Stan Douglas in "Vancouver" - Season 8 | Art21

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

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

[Railroad crossing signal clanging]

[whistling]

[Jazz playing on radio]

It got a reputation as being a Black neighborhood,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Jazz playing]

[Man] Hey, Roy.

[Roy] How do, buddy?

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

[Roy] Just got back last night.

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

and actually play like a game.

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

Here's the Italian bootlegger.

[Man humming]

[Bell dings]

Here was a Chinese brothel.

[Woman] How much you pay your
girls?

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

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

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

[electronic music]

My first job after high school was as an usher.

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

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

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

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

these movies were being made,

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

[ambient music]

[Indistinct chatter]

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

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

that Vancouver's part of this film noir world.

[jazz music]

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

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

At first, it's very confusing...

- What's your name?

but eventually, 
you learn to watch two things simultaneously.

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

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

[Stand Douglas] We made virtual sets.

We built the entire neighborhood of Hogan's Alley.

Built two entire floors of the Hotel Vancouver.

- No. Take a walk!

- Come on. Get out of here.

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

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

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

and another background can 
be inserted behind them.

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

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

- Please don't spoil my fun.

I haven't had uch lately.

- I think I'll join you.

- You'll probably need a double.

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

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

The tough guys and femme fatales,

they're actually desperate.

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

- Spare a cigarette, hon?

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

- To help us all out, you...

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

I don't know why.

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

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

that we're kind of locked inside our brains.

This is something which I 
take as a starting point.

So behind me is the intersection 
of Abbott and Cordova.

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

but probably just above that "P" where the windows

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

[building ambient music]

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

so they decided to have a festival,

and the cops didn't like this.

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

there's obviously documentation of that moment.

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

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

We had to build a set.

We needed a lot of light to make that piece.

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

That event made this 
neighborhood what it is today.

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

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

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

themselves the possibility of 
having been something else.

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

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

[soft electronic music]

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

and this particular piece has 6 video screens.

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

which is what we've set up here.

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

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

[Door opens]

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

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

of the logistics of how are we gonna mount this.

- Blow up the Marconi
installation at Sesimbra.

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

- What are you supposed to
be anyway,

anarchist, desperate
communist?

- Anarchist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

- A man was blown up at
Sesimbra this morning.

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

so this idea of taking an existing narrative

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

or takes you to a different 
context is something that

has been a very huge source of inspiration for me.

[soft electronic music]

- Two of these are backwards.

- One should be backwards,
right?

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

- Yeah, sure. Ok.

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

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

- Hold that.

[Indistinct chatter]

- Blow up the Marconi
installation at Sesimbra.

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

Always at least two are playing simultaneously.

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

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

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

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

We see stereo vision through parallax.

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

same subject from slightly 
different points of view.

This allows us to take in 
the two ideas simultaneously.

So the narrative of "The Secret Agent,"

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

think about what that meant in the 1970s,

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

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

A squeeze actuates the
detonator.

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

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

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

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

A few weeks after it premiered,

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

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

History does not repeat itself.

Things do come back, symptoms do recur,

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

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

what if did not work out the way it did?

So looking forward, looking back,

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

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

[soft electronic music]