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Stan Douglas

Luanda-Kinshasa
09.23.16 - 10.23.16
Video installation with sound — théâtre Garonne | Scène européenne

Photos diane arques / ADAGP, Paris, 2016

Image de Luanda – Kinshasa, 2013. Projection vidéo, durée 6h01 (boucle). © Stan Douglas. Courtoisie de l’artiste et David Zwirner, New York / Londres et Victoria Miro, Londres.

Born in 1960 in Vancouver (Canada), where he lives and works

 

The set for Stan Douglas’s film Luanda-Kinshasa carefully recreates the legendary Columbia Records studio in New York in the 1970s (some of the most memorable recordings of the 20th century were made in this studio set up in an old Armenian church). Luanda-Kinshasa shows a fictive recording in which the musicians improvise together in a visual environment that, from the style of the clothing to the recording equipment, helps recreate the atmosphere of the period and recall the issues of the day.

 

Luanda-Kinshasa sees this internationally renowned photographer and filmmaker continuing his reflection on the African roots of the New York music scene in the early 1970s. Afrobeat is vividly present here, as is the keen interest in the most diverse musical mixtures. Like many other films by Stan Douglas, Luanda-Kinshasa combines and recombines montages in order to multiply the musical variations.

 

For Luanda-Kinshasa the jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran worked with fellow musicians Kahlil Kwame Bell, Liberty Ellman, Jason Lindner, Abdou Mboup, Nitin Mitta, Antoine Roney, Marvin Sewell, Kimberly Thompson and Burniss Earl Travis. Other contributors were editor Christopher Martini, the Trivium Films production company, the producer and arranger Scotty Hard, lighting cameraman Sam Chase and art director Kelly McGehee.