defending ectoplasm
‘Thus to think the body without body of this invisible visibility — the ghost is already taking shape’ (Derrida, 1994).
Examining the relationship between ideoplastic manifestations, photography, psychoanalysis and trauma, my aim is to explore what is held in the interstitial space where traumatic remembering exists on the borders of exposure and concealment.
I propose that the concept of such ‘invisible’ matter made material, in the séance room and thereafter on camera, arises from the desire to fill the space between life and death, presence and absence. It is a notion of haunting that examines the idea of an externalisation of the haunted interior and creates the potential for a narrative to exist outside of the body as an alternative to negotiate not only individual trauma, but also collective trauma. Massumi, in Ontopower, calls such an emergence, ‘extensity… the synchronistic extrusion of the specious present’s taking place' (2015: 137).
Images 2018: C-prints, 297 x 420mm
Examining the relationship between ideoplastic manifestations, photography, psychoanalysis and trauma, my aim is to explore what is held in the interstitial space where traumatic remembering exists on the borders of exposure and concealment.
I propose that the concept of such ‘invisible’ matter made material, in the séance room and thereafter on camera, arises from the desire to fill the space between life and death, presence and absence. It is a notion of haunting that examines the idea of an externalisation of the haunted interior and creates the potential for a narrative to exist outside of the body as an alternative to negotiate not only individual trauma, but also collective trauma. Massumi, in Ontopower, calls such an emergence, ‘extensity… the synchronistic extrusion of the specious present’s taking place' (2015: 137).
Images 2018: C-prints, 297 x 420mm