Identity, Technology and Doppelgangers
Lecture by Stan Douglas
Stan Douglas, Der Sandmann Set Photos: Contemporary Set, DOKFILM Studios, Potsdam, Babelsberg, 1994. © Stan Douglas, Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner
September 25, 2022
7:30 pm
During his one year fellowship with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, Stan Douglas captured the city of Potsdam immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall in documentary form. The series Potsdamer Schrebergärten (1994/95) shows moments of transition. It addresses themes that Stan Douglas also takes up in his later works: How do cities change over time, how does history leave its traces, how do communities claim their space? Douglas’s film Der Sandmann (1995), filmed in the former DEFA-Studios in Babelsberg, is also a film about identity, between memory and repression. But Der Sandmann and Potsdamer Schrebergärten are not only works about Potsdam and reunification. They are works about Doppelgängers and unresolved moments in history, whose consequences are still palpable today.
Both the film and the photographic series are now being presented for the first time in Potsdam, the place where they were made. On this special occasion, Stan Douglas’s lecture will offer unique insights into his working process.
