Hosting 4: GHost-hunters 2

Vigil Group - Blue Firth, Mark Pilkington, Dr David Luke

Date: 16 November 2010, 6.30pm – 9pm 

SEE MORE on the GHost blog

 

Venue: The Senate Room, 1st floor, Senate House South Block,
University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Join us for the fourth GHost Hosting, an evening of exploration into the phenomenon of ghost-hunting, including the findings from the recent and very marvellous 'Vigil' at the Royal Academy and a dissection of the substance of ghost-hunting inside the world of television.

The stately Senate Room is haunted by the smell of academic incense and the ghost of the blue lady may be heard scratching from behind the wood-panelled walls.
Come and play with us...

Lucy Bensusan, “Most Haunted Live” – Interactive Television and the Domestic Ghost Hunter

Blue Firth, David Luke, Mark Pilkington, Vigil

Followed by discussion including the parapsychologist Dr. Ciarán O'Keeffe.
London spirits will be served.

This event is free but places are limited – to secure your seat please email us at ghost.hostings@gmail.com

Abstracts of presentations

Lucy Bensusan, “Most Haunted Live” – Interactive Television and the Domestic Ghost Hunter

'The camera as we know it now and in its future manifestations will continue to function as an apparitional apparatus.' (Daniel Wojcik, 'Spirits, Apparitions, and Traditions of Supernatural Photogrpahy', Visual Resources.)
The subject was initially born from a personal interest in the paranormal, but as I searched for something spooky to watch in the evening I became increasingly aware that I was spoilt for choice, and the body of preternatural television texts that are marketed as either documentary, reality or investigative is more dominant than ever before in television history.
Crucial to my investigation is how Most Haunted Live innovates the traditional notions of live broadcasting as media event, monopolises upon the advantages of digital television, explores multi-platform delivery, creates cult viewing, encourages high levels of audience interactivity to produce an active television viewer, and therefore an active ghost hunter operating from their own domestic sphere. Whilst textually analysing the ideology, address and format of programmes such as these, this project investigates what properties inherent to the medium of television make it suitable as a vehicle of supernatural factual or reality programming. Initially, one must observe to what extent this portrayal of the contemporary investigator imitates previous incarnations of psychic entertainment, but also contemporarily how does Most Haunted revise, re-work or create new formats of television programming? Finally, this discussion will encompass arguments over the potential of the medium of television to be used to channel the deceased, encouraged by televised paranormal investigations, and being able to function as an 'apparitional apparatus', both letting the viewer see far into the distance whilst possibly bringing an unknown energy into the domestic sphere.

Blue Firth, David Luke, Mark Pilkington, Vigil

VIGIL is a participatory investigation into alleged paranormal phenomena at The Royal Academy Schools in Piccadilly, London. It was conducted in October 2010.
The project arose from first hand accounts of anomalous experiences told to RA student Blue Firth by security guards doing night shifts on the site. Their descriptions prompted Blue to unearth a history of unusual phenomena at the Academy buildings.
Wanting to explore these occurrences further, Blue brought in parapsychologist Dr David Luke and fortean author-curator Mark Pilkington. Together they attended training seminars with the respected investigation group ASSAP (Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) and devised Vigil according to their guidelines. Blue and Mark also interviewed veteran psychical investigator Guy Playfair, who in 1977 experienced, and documented, dramatic poltergeist phenomena at the home of the Hogdson family in Enfield, North London.
Vigil took place over two evenings in October, during which 120 people participated over six sessions. Each session lasted 30 minutes and was conducted in total silence and complete darkness; subjects were asked to complete psychometric assessment forms and detail any unusual sensations felt during the session. Trained medical and psychological facilitators were on site to assist with the project.
For Hostings Blue, David and Mark will present a performative summary of their findings incorporating data and documentation from the Vigil sessions. 

400 Women

400 Women is an exhibition of new work by 200 artists in response to the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. A project by Tamsyn Challenger, curated by Ellen Mara De Wachter.

Each artist was given the name of a murdered woman. Some had a photogragh, others just the name.

I was given the name:

María de la Luz Murgado Larrea Gutiérrez

The first exhibition of all 200 paintings took place at Shoreditch Town Hall fro 12 November - 5th December.

I searched for information about her on the internet and found only an autopsy report. Maria was strangled in a motel room.

I painted her as a Soldaderas, a woman soldier from the Mexican war of independence.

You can read more about 400 women here

The Infinity Box

Something is waiting for you in the Belfry!'The Infinity Box' - Sarah Sparkes

Private View:November 4th 6 - 9pm arrive early for some homemade soup.
drinks will be served.


I built a shed in the Belfry of St Johns. Placed to the back of this narrow, alcoved space and angled awkwardly, the visitor was forced to squeeze down a small passage at it's side. After climbing the winding stone steps to the Belfry, visitors were confronted with an illuminated sign slowly pulsing with the maxim, NEVER AFRAID . The far side of the shed was lit-up with a halogen lamp, placed in a corner, so that it's rays glancing off the roof of the shed up to the ladder and opening leading up into the Belltower. The shed door contained a small 'spy-hole' through which a flashing tunnel of lights could be glimpsed, dancing off into infinity.

Opening night is part of First Thursdays atThe Belfry, St John on Bethnal Green200 Cambridge Heath RoadLondon E2 9PA(next to Bethnal Green Tube)



The infinity box is an old optical trick using simple technology to create a �Tardis-like� illusion of a space larger on the inside than it appears from outside. For some years, Sarah Sparkes has been exploring the potential of these boxes, previously installing them into coffins, built to fit the artist. Viewed through a peephole, a portal opens out into a limitless dimension, referencing both our arrival into this world and our departure from it.The Belfry will become home for a structure, which is domestic and everyday, whilst serving as a gateway to explore a fascination for �other worlds
Exhibition open Sundays 12-5pm until Dec 2nd.Closing event First Thursday, December 2nd - 6-8 - Sandra Sykorova and Sarah Sparkes, 'one-to-one with infinity' or by appointment

RECESSIONAL AESTHETICS

Sandra Sykorova and Sarah Sparkes present
"One-to-One with Recessional Aesthetics"
as part of a one day event organised by no.w.here
Sunday October 17th
at James Taylor Gallery
Collent Street (just off Well Street) 2pm - midnight

Bring some food, join the dinner and discussion.
You will be called for your 'one-to-one' with Recessional Aesthetics

Sarah and Sandra

 ‘Recessional Aesthetics’ was a discursive event organised by no.w.here (founded by artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler) at the James Taylor Gallery in Hackney,  Sunday 17th October, 2pm - 12 pm.

One of the large rooms of JTG, a not-for-profit exhibition space established by two artists in a large sprawling, multi-roomed warehouse in Hackney, was set out with a long dining table  and looking like cross between a communal canteen and a bourgeoisie dinner party. Around the table sat different thinkers and makers presenting ideas, films, performance, readings all designed to open discussion related to the economic, political, and social implication of the forthcoming cuts. Throughout the questions raised included “how we are working in the Arts?, how have we worked?, and how are we expected to work?”

The event was free to all, but participants and guests were asked to bring food to the table,  invited to sit down to dine and to contribute to on-going discussions which were both fed by and fed into the content of the program of presentations.

For the full duration of the event, in the far corner of a room adjacent to the main dinner and discussion , artists Sandra Sykorova and Sarah Sparkes’ created a space for a more personal discourse during a ‘Recessional Aesthetics One-to-One’.

On arrival, guests were given number cards. Periodically and at the push of a button a number screen in the dinning room generated random numbers.  The number holder was then invited to join one of the artists in the back room for a ‘one-to-one’. 

The ‘one-to-ones’ took place at a small dinner table where those selected where invited to sit upon a toilet and choose a ‘question dish’ to their taste then spending time discussing this topic with one of the artists.  The questions were written upon a stack of paper plates and taken from many current sources of thought and writings about the roles of art, artists, aesthetics and economics.  The responses were recorded on a typewriter by the artist acting as a scribe to create a documentation of the ideas exchanged.

The interviewee sat upon a white porcelain toilet, a reference to Brunel’s film ‘phantom of liberty’ the title of which is a homage to the opening sentence of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Communist Manifesto ("A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Communism").  On another level the aesthetics of this performance, also referenced the dis-empowering, bureaucratic approaches of institutions and the recourse to humour that often occurs during times of hardship.  Paradoxically, the content of the exchange in this absurdist setting, was largely passionate, empowering and humane. The interviewee and interviewer feeling a sense of conclusion, discussions always ending by mutual agreement.

  some of the responses from participants of the ‘one-to-ones’ will be posted on a 'one-to-one' blog coming soon!:

http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/

Schedule

From 2pm - midnight
Sandra Sykorova and Sarah Sparkes
Recessional Aesthetics: one to one

"Workers Playtime" by Simon Bookish
2pm
William Raban
The Fiction of capitalism: The potential for an exponential decline?

2.30pm
David Graeber
Debt: the First Five Thousand Years

3.15pm
Oliver Rees
Address to Congress.

4pm
Ellie Harrison, Rachel Pimm and Edward Dorrian
Risk, responsibility and public money

5pm
Lutz Becker, Karen Mirza, Brad Butler
The Aesthetics of Resistance

15 minute break

6pm
Stefano Harney
For most people the crisis has just begun…

6.45pm
Maxa Zoller and Claire Tancon with William Cobbing
Processional Aesthetics

7.45pm
Alana Jelinek and John Reardon
De-schooling society

8.45pm
Dean Kenning and Paul O Kane
The Inoperative Community

9.30pm
Matthew Stone/Cedar Lewisohn
Interconnected Echoes/The Gut Club

10.15pm
About Now MMX by William Raban:
film screening: 27 mins.


It is certain that we are all currently engaging in personal and sometime public conversations around the arts and the cuts and what to do in the face of the dramatic changes that are in motion. We are witnessing different strategies of mobilisation across the breadth of cultural production and we know that the arts are not alone, the public sector as a whole is to be cut and as such we all have different questions and pressures we are asking of ourselves on fundamental levels.

In this light this event is proposed as a frame for exchange at James Taylor Gallery. As you may know James Taylor Gallery is not a traditional gallery space, it is best described as an artist occupation of a 25,000 sq foot space in the East End awaiting finance for its planning permission for conversion to luxury flats. In the meantime the gallery is an artist run live work space that sites exhibitions whilst facing a rolling 2 month notice of eviction. We felt this a fitting space for discourse combining a vast space, the gallery's fragility, and the context of a group exhibition that will not only stretch over the Government announcement of the cuts - but also the weekend of Frieze.

This invitation is to attend and participate in Recessional Aesthetics; a durational, discursive event produced, staged, and facilitated by the context of the space and the conditions of our present moment. This will take place on Sunday 17th October from 2pm - 12 pm and is to be sited around a long dining table, a cross between a commune (communal) dining hall and a (bourgeoise) banqueting dinner. Around this table on the hour different thinkers and makers will open a discussion in relation to the economic, political, and social implication of the forthcoming cuts. Whilst different individuals will lead each hour according to a schedule - the forms of such a participation are free and may take the form of people / collectives conversing, cinematic interventions, readings, or performed works. Time keeping will be upheld by sonic interruptions on the hour from the series “workers playtime” in homage to the radio series started in 1941 “to keep up the morale of the workers”. Throughout the questions raised will include how we are working in the Arts?, how have we worked?, and how are we expected to work? So the day will act as a durational discursive event, a coming together of individuals as part of a collectivity operating in the threshold of the public and the private, an image, a staging and an active discussion.

Your discourse is welcome. You are free to sit down, eat, and to join the discussion. We ask only that you bring a food offering for the table.

... a thought must be coarse to find its way into action. Bertolt Brecht

Rhizomatic- Departure Gallery

RHIZOMATIC 1st October – 12th November 2010 by appointment.Private View Friday 8th October, 6 - 9.30pm (free taxi shuttle from Southall, see below) Departure Gallery, 5 - 6 Boeing Way, The International Trading Estate, Brent Road, Southall, London UB2 5LF.




A host of artists showing work in two awesome warehouses.

Needless to say I picked the scary warehouse and hung up some 'Never Afraid' Bunting as a welcome to visitors







Here's how it works - Rhizomatic is an experimental, decentralised curatorial system based on the concept of the Rhizome, as explored in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical masterpiece A Thousand Plateaus. This is Departure Gallery’s largest and most ambitious show so far and includes work by over two hundred artists exhibiting in 100,000 sq ft of warehouse space.Selected artists associated with Departure Gallery were each invited to choose up to six artists to exhibit alongside them. In turn, this second generation were encouraged to invite a further six participants, making a third generation, who could then invite six more. This six-link structure was inspired by the idea that all humans are connected by ‘six degrees of separation’. A rhizome is a sprawling, unhierarchical system of connections that are constantly in flux and can spring up at any moment in space and time. This exhibition does not seek to fix the rhizome by presenting it in a finished form, but, rather, it represents an attempt to freeze a moment of this rhizomatic process in the interests of examining its structure more closely. Furthermore, the show aims to catch a glimpse of the creative networks within which Departure Gallery’s artists operate, in order to locate ourselves within the wider art world. “Principles of connection and heterogeneity: at any point a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be…A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power, and circumstances relevant to the arts, sciences and social struggles.” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. This rhizomatic structure has particular resonance in the context of The International Trading Estate, which is a hub of haulage and distribution companies sorting and transporting goods in flux between producer and consumer.
The exhibition will not constitute the end of the rhizome, because a true rhizome has no beginning or end, but is ongoing and unlimited. Each artist involved will continue to make connections during and after the exhibition through the contacts and ideas that emerge as a result of the show. This opens up the possibility of creating a larger sequel exhibition at some point in the future. Who knows where this will go and what might result?
Louise Ashcroft, Curator.
Getting There: Take national rail from Paddington to Southall (14 minutes) then buses 105, h32, 105 or 482 to Brent Road. On the private view night there will be a free taxi shuttle from Southall Station between 6pm and 9.30pm- turn left out of the station and follow the signs to the shuttle stop.For more information or to make an appointment please contactlouiseashcroft@departuregallery.comLouise AshcroftDirector of ExhibitionsDeparture Gallery http://www.departuregallery.com/


Ancestors - I was selected by Ben Woodeson, who was selected by Russell Herron and I need to check on who selected him!

Nunhead Open

The film documenting my residency at Nunhead Community Centre was shown at this years Nunhead Open, an annual Art Exhibition at The Nunhead Community Centre. 10-12 September 2010

see more about events, projects, artist films and performance taking place alongside the Nunhead Open:http://thesurgery.turnpiece.net/gallery/2407

Sarah Sparkes, Deserters, 2009, 2 mins 36, dvd format Fri- Sunday 12-5pm Sarah Sparkes was the artist in residence at The Nunhead Community Centre during Nunhead Arts Week 2009. Sarah examined the absence of community at the the abandoned centre. The film Deserters was made during Sarah's residency and returns to haunt the community centre on a plinth, made from cushions left behind by the old people, on a tower a-top of Great Aunt Vera's Table.

This still from the film shows the portal I made inside a coffin at the community centre:

You can watch my film documenting the 'Deserter's Residency' below. The film shows the interventions I made in the space which were largely constructed from the furniture and objects left behind by the community. The bunting was from the silver Jubilee and was 'made over' by COTH (Sarah Sparkes and Simon Neville). I asked Derek Jordan to sing some popular war songs andit is his voice hauting the space:

Hostings 3 - GHost-hunters 1

Date: 12 October 2010, 6.30pm – 9pm This event is free but places are limited – to secure your seat please email us at ghost.hostings@gmail.com
Venue: The Senate Room, 1st floor, Senate House South Block,
University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

GHost invites you to join us for three presentations on the wondrous world of ghost hunters in film, in video games and in real life. A 'blue lady' is said to haunt our atmospheric venue, so you'll have the the chance to do a bit of ghost hunting yourself.

Maya McKechneay, "Respectable Gentlemen, Techno-geeks and Wise Women: Gender Roles in Ghost-hunter films"

Scott Wood, "Elliott O’Donnell: Number 1 Ghost-hunter"

Rob Gallagher, “Press X to Enter”: Videogame Ghost Hunts and the Horror of the Object"

The event is part of the GHost project, led by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal

Maya McKechneay, Respectable gentlemen, techno-geeks and wise women: gender roles in ghost-hunter films
In fiction films ghost hunters are usually portrayed in a standardized way: There is the stereotype of the respectable gentleman in the Brit-Mood-Horrorfilm. Like Dr. John Markway in Robert Wise’s “The Haunting” or Mr. Barrett in John Hough’s “The Legend of Hell House”. The respectable gentleman-ghost hunter has greying hair and is on top of the hierarchy within the team he assembles around him (the psychic-medium, the experienced eye-witness, etc.) ... which makes him the love interest of the female participants. There is the clergyman, deeply afflicted by his responsibility, who performs an exorcism, most famously Max von Sydow in William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist”. Then of course, there is the comic ghost hunter: you’ll find him (and his technical gadgetry) in Ivan Reitman’s 1984 classic “Ghost Busters” and its sequels or in family entertainment like “Disney’s Haunted Mansion”.
Female ghost hunters usually choose the mental path and take the role of the psychic medium. They rarely use machines or technical gadgets like the male ghost hunters. Women lure ghosts out of their hidings with their mind, they try to establish communication and offer to be the therapist. Some even offer their voice and body to the ghost, which may take the form of a more or less explicit metaphor for the sexual act.
Ghost hunting is an archaic profession, so – not surprisingly – gender roles are firmly cemented. Still: the classical male ghost hunter is usually far less interesting than his female counterpart. While he is in for ratio and eventually knows less than he thinks, she always seems to know a little bit more than what she chooses to tell the audience.
Maya will explore the gender-theme by talking about some spectacular (and some spectacularly crappy) films. She will also show clips from the films.

Scott Wood, Elliott O’Donnell: Number 1 Ghost hunter.
“And now, as I stared in wonder –and, I admit, not a little fear – I saw something rise from the floor and advance towards me.”
Elliott O’Donnell (1872 – 1965) was an Irish ghost hunter and writer who couldn’t have a drink in his club, sit on a park bench or stay in a boarding house without someone telling him their encounter with a ghost or seeing something spectral himself. His mother was psychic, he saw his first ghost, with “yellowish green and sphinx-like” eyes at the age of 5, he was throttled unconscious by a dangerous spirit in Bristol and his father’s death was heralded by the family banshee. He wrote many books based on these encounters that tell wild tales of almost medieval ghosts and spirits, all with spare but well round narratives attached to them.
Scott Wood, of the South East London Folklore Society and Fortean London column, picks out and discusses some of O’Donnell’s stories, compares them to our meagre contemporary ghosts stories and tries to find out who Elliott O’Donnell was through his stories, ghosts, opinions on Celtic identity and his eagerness to prove his own membership of the O’Donnell clan.

Rob Gallagher, “Press X to Enter”: Videogame Ghost Hunts and the Horror of the Object
Rob will discuss the Fatal Frame, Silent Hill and Forbidden Siren videogame series, all of which allow players to go hunt ghosts from the (dis)comfort of their own settees.
While the games remediate various tropes from gothic literature and horror cinema, their plots – and their marketing campaigns – have also drawn heavily on the culture of contemporary ghost hunting and paranormal investigation: the Siren games were promoted via a series of hoax websites and blogs purportedly maintained by in-game characters, while Fatal Frame was marketed in America as ‘based on a true story’ - a claim that catalysed widespread online debate as to the location of the game’s (fictional) setting.
These electronically-orchestrated misinformation campaigns hint at a dominant theme in the titles, which are profoundly preoccupied with the capacity of technology to unearth and make sense of the past. While all the games stage dramatic confrontations with spectral, undead or demonic antagonists, the horror they generate turns out to have much more to do with the ghostliness of electronic media and the intractability of material objects; players spend as much time fiddling with cameras, radios and telephones, collecting keys, lockets and dolls as they do discharging firearms.
What emerges is a fear of the capacity of objects to look back – both in the sense of indexing the past, and that of seeming, uncannily, to return the player’s gaze. Via a reading of these titles informed by Sartrian phenomenology and the ‘thing theory’ of Bill Brown, Rob hopes to throw light on their presentation of ghost hunting as paradigmatic of modern experience and to suggest how their interactivity furthers this end. He will use footage of play to illustrate his argument.

If you want to attend more hostings in the ghost hunters series please put the following dates in your diary:

Hosting 4: Ghost hunters 2: 16 November 2010, 6.30 – 9pm
Senate Room, Senate House, University of London

Lucy Bensusan, “Most Haunted Live” – Interactive Television and the Domestic Ghost Hunter
Blue Firth, David Luke, Mark Pilkington, "Vigil"

Hosting 5: Ghost hunters 3: 18 January 2011, 6.30 – 9pm
Senate Room, Senate House, University of London

John Hyatt, The Uncanny in the Everyday
Hannah Gilbert, with (Films by Amanda and Rachael Hayward) Translation for the Dead
James Thurgill, Ghost hunting and the architecture of Hauntology