Stan Douglas

Video installation by Vancouver based artist Stan Douglas

“ ‘Hors-champs’ presents the performance of four Americans who either lived in France during the Free Jazz movement, or who still reside there today: George Lewis (trombone), Douglas Ewart (saxophone), Kent Carter (bass) and Oliver Johnson (drums). The music they play is based on Albert Ayler’s 1965 composition, Spirits Rejoice, and composed of four basic musical materials: a gospel melody, an attenuated call and response, a heraldic fanfare and La Marseillaise. Like many other national athems such as the Star Spangled Banner (which also makes a brief appearance), the recollection of its blood-thirsty lyric will remind one of the tacit content of myths of national identity.
    Hors-champs was shot en-direct in the style of an ORTF musical television production from the same era as Ayler’s composition – notably those of Jean-Christophe Averty. Two video projections are simultaneously presented on recto and verso sides of a suspended wall. While on one side of the screen shows a ‘programme’ montage of the two cameras, the other presents a simultaneous counter-narrative of everything that had been edited out, or relegated to the outside.” Stan Douglas (from press release)
‘Hors-Champs’ was part of ‘Fotofeis’, a national photography festival.