Stan Douglas7 November 2014 – 15 February 2015

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Learning Through ExhibitionsA resource for teachers and community leaders

Image: Stan Douglas, Corrupt File: 2012_0279, 2013

Learning Through Exhibitions A resource for teachers and community leaders

The Learning Through Exhibitions series helps schools and community groups to explore exhibitions before,during and after a visit to The Fruitmarket Gallery. They can also be used for arts activities at any timealongside our other resources documenting the exhibition. The series suggests ways to think with and through art and be inspired to make it. Creative Challenges are open-ended and adaptable to any age group.

Art forms: photography, film, literature

Themes: history, memory

Activities support Curriculum for Excellence levels 0-4: Expressive Arts, Literacy, Religious and Moral Education, Social Studies

The Learning Through Exhibitions series can be downloaded from www.fruitmarket.co.uk. Group visits are free and include an introduction to the exhibition and a copy of the current Learning

Through Exhibitions resource.

Exhibition: Stan Douglas

Date: 7 November 2014 – 15 February 2015

Stan Douglas (b.1960, Vancouver) makes films, photographs and installations that bring the past into thepresent. He uses digital and analogue technologies and historic and contemporary themes to deconstructand reconstruct his subjects, taking inspiration from the style of Hollywood movies, film noir crime dramasand post-war press photography. His narratives explore the contested nature of representation, and itstruth and fictions in relation to memory and how we make sense of the world.

Douglas’s exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery includes films and photographs made from 1995 to thepresent. In the lower gallery the film Der Sandmann (1995) explores a character’s repressed memorythrough a narrative told in three letters read out loud. The film moves between moments in time while set in the same place. Photographs from the series Midcentury Studio (2010–11) see Douglas taking on the role of a fictional press photographer working between 1945 to 1951, reconstructing moments, people,objects and incidents that look like midcentury commercial or press photography. The photographic seriesMalabar People (2011) contains eight portraits from a series of 16 of staff and patrons of a semi-fictionalnightclub in 1950s Vancouver. In the upper gallery the two large photographs Hogan’s Alley and The Second Hotel Vancouver (both 2014) present scenes of two areas in Vancouver. Made from archivaland contemporary photographs, these meticulously detailed digital reconstructions were made as virtualsets for Douglas’s cinematic stage production Helen Lawrence, shown at the Edinburgh InternationalFestival in 2014. The six large abstract works Corrupt Files (2013) are prints of damaged digital image files of earlier photographs, unrecognisable from what they were originally intended to capture. Lastly, thevideo installation Vidéo (2007) draws upon film noir and other films in a richly-layered portrayal of menace

and impending violence, watching and being watched.

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Thinking with artUse the guide below to introduce your group to ideas around Douglas’s work before a visit to theexhibition or starting your own project.

Download Douglas’s app Circa 1948 and explore Hogan’s Alley and Hotel Vancouver. •What can you find? Is there a story to your explorations? Explore different areas of the app and share your experiences.

Collect press images from newspapers or magazines and images of objects or products from•catalogues. What makes them distinctive to their genre or use?

Make quick films using a smart phone or tablet. Try attaching the camera to your body •and recording a film as you walk down the street, or experiment with filming people fromdifferent angles e.g. straight on, from behind or from low on the ground looking up. What effect do the different camera angles have?

Think about whether a narrative or story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. •What are the benefits of diverting from this formula?

Discuss the truthfulness of photographic representation. How are photographs similar or different•to representation through other media, e.g. drawing or painting?

Discuss the ways in which photographs and films can be abstract. What examples can you find?•

Find out more about some of the references in Douglas’s work in the exhibition: Freud’s •text The Uncanny (1919), the meaning and style of film noir, post-war press photography,Samuel Beckett’s film Film (1965), Orson Welles’s film of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Douglas’s play Helen Lawrence (2014). Share brief summaries with a group.

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Installation view: Stan Douglas

Look and Respond

The guide below helps explore the artwork in the exhibition. It can also be used alongside resourcesdocumenting the exhibition.

Watch the film Der Sandmann (1995), making sure you experience the whole film •by listening to the narrative twice. What’s happening in the background of the film? How does this link to the narrative?

Look at the dates of the two photographic series Midcentury Studio and Malabar People.•What do they tell you about when they were made and what the artist might be tryingto do? How do images in the series differ? What relationships do they have to eachother?

Look at the characters in the portraits Malabar People (2011). Who are they? How do the•photographs present themselves to the viewer? What do you notice about how thesubjects are lit, and the backgrounds they are presented on?

How do the Corrupt Files (2013) relate to abstract painting or drawing? How do they•compare to other artwork in the exhibition.

Use a torch to view the large photographs Hogan’s Alley and The Second Hotel•Vancouver (both 2014). How might these works have been made? Do you noticeanything unusual about the images? Look out for depth of field, perspective, level of detail and who might inhabit these places.

Watch the mostly silent film Vidéo (2007), viewing two rotations of the continuous loop to•experience the whole film. What’s happening? How much can you understand aboutwhat’s going on through gesture, the effect of camera angles, sets and backgrounds?What is the effect of the sound, and why do you think it’s placed where it is?

What do you notice about the scale of the artworks? How does this relate to their•subject matter or narrative?

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Installation view: Stan Douglas

Creative Challenges

These creative challenges use participants’ own ideas and artistic responses to the exhibition to make new artwork using photography and film. Activities build from quick to more complex ways of working with the medium.

1. Staged NarrativesLook at Douglas’s photographs Malabar People (2011) and Midcentury Studio (2010–11). These are

contemporary photographs that re-stage situations, objects and narratives from the 1940s and 50s.

1.a. Characters

Create characters as a group. Be inventive •about how you do this, e.g. play the gameExquisite Corpse, make up characters from a fictional story or pick out random characteristicsfrom a hat.

You could try dressing up as characters from •a historical era or moment. Imagine who livedthere, what their role was and what personalcharacteristics they had.

Use props to dress up as the different characters•and photograph your own self-portrait or takeportraits of one another acting in these roles.Props can be as simple as a hat, a piece of clothdraped over a head or part of the body, or aslight change in hairstyle. Borrow from a costumebox or collect items over time to make moreelaborate costumes.

Tips

Think about detail and lighting. What effect do you want your portraits to have? •

Use Instagram to edit and add themes to your photographs, and to display them together •as a group.

Try acting out the character’s role using no props but just gesture, facial expression •and body language.

Discussion

Which images best describe the characters? What factors contribute to this? •

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Image: Stan Douglas, Midcentury Studio: Clown, 1946, 2010

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1.b. Stories

What are the links between your characters? Display the series of portraits accordingly.•

Write a story about your characters. Be creative and do this as a group. Make connections•between characters in pairs or through picking scenarios and characters randomly out of a hat. How do the scenarios fit together to form a narrative?

Create a stage set in your classroom or community centre and photograph or film a scene•from your story.

Tips

Stories don’t have to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Think about ways you can•create a narrative without these conventional tropes of storytelling.

Development

Pretend you’re spying on a historical era. Recreate a scene from it with characters to film or•photograph. Is it a historical or a current moment?

Find out about Douglas’s play Helen Lawrence (2014). Make a stage set using a computer •or in real life, and play with shadow puppets or live filming.

Images: Stan Douglas, Malabar People: Dancer, 1951, 2011 and Malabar People: Cab Driver, 1951, 2011

2. Photo Safari

A photo safari, or going out and taking photographs of a chosen subject or scene set to a brief or particular to a place is an easy and simple way to focus on new and unusual places, subjectsand types of shot. Go on a photo safari around your local environment, school, community centreor anywhere that interests you. Take images of places, buildings, people (always ask them first),objects or situations. Your photo safari can take as little as 20 minutes to a week or longer, and can take many forms with different starting points. Some to consider are:

Take photographs of one thing: the ground, walls, objects in shop windows, graffiti, portraits•of people, unusual textures or smells. What stories does your collection of images tell?

Photograph a particular event in order to document it, e.g. anything from a school•assembly, going to the shops or having breakfast to a wedding or ceremony (make sureyou have permission to photograph it).

Pretend to take on the role of a photojournalist, capturing evidence, incidents or•documentation of places where notable events have or might have happened.

Choose a genre or style you’re interested in and use it to influence your taking of•photographs: e.g. cinema, television, a historical era or event, a book or literary text.

Tips

Experiment with different camera angles, e.g. close up, far away, kneel down to the ground,•hold your camera up in the air.

Use disposable cameras and use up all the exposures on one photo safari; or use digital•cameras, smart phones or a tablet and upload and print the best images from an inkjetprinter.

Look at Henry Wessel’s Incidents (2012) and the work of Weegee for inspiration.•

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Image: Stan Douglas, Hogan’s Alley, 2014

Development and display

When printed, choose your best photographs todisplay as they are or try collaging them together.Look at Douglas’s works Hogan’s Alley and TheSecond Hotel Vancouver (2014). These images werecreated using a computer, with textures sourced fromold and new photographs. Collage your photographsby sticking them on paper or stapling together to create a scene or narrative. Cut to size and use a photocopier to enlarge images to add differenteffects, texture and scale. You could add drawing or images from newspapers and magazines to addlayers and texture.

Discussion pointsCompare and discuss your different compositions and subject matter as a group. Some points to thinkabout are:

Get others to guess your scene or narrative. Did they get it right?•

What things do you see in the photographs alongside the things you intended to shoot? •

If you took photographs of objects, do they suggest a narrative or use?•

How reliable are photographs as ‘evidence’? Have some of them become far removed from•their original subject?

How do photographs change when you enlarge and photocopy them? •How do they compare to their originals?

If you used a disposable camera, how did you feel about having a limited number of shots?•Did the photographs turn out as you expected?

3. History in the Present

View or find out about Douglas’s film Der Sandmann (1995). The following activities explore how weengage with history and memory in the present.

Write a letter to a friend or family member about something you remember from your•childhood or a place that holds a specific memory for you. Read the letters out loud to eachother. Try recording the readings, either as audio or video using a smart phone or tablet.

Collect old photographs that are personal to you. They could be of family, friends or places.•What memories do they trigger? Make a collage with the photographs that tells a story aboutthe memory. Use photocopies of old photographs if you don’t want to use the originals.

Choose a place that has an interesting history to it, or story about something that has•happened in the past. It could be a cultural site like a monument or museum, a church, caféor bar, your school or home. Tell the story by taking photographs. The story can be general and exploratory and doesn’t have to have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Start a diary or sketchbook and research something that has happened in the past •e.g. an element of your family history, a local political project or a particular historical period.

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Image: Photo safari workshop at The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2014

Note down anything you can find out using text, drawings or collage. What is interesting to you about your chosen focus? Where are the gaps in your research? What do you think is not being said, misrepresented or perhaps not yet uncovered? How would you re-imagine the outcome?

DevelopmentUse the exercises above as the basis for a more involved series of photographs or a film, takinginspiration from Douglas’s work or other photographers or film makers that you like. You could layer livespeech or audio recordings over collaged backdrops to make a performance or film, or make a filmor photograph revealing something new from your historical research.

Tips

If you’re new to film experiment with making quick short films with a tablet or smart phone,•filming scenes using three simple shots: wide pan around the scene, approach the subject,close up of the subject. Download a free app to edit footage.

Look closely at Douglas’s works Der Sandmann (1995) and Malabar People (2011). How does•the use of projectors, light and shadow, and the composition and staging of these worksreinforce their narrative or message? How will you use technology to reinforce the narrative or message in your work?

Use influences from other artforms to add layers to your work, e.g. a poem, film, piece of music•or writing from a historical period you’re interested in. How does this relate to or inspire yourexplorations and interests?

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Image: Stan Douglas, Der Sandmann, 1995

Discussion points

To what extent do old photographs of familiar places, people or scenes trigger actual•memories or construct them for you?

Is what your work intending to say obvious to others without explaining it too much? •

How effectively does your artwork made now reflect on the history of its narrative? •

4. Fractured Image

These are quick and easy ways to experiment with fragmenting and making abstract moving images.

Flip bookMake a flip book of a story, character, or of random images. You could create this as a group, eachdoing a drawing on one page and continuing the last line of your drawing or marking a point on thefollowing page, so the next person knows where to start.

Tips

Experiment with figurative and abstract shapes, having a narrative and not following one.•

Cameraless filmMake a film without using a camera by drawing directly onto blank clear film using paint, nail varnish and marker pens. Draw shapes from an invented or existing story, or random images and words. Try this in a group, each working on a small section of one long strip of film. You can draw or write anywhere – there are no frames on this type of film.When finished, play the film directly through a projector or send to a processing company to make it into a digital file.

Tips

Try this working on film that has already been developed. This type of film can be scratched,•etched, sanded or holes punched into it to disrupt or fracture the existing moving image or narrative.

If producing a cameraless film is difficult, try drawing on transparencies to make backdrops for•a shadow puppet scene. Place the transparencies on a projector and make opaque shapesor use your hands to create shadow puppets against the backdrop. You could film thesequence with a smart phone or camera for a quick and easy digital record.

Image: Cameraless film made by Art Works participants at The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2013

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Discussion points

How have the original images or words translated into film? Are they recognisable?•

If you used narrative, how does this appear in the finished film? Can you and others follow it? •

If you used film that had already been developed, how did the process alter the original•footage?

5. Further Research

Research other artists who use film and photography linked to themes and techniques you’ve beenexploring. Compare their work to Douglas’s and your own. Some artists to look at include:

Lee Friedlander •

Douglas Gordon’s film 24 Hour Psycho (1993)•

Rachel Maclean•

Cindy Sherman’s photographs Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980)•

Tris Vonna-Michell•

Weegee•

Henry Wessel’s Incidents (2012)•

Images: Stan Douglas, Corrupt File: 2012_0147, 2013 and Corrupt File: 2013_9009, 2013 All works reproduced courtesy the artist, David Zwirner, New York/London and Victoria Miro, London. © Stan Douglas

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General Questions

What is contemporary art?Contemporary art is the term used to describe artof the present day. It is art that has been orcontinues to be created during our lifetimes fromthe 1960s to the present.

What is The Fruitmarket Gallery?The Fruitmarket Gallery is an art gallery funded bythe taxpayer displaying exhibitions of work that arenot for sale. The Gallery brings the work of someof the world’s most important contemporary artiststo Scotland. We recognise that art can changelives and we offer an intimate encounter with artfor free. The Gallery welcomes all audiences andmakes it easy for everyone to engage with art.Gallery facilities include a bookshop and café. TheGallery is physically accessible and family-friendly.

What is the difference between analogue and digital photography?Analogue photography is also sometimes calledfilm photography and is a term widely used todescribe the process of making photographs witha camera that uses photographic film inserted intoit. After all the exposures on the film have beenused, the film is taken out of the camera andprocessed in a lab using chemicals to developphotographs that can be edited during the process.Digital photography uses a camera with a sensorthat captures images that can be seen instantlyon a screen on the camera. They can be editedon the camera and uploaded to a computer forfurther editing. They are printed using a processthat fires jets of ink and dyes at paper.

What makes a film an artwork?Film, also sometimes referred to as video todifferentiate it from analogue or film photography(see above) is a medium used in a wide variety of contexts across many different disciplines.

Artists use film in different ways, including makingdocumentaries, animation and abstract films. Ingeneral terms artists use film much like they wouldany material to make work: as the appropriatemedium to express, explore or present an image,idea or message. Film artworks can have a linearnarrative but not always. When displayed in a gallery they often play continuously in a loop,allowing access at any point.

ResourcesThe Fruitmarket Gallery produces resources that are available in the Gallery and online at www.fruitmarket.co.uk:

Little Artists are activity sheets for families andprimary school groups to enjoy the exhibitiontogether.

Download the current exhibition guide.

View the short exhibition film in the resourceroom or online atwww.youtube.com/fruitmarketgallery

Talks and events are programmed for eachexhibition with recordings available online.

View publications in the resource room. Theexhibition is accompanied by a new publication,Stan Douglas. An educational discount isavailable: please enquire at the bookshop.

Book a group visit Group visits are free and include an introduction to the exhibition and a copy of the current Learning Through Exhibitionsresource.

To book call 0131 225 2383 or emailinfo@fruitmarket.co.uk

Written by The Fruitmarket Gallery Follow us www.fruitmarket.co.uk

Send us your workSend us examples of work produced in response to the exhibition and we willfeature a selection on The FruitmarketGallery’s Facebook page.

Caitlin Page, Learning Programme Manager Email caitlin@fruitmarket.co.uk.

TheFruitmarketGallery

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