Bloomsbury Festival: Reading as Art - A Psychic Synopsis

I'm back at Senate House for the Bloomsbury Festival 2013!

On October 15th you will find me in the Paleography and Manuscripts Room at Senate House Library, as part of Sharon Kivland and Mura Gosh's Reading as Art. Turning the Pages of Victorian Psychology.  

I'll be performing Psychic Synopsis - Indexing the Unconscious Mind of Senate House Library

Taking the Victorian subdivision of the Psychology Library as her point of departure and return, Sarah Sparkes has wandered the labyrinth of Senate House library - literally, virtually and conceptually - exploring this vast, towering archive in search of its unconscious mind. Certain books, pamphlets and other archival material, which resonated in response to her quest, have been indexed by the artist on a set of cards. These cards, referencing playing, divination and Zener cards  (used in early psychical research to test telepathic powers) will be laid out on a table in front of the artist. You are invited to choose, take and keep a card; on turning this over you will find a reference number to a book or other item in SHL which, you may make your own physical or psychical journey to find

READING AS ART. TURNING THE PAGES OF VICTORIAN PSYCHOLOGY 

Convened by Sharon Kivland and Mura Ghosh 

SENATE HOUSE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY of LONDON, Malet Street, London 

TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER

5.45 p.m. for a 6 o'clock start

and ending some time around 7.45 p.m. 

Evoking a wind that blows through a library, opening books, prompting unexpected stories, this evening of readings, art,  and performances engages with Victorian psychology from the library’s collections

Debbie Booth, Kate Briggs, Jan Campbell, Jamie Crewe, Vincent Dachy & Bridget MacDonald, Karen David, Annabel Frearson, Rachel Garfield & Janet Hodgson, Chris Gibson, Laura Gonzalez,  Jane Harris, Peter Jaeger, Kreider + O'Leary  & Paul Bavister, Catherine Linton, Hayley Lock,  Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Forbes Morlock, Hester Reeve, Naomi Segal, Sarah Sparkes,  Holly Stevenson, Julie Westerman, Sarah Wood, Gillian Wylde

This event is free but places are limited and must be booked through the Bloomsbury Festival.

http://bloomsburyfestival.org.uk/ai1ec_event/reading-as-art-turning-the-pages-of-psychology/?instance_id=1207

GHost News - Reproductions and GHost Comrades

Two pieces of exciting news from my visual arts and research project GHost:

 Firstly Hostings 10 - A Haunted Reproduction...

After years tied to the University of London, GHost is now wandering the earth and may turn up anywhere!
First up we'll be at  Domobaal gallery - not too far from our old home - with a special Hostings for Sharon Kivland's wonderful exhibition Reproductions II

GHost presents: Hostings 10 - A Haunted Reproduction

February 16^th, 5.30 – 7.00pm

DOMOBAAL

3 JOHN STREET  LONDON WC1N 2ES 

T +442072429604 M +447801703871

DOMOBAAL.COM  

Between 5.30-7.00pm, in response to Sharon Kivland's exhibition, Sarah Sparkes of GHost invites Birgitta Hosea, Peter Suchin and Sarah Wood to interrogate ideas pertaining to 'haunting' in both Kivland's work and the gallery space itself. This evening's Hosting will initiate an apocryphal archiving of Reproductions II – an immaterial revenant to haunt the invited guests.

Birgitta Hosea is a digital artist, and Research Leader for Performance and Course Director of M.A. Character Animation at CSM. Her current work investigates photographic manipulation and theatricality in Victorian Spirit Photography and mediumistic performances.

Peter Suchin is an artist and critic, contributing to Art Monthly, Frieze, The Guardian, and many other journals.

Sarah Sparkes is an artist, curator and researcher.  She leads the GHost project. Initiated in 2008, GHost provides a supporting platform enabling invited guests to visually and conceptually manifest and interrogate the idea of the ghost.

Sarah Wood is Senior Lecturer at The School of English, University of Kent. She is Managing Editor of The Oxford Literary Review and a founder of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.

'GHost Hostings 10:  A Haunted Reproduction' will be part of a day of closing events on Saturday 16th February for Sharons Kivland's exhibition Reproductions II.  Places are limited and must be reserved in advance.  Please email the gallery if you wish to attend:  INFO@DOMOBAAL.COM

On the final afternoon of Sharon Kivland’s exhibition Reproductions II

We cordially invite you to an afternoon of select walking tours, discussions, book presentations and hauntings,

these events are all free however numbers are strictly limited and places must be reserved on a first come basis: 

please contact the gallery. INFO@DOMOBAAL.COM 

Secondly, a new call for two new Hostings GHost is moving in a new direction, the GHosts of the past can take us into the future as a unifying force - ghost comrades!!

GHost-dance: ghosts as cultural and political movement

GHost Hostings 11 and 12 a call for submissions

Call for papers, presentations, performance and dance for an interdisciplinary seminar and performance event – the so-called 'GHost Hostings'.   Hostings 11 and 12 take the GHost project's research in a new direction. 

Deadline for submissions – March 16th

The Hostings are supported by the Centre for Performance at CSM, University of the Arts.

Venue:  CSM, University of the Arts, Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA

Dates:        17th April, 6pm - 9pm – LVMH Lecture Theatre

                   21st May, 6pm – 9pm – Studio Theatre (dance and performance space)

“Standing on the hill where so many people were buried in a common grave, standing there in that cold darkness under the stars, I felt tears running down my face. I can’t describe what I felt.  I heard the voices of the long-dead ghost dancers crying out to us.”

(Leonard Crow Dog, during the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee, 1973).

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, self proclaimed prophet Wovoka, of the Paiute people, became the figure-head for the Ghost Dance - a religious movement adopted by a significant number of the Native American Nations. Central to this belief was a communal ritualised dance, inducing a trance state, in which it was believed the souls of the dead and living would be reunited and their land returned to them. In the 1970s the Ghost Dance was revived as part of the Red Power Movement, with the activists group AIM (American Indian Movement) at its forefront, fighting for Native American civil rights. The ghost in the Ghost Dance was a revitalising force for a people whose land and loved ones had been taken from them and who were facing cultural genocide.

The Spiritualist movement in nineteenth century U.S.A provided a forum in which women, whose role in society was very much surpressed, could give voice to their opinions in a public arena. Appeals for women’s emancipation and the abolition of slavery could be expressed under the guise of a ghost voice, allegedly channelled through the medium.

At the same time in Europe, in the opening sentences of Marx and Engle’s Communist Manifesto, “A Spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.” Communism could be said to have been conceptualised as a powerful ghostly presence, waiting to materialise and take shape within the living as a force for revolutionary change.

GHost is seeking proposals for thirty minute papers, performances, performative presentations, contemporary or traditional dance and ritual performance encompassing all disciplines and fields of interest.

Submissions may address, but not be restricted to, one or more of the following:

·Ghosts as a political or cultural voice within marginalised or disenfranchised communities.

·The embodying of ghosts within ritual and performance to instigate socio-cultural or political change.

·Ghosts as a healing and unifying presence within marginalised cultural groups or genders.

·The appropriation of the ghost-dance, and other forms of spirit–possession, within contemporary art.

·The ghost narrative as a political device within rhetoric, writing, film, visual art or popular culture (fiction and non-fiction).

Please send a (working) title and an abstract of approximately 300 - 400 words, a brief biography and, if applicable, a couple of photographs or links to film clips documenting your performance or dance.

Please send submissions to Sarah Sparkes and Aldworth Howard at:

ghost.hostings@gmail.com

www.ghosthostings.co.uk

www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com