Susan MacWilliam Work Statement Updated October 2008
Selected to represent Northern Ireland with a solo exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale MacWilliam�s practice involves the investigation of individual cases particularly those relating to the paranormal, the supernatural and to perceptual phenomena. Using video, photography and installation MacWilliam has made work about materialisation mediums, table tilters, optograms, trance, dermo optical perception and x-ray vision. MacWilliam works extensively with archives and direct first hand contact with research bodies and figures significant to the narratives. The use of interview and documentary processes as portraiture is explored. The works provide a historical visual record and interpretation of particular cases within the history of parapsychology and psychical research.
In March 2009 MacWilliam will discuss her work at the �Spiritualism and Technology in Historical and Contemporary Context� seminars, University of Westminster, London.
In 2008 MacWilliam completed a residency in Winnipeg where she researched the Thomas Glendenning Hamilton Spirit Photograph Collection housed at the University of Manitoba Archives. MacWilliam has worked with the Parapsychology Foundation, New York since 2006 and was artist in residence in 2007. She has made a number of video works based on the Irish medium and founder of the Parapsychology Foundation, Eileen J Garrett. These works have been exhibited alongside archival photographs of mediums from the collection of the psychical researcher Harry Price in 'Seeing is Believing' at the Photographers' Gallery, London, as a solo exhibition at Gimpel Fils Gallery, London and at the Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices, Belfast.
In October 2008 MacWilliam attended Utrecht II, Charting the Future, a conference co-organised by the Parapsychology Foundation. In her role as Parapsychology Foundation Film Archivist MacWilliam recorded this conference for the Foundation�s archives. In 2007 she attended the Parapsychological Association Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she met many leading researchers including Stanley Krippner, Rex Stanford, Bill Roll and Erlendur Haroldsson.
MacWilliam�s video works (1998-2007) are housed in the Drama and Literature Section of the British Library�s Sound Archive
Particular Works
Incorporating research into the fields of psychical research, psychology, physiology, photography and optical viewing devices the practice explores ideas about the visible and the invisible, about vision and perception, reality and illusion.
The phenomena of materialisation mediums, table tilters, optograms, trance, clairvoyance and x-ray vision are explored. 'Dermo Optics', 2006 uses footage shot in the Dermo Optical Perception Laboratory of Madame Duplessis, Paris while 'Experiment M', 1999 is based on the case of the Belfast based table levitator Kathleen Goligher and her researcher Dr. William Jackson Crawford. The installation �Experiment M� explores the relationship between a researcher and his subject, and suggests that the authentic research was muddied by another relationship. In the 1999 work �Faint�, hysteria is made visible through the repetitive action of the faint.
An important process within the work has been that of reconstruction and appropriation and this has been used as a device to re-present the image and give it credibility. �Kuda Bux�, 2003, uses reconstruction to create an installation that houses a video work presenting images based on the eyeless sight demonstrations of the New York mystic Kuda Bux. �Kuda Bux� was awarded the Perspective 2003 Award at Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast by Enrique Juncosa, director IMMA, Dublin. The 1998 work �The Last Person�, selected for the Glen Dimplex Artists Award, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1999 explores the genre of spirit photography and notions of fraud and authenticity. �The Last Person� is based on the case of Helen Duncan who in 1944 was the last person to be tried and prosecuted under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735. Victorian moving image devices such as the zoetrope are presented in �45rpm�, 2000 while scientific theories such as the myth of the optogram are presented in �After Image�, 2002. Delving into the bizarre and the extraordinary 'After Image' explores the myth that the last image seen before death is retained on the retina of the eye.
Perceptual phenomena, paranormal activity and eyeless sight are amongst the phenomena examined. �Headbox� 2004 is an installation of objects and video. The work presents images based on the case of Rosa Kuleshova, a young Russian woman, whose remarkable ability to read with her fingertips made her the subject of intense scientific observation in Russia in the 1960s. This scientific research has been reinterpreted though a series of videos. �Headbox� reflects and explores an interest in the contraptions and paraphernalia employed by the scientists during their experiments.
Susan MacWilliam
Northern Ireland
Belfast
United Kingdom
Europe
