Installation view, Stan Douglas, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, May 23—July 29, 2023. Photo by Elon Schoenholz. Courtesy of David Zwirner.
David Zwirner is exhibiting Stan Douglas’s major two-channel video installation ISDN (2022), along with a group of related photographs, which will be his first solo presentation in more than twenty years in Los Angeles.
In the two-channel video installation ISDN, the viewer finds themselves in the middle of a call-and-response jam session that unfolds across continents, literally positioned between the two screens. Set in 2011, the work pairs MCs in improvised studios, one in London and the other in Cairo, who trade free-styled verses, transmitted between them on ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Network) lines, a technology that has become largely disused as it has been replaced by faster broadband and fiber optic connections.
The video presentation is complemented by five photographs that recreate specific moments from 2011 in four global cities: London, New York, Tunis, and Vancouver. To create these panoramic mises-en-scènes, Douglas digitally stitched together imagery, utilizing a variety of sources to reconstruct the events as accurately as possible.
Stan Douglas’s work is on view through July 29 at David Zwirner LA, 612 North Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90004
