The Ghost Parlour - Solo Exhibition at New Art Projects

Sarah Sparkes – The GHost Parlour

Thu 14 Mar 2019 - Sat 27 Apr 2019

New Art Projects, London

Sarah Sparkes UK
http://newartprojects.com/events/sarah-sparkes-ghost-parlour/

 

British artist Sarah Sparkes has been working hard on a number of residencies and commissions, both Nationally and Internationally. This exhibition seeks to present these projects, alongside new works to create ‘A GHost Parlour’ for New Art Projects.

 

Sparkes sees the objects in the exhibition as containers and conduits for the embodiment of narratives and more conceptually ‘spirits’. Her subjects include: Janet the Enfield poltergeist girl, Native Americans Ghost-dancers, Neolithic monuments and artefacts and some key figures from early 20th century psychical research; all attempt(ed) to communicate with the dead.

 

Central to this project is ‘The GHost Tunnel’ installation, 2016-17, This major installation has toured to FACT and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art and is presented here in all its mystery in London for the first time. The GHost Tunnel references portals, black holes and equates time travel with death as another dimension that we may enter.

 

Sarah Sparkes was recipient of the MERU ART SCIENCE AWARD and has entered GAMeC’s permanent collection and entered the archives of the Fondazione Meru and the Association Bergamo Scienza with her specially commissioned film ‘Time You Need’ 2015.

 

To compliment these extraordinary pieces Sparkes has created a series of new works ‘GHost -dance – David Soul’. Two rolls of wallpaper, remnants of those that graced the walls of Sparkes’ childhood bedroom and kitchen, have been used together with gouache paint, digital print collage and assemblages to make a series of intriguing works that cross the wall like shadows of the past.

 

 Sarah Sparkes is a London based artist and curator who exhibits widely in the UK and internationally. Her work ‘The GHost Formula’, 2016, commissioned by FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) recently toured to NTMoFA (National Taiwan Museum ofFine Arts) as part of the exhibition ‘No Such Thing As Gravity’ curated by Rob la Frenais. She was the 2015 recipient of the MERU ART*SCIENCE award with her film ‘Time You Need’ which has entered the collections of GAMeC Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo). In collaboration with Ian Thompson, she was awarded a funded BEYOND artist residency at Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Northumberland 2018. She exhibits with New Art Projects London.

 

Sparkes’ work explores magical or mythical narratives, vernacular belief systems and the visualisation of anomalous phenomena. Her work is often research led and an exploration into the borderlands where science and magic intersect. She works with installation, sculpture, painting, performance and more recently film. She leads the visual arts and creative research project GHost, initiated 2008, consists of an on-going programme of exhibitions, performances and interdisciplinary seminars interrogating the idea of the ghost. GHost events have been supported by Folkestone Biennial, University of the Arts, University of London, FACT, NTMoFA and Arts Council of England – in 2016/17 Sparkes was awarded Arts Council funding for her project to archive Liverpool ghost stories. She recently co-curated ‘the Ghost Tide’ exhibition at Thames-side Studios Gallery with Monika Bobinska of CANAL Prjects. Sparkes has published chapters on the GHost project and has lectured extensively on this subject.

 

Image: Sarah Sparkes The GHost Tunnel 2016, sculpture, 90 x 90 x 53 cms

The Ghost Tide

THE GHOST TIDE

curated by Monika Bobinska and Sarah Sparkes

Thames-Side Studios Gallery, Thames-Side Studios, Harrington Way, Warspite Road, Woolwich, SE18 5NR. www.thames-sidestudios.co.uk

EXHIBITION DATES 20 October – 3 November
GALLERY OPENING HOURS Thurs-Sun 12pm – 5pm

OPENING PARTY Friday 19 October 6pm - 8.30pm
Gen Doy performance 7.30pm

The Ghost Tide - coinciding with the festivals of Hallowe'en, All Souls and the Day of the Dead - takes as its starting point the perspective that ghosts exist as an idea, or as part of a belief system, across cultures, across national borders and throughout recorded history. Most languages contain words to describe the ghost, spirit or immaterial part of a deceased person. Often, these words - like the type of ghost they describe - have traversed borders and been assimilated across cultures.

The exhibition, situated next to the Thames Barrier in South-East London, evokes ghosts as a migratory tide, washed up along the shore of the Thames their historical baggage in tow. It also explores the presence of artists in this part of London, as a migratory tide of creative flotsam and jetsam which ebbs and flows as the city gentrifies and develops.

Featured works include sculpture, installation, film, sound, performance and wall based works. The exhibition will include installations and outdoor interventions, as well as public events.
The Ghost Tide features works by over 30 UK and international artists.

Artists featured: Andrea G Artz, Chris Boyd, Davies, Monaghan & Klein, Gen Doy, Sarah Doyle, Graham Dunning, Diane Eagles, Andrew Ekins, Charlie Fox, Katie Goodwin, Kio Griffith, Miyuki Kasahara, Calum F Kerr, Rob La Frenais, David Leapman, Liane Lang, Toby MacLennan, Laura Marker, Joanna McCormick, Josie McCoy, Jane Millar, Output Arts, Miroslav Pomichal, Brothers Quay, Anne Robinson, Edwin Rostron, Matt Rowe, Sarah Sparkes, Charlotte Squire, Sara Trillo, Yun Ting Tsai, Kate Walters, Patrick White, Heidi Wigmore, Neale Willis, Mary Yacoob, Neda Zarfsaz.

About the Curators: Monika Bobinska is the director of CANAL, which organizes exhibitions and art projects in a variety of settings. She is the founder of the North Devon Artist Residency.
Sarah Sparkes is an artist and curator. She leads the visual arts and creative research project GHost (initiated in 2008), curating an on-going programme of exhibitions, performances and inter-disciplinary seminars interrogating the idea of the ghost.

CURATORS' TALK Saturday 20 October 3pm – 4pm

DAY OF THE DEAD CLOSING PARTY Saturday 3 November 2pm – 7.30pm

Papel Picado Workshop 2pm – 5pm   Make your own Day of the Dead 'cut - outs' with artist Sarah Doyle. Suitable for all ages, materials provided
Performances and Artist Led Walk 2pm – 5pm  Charlie Fox, Calum F Kerr, Joanna Mccormick, in and around the gallery
Day Of The Dead Feast  5pm – 6pm   Refreshments served
International Film Screening 6pm  Screening of short films in the gallery: Chris Boyd, Liane Lang, Brothers Quay, Yun Ting Tsai and Neda Zarfsaz

For more information, contact us on l 0786 606 3663 | 07900 208 711 |
theghosttide@gmail.com
www.ghosthostings.co.uk | www.canalprojects.info

GHost at Camberwell Free Film Fesival 2018

GHost is back to host two nights of cult ghost and horror films for Camberwell Free Film Festival 2018.  
We return to our favourite venue, Jazz Live at the Crypt, located in the crypt of the Victorian gothic St Giles in Camberwell.  The bar is open throughout the screening.  This is a free screening, but seats are limited so arrive early to avoid disappointment.  

21 March, 8pm (doors open 7pm arrive early to be sure of a seat)
 The Woman in Black (1989), Cert 15, Dir: Herbert Wise, UK, 100 mins
JazzLive in the Crypt, St Giles Church Crypt, Camberwell Church Street, SE5 8RB

"The most terrifying programme I’ve ever seen" Reece Shearsmith

When a friendless old widow dies in the seaside town of Crythin, a young solicitor is sent by his firm to settle the estate. The lawyer finds the townspeople reluctant to talk about or go near the woman's dreary home and no one will explain or even acknowledge the menacing woman in black he keeps seeing.

Ignoring the towns-people's cryptic warnings, he goes to the house where he discovers its horrible history and becomes ensnared in its even more horrible legacy.

This Central Television production of The Woman In Black, adapted for TV by Nigel Neale from Susan Hill's classic horror novella was broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1989 and repeated only once in 1994. However, the film is often held up as one of the most potent, paralysingly spooky screen adaptations of a ghost story ever made.The film has been described by Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentleman) as “the most terrifying programme I’ve ever seen”. Without giving away any spoilers, there are some shocking moments in this TV adaptation which will linger in the memory of anyone who sees it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwtFRXWIGK8

22 March 9pm (doors open 8pm arrive early to be sure of a seat)
Hausu (House) - Cert 15 - Dir: Nobuhiko Obayashi, Japan (1977) 88 mins

'One of the Weirdest Horror Films ever Made' - Taryn McCabe Little White Lies.

An unforgettable mixture of bubblegum teen melodrama and grisly phantasmagoria, Obayashi’s deranged fairy tale Hausu (House) is one of Japanese cinema’s wildest supernatural ventures and a truly startling debut feature. Adapted from an idea from Obayashi's young daughter, the film looks like a psychedelic, nightmare version of a children's ghost hunting adventure, but there are sophisticated undercurrents that hint at the dislocation in Japanese culture pre and post second world war.

Distressed by her widowed father’s plans to remarry, Angel sets off with six of her schoolgirl friends in tow for a summer getaway in her aunt’s isolated mansion. But all is not well – in this house of dormant secrets and cobwebbed interiors long-held emotional traumas have terrifyingly physical embodiment and the girls will have to use all their individual talents if any are to survive.
A roller-coaster ride without brakes, House is by turns sinister, hilarious and curiously touching, with ceaseless cinematic invention and a satirical, full-blooded approach to the horror genre
(from Eureka Masters of Cinema Series)

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6BMehj59co

GHost at Camberwell Free Film Festival

GHost is hosting two nights of classic ghost films at St Giles Church Camberwell as part of Camberwell Free Film Festival

These are FREE events. No tickets required, arrive early to get the best seats and enjoy the accompanying installation artworks and performances before the feature film commences.

26 March, The Innocents, 6.45pm - 8.00pm exhibition and bar open, 8.00pm film commences.
Venue, The Knave, St Giles Church, Camberwell Church Street, SE5 8RB
27 March, Kwaidan, 8.00pm - 8.30pm performances in and around The Crypt, St Giles Church, Camberwell Church street, SE5 8RB

The screenings are accompanied by an exhibition of installations and performances with artists: Sarah Doyle, Jennie Fagerstrom, Miyuki Kasahara, Calum F Kerr, Joanna McCormick, Anne Robinson, Sarah Sparkes, Charlotte Squire, Sally Waterman and John Workman.

The Innocents (Dir: Jack Clayton, 1961, UK/US, Cert 12A, 100 mins) is a classic British supernatural gothic horror film directed and produced by Jack Clayton. Starring Deborah Kerr in a career-best performance the film achieves its effects through lighting, music and direction rather than conventional shocks.
Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) applies for a job as a governess. It is to be her first position, but the wealthy bachelor interviewing her (Michael Redgrave) is unconcerned with her lack of experience. He values his freedom to travel and socialise and unabashedly confesses that he has "no room, mentally or emotionally" for his orphaned niece and nephew, who were left in his care as infants and live at his country estate. However, Miss Giddens slowly starts to convince herself that the house, grounds and two children in her care are haunted. The Innocents is based on the Henry James ghost story novella The Turn of the Screw (1898).

Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1965, 185 minutes)  features dreamlike ghost tales adapted from Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folk stories of the same name. This lavish, widescreen production drew extensively on director Kobayashi’s own training as a student of painting and fine arts. Toru Takemitsu's innovative score compliments the extraordinary and beautiful visuals. This film is rarely screened - don't miss it!
The film consists of four separate and unrelated stories. The Black Hair, Hoichi The Earless, In a Cup of Tea and The Woman of The Snow. We encourage you to stay and watch all four stories!

Artists
Sally Waterman, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ photographic ‘still movie’ (2001)'The Turn of the Screw' is an autobiographical interpretation of Henry James novel. It explores the issue of sexual and social repression of Victorian culture, in relation to childhood innocence through an ambiguous interplay between the existence of ghosts and the hallucinations of a neurotic governess played out by a surrogate self. In this brief extract, the viewer follows in her footsteps, tracing the precise moment when she glimpses the ghost of Peter Quint, who becomes representative of Waterman’s estranged father, peering in through the window, to her futile attempt to confront him outside, only to be faced with a discomforting, empty landscape. The unsettling silence emphasizes the inherent qualities of ghostliness and invisibility that emerge from Waterman’s elusive self-portraits, as the governess tries to understand what is real and what is imagined.
Biography: Sally Waterman employs literary adaptation as a mechanism for self-portraiture, creating photographic and video works that explore memory, place and familial relationships. Drawing upon writers such as T.S Eliot, Henry James and Virginia Woolf, she re-invents the source material through a fragmentary re-scripting exercise, seeking autobiographical associations with certain images, themes, characters or concepts. Waterman received her PhD in Media & Photography at the University of Plymouth in 2011. Recent exhibitions include Ruskin Gallery, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (Solo, 2012), Camberwell Space, London and Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany (Group, 2013). Her work is held in public collections including the National Art Library, V&A, London and the Yale Center for British Art, New York. She has lectured at Plymouth College of Art and the University of Plymouth and is currently an associate lecturer at Ravensbourne, London.
www.sallywaterman.com

John Workman, 'PAINTING THE PAST' Hand-painted lightboxes of various dimensions

John Workman’s lightbox pieces show a world that has gone. Metal lightboxes, salvaged from disused darkrooms, hold landscapes painted on glass, the light inside glowing through the painted clouds and trees like the dying light in a Claude Lorrain painting. Although the boxes belong to the industrial 20th century, they suggest with their illuminated images an older period, the Victorian era, with its magic lanterns and sentimental nostalgia for the past. The images themselves belong to an even more distant time; they are taken from paintings of the 18th or 17th century, idealised landscapes depicting scenes from a biblical or classical past that was already remote in time, or perhaps never existed.

Jennie Fagerstrom, 'Skogsrå', Lanterns, various materials

Jennie Fagerstrom brings intimate lanterns to light the loss of way and figures of the non existence to cause erasure of the real. Images referencing the female skogsrå of nordic mythology, seductively luring men to their doom in the lost depth of the forest. Born in Sweden, lives and works in London. Studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, London. She uses the body and movement as a means of inspiration and expression to create sequences. Translating her ideas onto the fragile nature of paper, supported by low tech and light. Her work touches on the notion of romanticism and nostalgia. Recent showings and exhibitions- St Leonards Church LCV event March 2013 ” Follow the Lanterns. The Sea and I EP launch with London Contemporary Voices” Stroud SITE Festival 2012 May, group exhibit “Golden is Silence” Studio 23 Netil House London June 2012 Coming soon- Clerkenwell Design Week London May 2013 Performance and installation night Stockholm, Sweden 25 May 2013

Miyuki Kasahara & Calum F Kerr, 'Yakumo’s Echo', performance and interventionsKoizumi Yakumo is the Japanese name of Lafcadio Hearn, the Irish Greek author who living in Japan wrote ‘Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things’ (1903) an adaption of Japanese folk stories to which the film ‘Kwaidan’ (1965) is based. This performance by Miyuki Kasahara & Calum F Kerr will, through gesture and sound, be an echo of the tales rendered so strikingly in Masaki Kobayashi‘s film.

Anne Robinson, 'Ghost Rider', hallucinatory film and voice manipulation

Dr Anne Robinson is a senior lecturer in Film Studies (0.6) and a practicing artist. Her specialist area of research is artists’ film and video, focusing in particular on artists’ experiments with time and duration in moving image work. She is a member of the steering committee for The Facility Centre for Creative Practice as Research at London Met andcurated the event One More Time in October 2011. She has previously curated symposia and screenings including:Time, Flesh and Nerve in 2006 and Slip Frame in 2007.
Anne's practice encompasses moving image installations, painting and performance and is concerned with the perception and politics of time passing. Her practice-led PhD work explored temporality, film and painting and she is also interested in expanded cinema and surrealism. She has shown work nationally and internationally, including recently working with the Comm(o)nist Gallery on song-films and performance interventions and showing installation works at GHost IV in London.
Details of Vital Excess,  Anne's up-coming exhibition


Joanna McCormick, 'Singing Ghost', Performance
The live art piece "Singing Ghost" explores the context of song lyrics and how the meaning of a song shifts sharply when sung by a ghost. The piece is a medley of covers interwoven with my own 'song poems' and ghost sounds that creates a multi layered performance examining notions of love, loss and our contemporary perceptions of the meaning of death. For "Kwaidan" on March 27th The Singing Ghost will have a Japanese twist.A self employed fine artist with a socially engaged practice and a studio space at a South East London primary school, Joanna works across different art forms from oil painting and watercolour to live art and taxidermy. "My focus is on surrealism and naivism, and I strive to evoke an emotionally engaged response in the viewer."
Joanna has exhibited widely both at home and internationally, with Birmingham's Ikon Gallery, The Fashion and Textile Museum in London, The Royal Parks at Richmond, The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and The National Trust.
She lives in London with her two children.

Sarah Doyle "The Woman of the Snow" Installation

Sarah Doyle's work for Ghost at Camberwell Film Festival is inspired by the story "The Woman of the Snow" from the film Kwaidan. The story depicts the folkloric character of Yuki-onna, a ghostly female figure who inhabits snowy regions. The set design for this story in the film is filled with haunting images of the woman's eyes looking out from the snowy sky. Sarah Doyle has created snowflakes (or Sarah Doyle Doylies) inspired by these haunting set designs that incorporate this image
Sarah Doyle’s work explores the construction of identity through visual culture and has developed a practice looking at the emulation of icons and obsessions. She is an interdisplinary artist working a variety of media including, painting, drawing, animation, etchings, etc. She has shown her art internationally in Japan, America and Germany and has collaborated with Elle magazine, Transition Gallery, Tatty Devine, Surface 2 Air, Arty Magazine. Her animation work was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of the Late Nights Programme and she was the winner of the New Artist Category at The Elle Style Awards. Sarah studied Art at Manchester Metropolitan University and Central Saint Martins College of Art London.
Sarah Doyles Blog

Charlotte Squire "Innocents"

Interior and exterior collide in these dark wooden spaces. Light shines to without, reflection peers inward. Wires tangle like roots.
A couple stand together, odd presences that have an otherness, they seem to be keeping each other company against the world at large.

Sarah Sparkes NEVER AFRAID - Giant Killer

 

'Giant Killer', an illuminated sign with slowly pulsing fairy lights, hangs over a doorway spelling out the artists maxim 'NEVER AFRAID' a phrase that crops up repeatedly in the artist's work. It is both an invitation and a challenge to cross the threshold. Sarah Sparkes is an artist, curator and lecturer primarily concerned with concepts of immateriality and how this might be visualised through contemporary art. Her work often interrogates the presence of magic in the domestic and everyday, both as supernatural force and as legerdemain and is an investigation into the belief systems and material symbols we adopt to mediate with the unknowable. Recent exhibitions include: Theatrical Dynamics at Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; The Infinity Show at NN Contemporary, Northampton, and Uncanny Landscapes at the Centre for Creative Collaboration, London. Between 2009 – 2012 she was a research fellow at the School of Advanced study, University of London where she was commissioned to create a public art work at Senate House in response to The Harry Price Library of Magical Literature. She runs the visual arts and cross-disciplinary research project GHost, which explores how ghosts are manifested in visual art and contemporary culture. Her chapter on GHost has been published in The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures and is available (2014). She is founder of The Chutney Preserves, performance collective who appeared at Supernormal 2013. She lectures widely on her own practise, the GHost project and Harry Price. She is an Associate Lecturer for the University of the Arts, lecturing in Independent Curating and Painting.

Hostings 14 - GHost-dance IV: the ghost without, the ghost within

GHost Hostings 14 - GHost-dance IV: the ghost without, the ghost within
A night of three distinct performances exploring ghosts as socio-cultural movement and human energy from without and within.

London Lucumi Choir photograph©Nadjib Le Fleurier

12th March 2014

6.30pm – 9.30pm

Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design

Studio Theatre

Granary Square

London

N1C 4AA

GHost Hostings 14 is supported by the Drama And Performance Programme.

Central St Martins School of Arts

GHost hosts an evening of cross-disciplinary performance which continue to explore the GHost-dance theme.

PROGRAMME

Home Stasis 73

I Am Still Within You Eleanor Clare, Kam Wan and Marcus Davidson.

THE LONDON LUCUMI CHOIR " The energy of Orisha, In Art Dance and Song: A multi-disciplined look at Yoruban deities"

Note: running order may be subject to change

HOME. Stasis 73

“The house I had they took away from me. The times happened to be unpropitious: war, destruction, exile.

I don’t know much about houses, I remember their joy and their sorrow

sometimes, when I stop to think…………….

sometimes, near the sea, in naked rooms with a single iron bed and

nothing of my own, watching the evening spider.”

George Seferis

HOME is of an immersive live sound, movement and projection performance consisting of drones and sonic explorations, utilizing manipulated and effected instruments and imagery, field recordings, voice and text, creating an atmosphere of sorrow and longing.
Referencing the ghost of deracination, and the idea of the created boundaries between migrating societies and their cultures : utilizing an empty interior as a signifier for the longing and sorrow for the lost ‘home’ to animate the movement between the two places of physical and psychological dislocation.
“It wasn’t easy, because you leave your home,
your possessions, your memories, your youth,
you leave your dead there………
and carry their memories in music and; dance”.
Ali Oney removed from Rethymno Crete to Ayvalik Turkey. Population Exchange 1923.

Stasis73 formed in 2009 by a collective of creatives from Hastings, film makers, painters, writers and musicians. The aim of the project is to move beyond the concerns of more traditional music making, yet not fall into the trap of being labelled experimental. Live sound and film installations of drones and sonic explorations, utilizing electro-acoustic manipulated pure noise, voice, text, whisperings, field recordings, decay, extended drones, and original, found & archive imagery, creating a multi-layered environment.

www.stasis73.com

I Am Still Within You.  Eleanor Clare, Kam Wan and Marcus Davidson.

The suggestion of a journey, magical and mystical, at times painful; the need to connect to something constant. Between darkness & twilight is where this work belongs: a sight just half seen. Visions appear transiently in the space between sleep & waking, the unconscious and conscious. The moon becomes symbolic because of its association with the feminine and its constant transformation from dark to light. One can take solace in the idea that there is something (albeit elusive) which resides through the process of change, dispersion, disintegration and regeneration.

I Am Still Within You is devised by Eleanor Clare, Kam Wan and Marcus Davidson. During the performance, singers move through the darkness. At times they will be lit by the projection, but the emphasis will be on the affect of their voices in the space, and the movement of sound with a sense of physical presence.

Biog

Eleanor Clare, Kam Wan and Marcus Davidson have been collaborating on this project since 2013. The concept was initiated by Eleanor Clare, through lyrics and a basic melody, with an idea of moving through darkness. Kam Wan created and devised the film projection and installation, using footage of the moon which he had been collecting over time. Marcus Davidson created the sound track and the vocal harmony, working with his own research into music devised from the sounds of space. The genesis of this project can be traced back to the artist and composer Ellen Southern, who invited Eleanor Clare to produce new work taking inspiration from her remix score of ‘The Brilliant and the Dark.’ The showing of this work is kindly supported by Bergen Kommune, Norway.

Here are our websites too:
www.eleanorclare.com

www.kamwan.com

www.marcusdavidson.net

The energy of Orisha, In Art Dance and Song: A multi-disciplined

look at Yoruban deities. Daniela Rosselson De Armas and The London Lucumi Choir

The London Lucumi Choir was formed in November

2006. It is still directed and led by one of its founder members, Daniela

Rosselson De Armas, who is a musician and a Priestess of Oshun. It is an unusual choir which sings songs for Orisha; deities that mediate between human beings and God ( Olofi) as sun in Cuba and other countries in the African Diaspora. Although it is a non audition community choir, it works

with highly qualified and knowledgeable artists and priests of the tradition. The songs that are sung within the choir are cultural representations of songs that are actually sung today within ceremonial

contexts. They are accompanied by Bata drums. Bata drums are three drums that are played together to form complex rhythms that also connect to what is being sung. In a ceremonial context, the songs' purpose is to "bring down" the Orisha to "mount" their initiates. The Orisha then dance, cleanse and give advise to the congregation. Obviously in a performance or cultural context this does not happen! The choir became finalists of the BBC Radio Three choir competition of the year in 2008 and have opened for big stars such as Eliades Ochoa ( Buena Vista Social Club) and Buika. They have performed at festivals, charity events, clubs and conferences and educational days at schools and are looking forward to playing at GHost. The performance at GHost Hostings will demonstrate a selection of songs to Orisha illustrated by dance moves which show the energy of the different Orisha by Afro Cuban Dancer, Yolanda Perez. It will be accompanied by a slide show which demonstrate Religious Altars, Orisha in nature and some wonderful art work by Contemporary Artists Janine Francois.
 ( introducing Oshun), Jacob V Joyce. Jacob will also be giving a run down on each Orisha in his own, inimitable style.

LINKS:

https:// londonlucumichoir.com

https:// facebook.com/TheLondonLucumiChoir

http://jacobvjoyce.com

http://yewandeokuleye.com

http://reintroducingoshun.tumblr.com

http://oshun-ibu-anya.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89GP83iuzp0 Yolanda dancing Oya

Hostings 13 - GHost-dance III: time travelling mediums

 Hostings 13 - GHost-dance III: time travelling mediums

February 17th 6.30 - 9.30

Central St. Martins College of Arts and Design, LVH E003

Granary Square London, Nr Kings Cross

London

N1C 4AA

GHost hosts an evening of presentations and performative presentations exploring the idea of ghosts as material transmutations in time.  

GHost Hostings 13 is supported by the Centre for Performance, Central St Martins School of Arts

Hostings 13 image - Anne Robinson Is It You 

PROGRAMME

Vicky Smith Haunting a medium through physical residue. 

Jessica Worden Materialising the Body: Material Phenomena and Sartre's Theory of Viscosity. 

Anne Robinson Is It You? Time travel and Physical Thinking.  

Eleanor Bowen  Drawing and Longing 

If you wish to attend please register for FREE seats by following the link below

ABSTRACTS 

Vicky Smith. Haunting a medium through physical residue.

I will talk about how imagery created directly onto film can deal with things that have been abandoned or are undervalued. Using clips from my recent film/ performance, 36 Frames Per Feet, I will illustrate how film, once inhabited, now presents only the trace of the absent body. I will discuss this in relation to Walter Benjamin’s meditation on the modern body in an age of animated machinery and his suggestion that the death of a technology releases the hopes which were embedded in it at its birth. Early cinema was proclaimed as ‘life itself’ (Doane, 2008). I will show how, by enlivening film with my own body and refusing to let film die, my research corresponds to the concerns of Ghosting with regard to themes of absence, presence, the politics of commodification and as a lamentation for what is lost.

Vicky Smith’s practice incorporates experimental animation and performance. Her work will be shown at The Tate Britain this Feb, 2014, and has recently been exhibited at:  No. w.here, London (2013) Lo and Behold, London (2012/2013), 100 Feet touring (2013-14) Edinburgh Film Festival (2012),  Melbourne Experimental Film Festival (2012).  Recently published work includes: Full Body Film in Sequence (2013). She was Workshop Organiser at the LFMC , lectured in Film Studies at UWE,  and is currently at UCA, teaching Digital Film and Screen Arts and researching into the aura and trace using films made without cameras.

Jessica Worden. Materialising the Body: Material Phenomena and Sartre's Theory of Viscosity (because slimy substances stick to the hands , and clothes, and because they stain) — Sartre, 1943.

Sartre describes the viscous in terms of its qualities, trying to create parameters around a state that is ‘always fleeing’. (Sartre, 1943) There is ample critique of Sartre's theory of viscosity (the slimy)— particularly the use of feminine metaphors to describe its negative attributes. By applying the properties of viscosity to the role of material phenomena in altering definition(s) of the female body, it is possible to underline the radical nature of these performances and potentially reclaim the viscous. Ectoplasms have been extensively cataloged and documented since the 1880's; the advent of their distinctly material ormations occurred simultaneously with the changing roles of women in society. Viscosity defies definition; it is my intention to suggest through visual and textual re-appropriation ways in which women utilised ectoplasmic manifestations to influence the definition their bodies and modes of (re)production by embracing viscosity.

I am a Dutch/American artist currently undertaking a practice-based PhD in Breathlessness in Performance in the Contemporary Performance department at Brunel University. I have been working with live art since 2005, having also run a live-arts platform from 2006-2008 in Rotterdam, NL. My practice is influenced by photography, but based in performance writing. I produce artist books, installations and performance pieces. My aim is to explore writing-as-performance and the interplay between the visual and the textual

 Anne Robinson. Is It You? Time Travel and Physical Thinking 

 This paper focuses on the two-screen performative video work, Is It You? a ‘ghost dance’ with polyrhythmic patterns made in response to the spectral traces of physically ‘remembered’ songs (including Toots and the Maytalls’ Pressure Drop). Is It You? engages with the ‘frame’ as temporal marker,  using slow shutter-speeds and high speed filming to capture the ‘same’ moments in time using different time bases. This is an unsettling experience of time deconstructed through cinematic devices which catches the spectator in a circuit of afterimages and pushes them into a strange, dissonant perceptual dimension, parallel to the temporal alterations in shamanic drumming. The experience of sound in the work is also immersive, pushing language to the threshold of recognisable auditory form. The talk draws on a body of practice-led research into temporality and philosophical perspectives from Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Gidal. Extracts from Is It You? (2012), Que Sera (2010) and Inside Out Blues (2013). 

 Anne Robinson’s practice encompasses painting, moving image and performance and is concerned with the perception and politics of time passing, recently working with the Commonist Gallery, ‘Winter Shuffle’, Supernormal, Psi19 and GHost IV following a PhD on temporality, film and painting. In summer 2013, she took part in the ‘DeTours’ residency inMarseilles, resulting in the performative song-film ‘Inside Out Blues’. She works with film as an artist and educator, currently senior lecturer in Film at LMU, curating the event One More Time there in 2011. 

Eleanor Bowen.  Drawing and Longing (performed text with slide projections)

My presentation for GHost is developed from material that was published in Performance Research, ‘On Choreography’ (Vol. 13: 2, 2008). It investigates the alchemical notion of parastasis as phenomenon of haunting that, rooted in the ancient desire to stop time by replicating or fixing the present, was eventually realised in the photograph. Such a haunting does not relate to the making of photographs, the spirit world of the darkroom, but reflects the unseen presence of the camera itself and its relationship as such to time travel. Incorporated into the presentation are readings of snaps from ancestral albums, found photos and pinhole images made in an underground archaeological site, not a burial but the archive of an archaeologist who was also my father.

Eleanor Bowen is a writer and visual artist, currently with a studio practice in London. She holds an MA in Visual Art and Theatre and a practice-based PhD from Wimbledon School of Art, in which she explored the relationship between early photographic practice and drawing. Publications include contributions to Performance Research, ‘Lexicon’ (11: 3, 2007) and ‘On Choreography’ (13: 2, 2008), http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/drawing-and-longing-proposal-drawing-paratext, ‘Between Laughter and Crying’, co-written chapter with Dr Laura Gonzalez for ‘Madness, Women and the Power of Art’, Oxford, Inter-Disciplinary Press (2014) which is to be developed as a co-performed text for ACTS RE-ACTS (March 2014, Wimbledon College of Arts).