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  • Stan Douglas b1960
  • Inconsolable Memories 2005
  • 16mm black-and-white film, audio track
  • Overall display dimensions variable
  • Purchased from David Zwirner Gallery, New York
  • Tate © Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, New York
  • T12217
  • View work within Tate Collection
Stan Douglas, Inconsolable Memories

Tate © Gabriel Orozco

Inconsolable Memories was inspired by Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's 1968 film Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) which tells the story of a writer who chooses to stay in Havana in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Stan Douglas updates the story to 1980 during the Mariel Boat Lift, a mass exodus of more than 125,000 Cubans including 10,000 convicts from Mariel Harbour, Cuba, to Miami. Douglas's installation comprises two black-and-white films, overlaid and synchronised so that, for most of the duration of the work, the scenes from one film run during the pauses of the other. A series of vignettes exploring the ex-convict hero’s past and present are displayed in various permutations randomly determined by computer, suggesting the fragmentation of memory and the subjective nature of truth.

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