of the actors on the scrim.

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At first, it's very confusing...

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- What's your name?

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but eventually, 
you learn to watch two things simultaneously.

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- If I asked you to do a little
something for me,

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you think you could do it, no
questions asked, on, the, uh, QT?

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[Stand Douglas] We made virtual sets.

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We built the entire neighborhood of Hogan's Alley.

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Built two entire floors of the Hotel Vancouver.

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- No. Take a walk!

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- Come on. Get out of here.

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[Stan Douglas] We have the actors on a blue screen stage.

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They're being filmed by cameras, and 
then because we're in a blue background,

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that can be taken away digitally 
like with the weatherman on TV,

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and another background can 
be inserted behind them.

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What is happening is we're making this thing live.

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The cast is making a film 
in real time every night.

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- Please don't spoil my fun.

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I haven't had uch lately.

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- I think I'll join you.

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- You'll probably need a double.

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[Stan Douglas] "Helen Lawrence" came from an 
epiphany I had about film noir.

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Somehow, the behavior of people in film 
noir was based on the trauma of war.

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The tough guys and femme fatales,

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they're actually desperate.

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They've done things they're not proud of.

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- Spare a cigarette, hon?

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[Stan Douglas] Killed people, seen
people die around them.

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- To help us all out, you...

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[Stan Douglas] These themes of trauma, these are things 
which I go back to again and again.

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I don't know why.

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- You know, I think you would
have been happy if I never came back.

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[Stan Douglas] The fact that we can't 
really understand each other,

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that we're kind of locked inside our brains.

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This is something which I 
take as a starting point.

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So behind me is the intersection 
of Abbott and Cordova.

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That's the setting for my 
photograph, "Abbott and Cordova,"

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but probably just above that "P" where the windows

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open is more or less the 
vantage point of my image.

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[building ambient music]

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In the 1960s and early seventies, 
there were many hippies in Vancouver,

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so they decided to have a festival,

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and the cops didn't like this.

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Often, with these--these works 
where I'm staging the photographs,

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there's obviously documentation of that moment.

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These documents do tell a story, 
but they're kind of partial.

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What I want to do is to be 
able to condense these ideas.

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We had to build a set.

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We needed a lot of light to make that piece.

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Almost always my works are 
allegories of the present, as well.

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That event made this 
neighborhood what it is today.

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After that event happened, the city's 
interest in the neighborhood declined.

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There was a policy of containing drug use, 
vice, and poverty in this neighborhood.

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My approach to looking at historical events 
is that historical events always have within

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themselves the possibility of 
having been something else.

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And the tension between different 
forces at play should not be forgotten.

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I often depict minor histories, but I always try 
to depict a local symptom of a global condition.

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[soft electronic music]

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[Peter Courtemanche] So we're working on the soundtrack 
for a new video installation piece,

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and this particular piece has 6 video screens.

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[Brodie Smith] And each screen will have a pair 
of speakers, so making 8 speakers,

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which is what we've set up here.

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[Peter Courtemanche] They're just trying to get a sense of how 
all the sounds work together in the space.

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[Brodie Smith] This one is called "The Secret Agent."

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[Door opens]

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It's completely different than 
anything that we've ever done before.

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That will be exciting, but it's 
also quite complicated in terms

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of the logistics of how are we gonna mount this.

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- Blow up the Marconi
installation at Sesimbra.

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[Peter Courtemanche] We'll get a miniature version of it up 
and running in Stan's studio for a while.

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- What are you supposed to
be anyway,

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anarchist, desperate
communist?

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- Anarchist.

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[Brodie Smith] It plays back as a computer program, and so 
then we always run them for extended periods of time

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so that we know that they're 
stable for an exhibition.

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[Stan Douglas] "The Secret Agent" was based 
on the notion of terrorism,

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which we're very concerned about these 
days, but it's been around for a long time.

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"The Secret Agent" was the first 
literary depiction of terrorism,

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but it was depicting anarchists who 
were active in the late 19th century.

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- A man was blown up at
Sesimbra this morning.

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[Stan Douglas] The terrorists I was looking 
at are more based in the 1970s,

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so this idea of taking an existing narrative

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and restaging it in a way that 
reveals some hidden content there

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or takes you to a different 
context is something that

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has been a very huge source of inspiration for me.

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[soft electronic music]

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- Two of these are backwards.

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- One should be backwards,
right?

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Let's take a look. It may just be a little bit out.

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- Yeah, sure. Ok.

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- I have nothing special to
tell you. You summoned me.

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- This one should go a bit more
to the right, I think, too.

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- Hold that.

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[Indistinct chatter]

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- Blow up the Marconi
installation at Sesimbra.

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[Stan Doublas] In "Secret Agent," there are 6 screens playing.

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Always at least two are playing simultaneously.

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There's more going on than you 
can actually pay attention to.

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This kind of confusion is part of everyday life 
where we're not quite sure what's gonna happen.

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- What are you supposed to be anyway, 
anarchist, desperate communist?

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[Stan Douglas] In these works, a kind of parallax happens.

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We see stereo vision through parallax.

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Our left eye and our right eye allow us to see the

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same subject from slightly 
different points of view.

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This allows us to take in 
the two ideas simultaneously.

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So the narrative of "The Secret Agent,"

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if you think about what that 
meant in the 19th century,

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think about what that meant in the 1970s,

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this is a parallax through which we can 
view the same story in different ways.

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- And when I walk in a crowd,
I never let go of this.

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A squeeze actuates the
detonator.

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[Stan Douglas] And these things of course 
relate to what we have now.

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You see in a very real sense 
the consequence of terrorism,

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of somebody saying to somebody 
else, "I'm better than you."

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"I know the way you should live so much so 
that your life matters less than my act."

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A few weeks after it premiered,

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this terrorist bombing took place in Paris from 
people who were based in and around Brussels.

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The show was shut down for many 
days because of terrorist fears.

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History does not repeat itself.

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Things do come back, symptoms do recur,

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but they often recur because what caused it 
in the first place never actually went away.

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In my work, I want to go back to 
look at these possibilities of

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what if did not work out the way it did?

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So looking forward, looking back,

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I always want to consider that the 
thing we have is not necessary.

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It's not the only way things could possibly be.

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[soft electronic music]