PHANTOM INTERLOCUTORS: Part Two
Blindside ARI
12–29 Oct 2022
The fleshy chamber of the retina is scanned for the flicker of a ghostly ectoplasm, a research team is plagued by a mysterious illness. An unusual manuscript is saved from a mass book burning and a water-damaged Catholic souvenir depicts a wavering image of the Madonna.
We use systems of knowledge to perceive and understand the world and yet these stories depict failed encounters. Discourses such as history or science appear to render the pandemonium of existence into concrete fact but within these systems there are fissures. Something slips through the cracks: ideas, memories and experiences that cannot be contained drift out in the world to create new narratives. This exhibition uses speculative fiction to tell stories of absences, of what cannot be seen in interstitial spaces. In 1993 in his book Spectres of Marx, French Philosopher Jacques Derrida conceived of the term ‘hauntology’, exploring the notion that ideas and knowledge could haunt one another throughout time. Phantom Interlocutors contemplates hauntology: presenting spectral encounters imbued with the melancholy that accompanies absence.
Catalogue essay by Cameron Hurst
All images courtesy Nick Archer
