Kerry James Marshall
(c)image: Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY, and Koplin Del Rio, CA
The Doppler Incident (1997) is a provocative montage of film, video, poetry, stories and improvisations of jazz-influenced music. It is an ambitious combination of live performance, the spoken word, music and video projections. The piece was first presented in 1997 at the Kitchen in
New York City, as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Artists in Action series. Singers, actors and musicians stood on a stage that provides for parallel and interwoven story lines, while the video montage played on a screen behind them.
The Doppler Incident is also filmed, recorded in Marshall's own neighbourhood. It constructs the fragmented story of a knife fight as seen from his window. The fight scene appears twice: once in real time and once in slow motion. The images are constantly interrupted by flashes of composite images and intervals of color fields that shift from blue to white.