Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, United States
February 13–August 24, 2025
Colby College Museum of Art presents an exhibition of Stan Douglas’s 1992 multichannel video installation, Hors-champs.
Within his practice, Stan Douglas investigates the context of history, considers alternative narratives, and examines the intersection between race, class, and power. He gained international acclaim in 1992, when he premiered Hors-champs, his first multichannel video installation, at Documenta in Kassel, Germany. Hors-champs, French for “off-screen” or “off-camera,” is simultaneously a work of fiction and a document of a performance.
Projected on opposite sides of a suspended screen, a jazz quartet riffs on Albert Ayler’s Spirits Rejoice (1965), a composition that incorporates reworked passages from the French and US national anthems while also drawing on gospel, military fanfare, and other musical traditions. On one side of the screen, a polished, made-for-TV edit plays, while the other displays footage that typically is omitted. By showcasing what is typically off-screen, Douglas gives us access to moments such as the musicians intently listening and responding to the instrumental language of their peers.
The performers play free jazz, which dispenses with such musical conventions as harmonies, chord progressions, and regular tempos. When it originated in the late 1950s, free jazz was linked with political activism, particularly in Paris, where a number of Black US musicians lived in self-imposed exile. By choosing four American musicians (George Lewis on the trombone, Douglas Ewart on the saxophone, Kent Carter on bass, and Oliver Johnson on drums) who either lived in France during the Free Jazz moment or who still reside there today, Stan Douglas points to the continuous presence of African-American music in Europe, starting with Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet and continuing to the present.
Stan Douglas: Hors-champs is curated by Sarah Humphreville, Lunder Curator of American Art, and Taka Suzuki, Assistant Professor of Art.
Learn more at Colby College Museum of Art.