The Secret Agent: Music for a Film by Stan Douglas
Composed by The Legendary Tigerman and Filipe Costa
A 12-inch LP: Theme & Five Variations
Recorded live at Clube Recreativo dos Anjos, March 2015
Mixed at Bandido Sessions Studio
The Secret Agent is Douglas’s adaption of the 1907 political novel of the same title by Joseph Conrad. Set in London in 1886, the book recounts an anarchist’s failed plot to bomb the Greenwich Observatory and is considered among the first literary portrayals of modern-day terrorism. Consistent with Douglas’s nonlinear treatment of historical events within his practice, his version sets the action within the context of Portugal’s so-called “Hot Summer” of 1975, which ended the turbulent period between the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 (a bloodless coup to end Europe’s longest dictatorship) and the ratification of a new constitution. During the transition to democracy, which hastened the decolonization of Portuguese colonies, numerous terrorist acts by extreme right- and left-wing groups rocked the country.
Publisher: Metrónomo
Artists: Stan Douglas
Contributors: The Legendary Tigerman, Filipe Costa
Publication Date: 2016
Binding: 12-inch LP
ISBN: 0000000000024
Retail: $20
Status: Not Available
Stan Douglas
Since the late 1980s, Stan Douglas has created films, photographs, and installations that reexamine particular locations or past events. His works often take their points of departure in local settings, from which broader issues can be identified. Making frequent use of new as well as outdated technologies, Douglas appropriates existing Hollywood genres (including murder mysteries and the Western) and borrows from classic literary works (notably, Samuel Beckett, Herman Melville, and Franz Kafka) to create ready-made contextual frameworks for his complex, thoroughly researched projects.
