The secret agent
Stan Douglas

Visual artist Stan Douglas explores the turbulent history of 1970s Portugal, a time when the nation both freed itself from a dictatorship and relinquished its colonial holdings. The book features three works. The first, a video installation titled ‘The Secret Agent’, follows a story written by Joseph Conrad in 1907. Douglas keeps the plot characters but transports the narrative to Lisbon, soon after the Carnation Revolution. ‘Disco Angola’, a series of staged historic photos in New York and Angola, juxtaposes the city’s hedonistic nightlife with the African nation’s brutal civil war. Finally, ‘Luanda-Kinshasa’ is a six-hour-long film comprising eleven jazz songs from the legendary 30th Street Studio.