Beyond Text: Spiritualism and Technology in Contemporary and Historical Contexts

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The central theme of the project concerns historical and contemporary spiritualist photographic practices. Since spiritualism has in the main not been considered an object of serious academic study, there is a requirement in this context to assess the forces that have affected the cultural reception of spiritualism. Spiritualist photography is a discourse of transmission and memory, in that it is concerned with preserving memory of communication with the dead. Spiritualist photography questions the trust placed in technologies in terms of their documentary truth, but whatever the veracity of such claims, it also marks a desire for continuity with the past and the maintenance of personal relations and cultural values. In this light, the project aims to consider spiritualist photographies as practices that may attest to, and be witness of, their times/that is, as creative and critical practices that may shed light on wider cultural, economic, and political forces.While spiritualist photography has received little serious or sustained academic attention, this aspect of visual culture has received significant attention in the work of contemporary photographic artists. Such practitioners both reflect upon historical instances of spiritualist practices and upon contemporary concerns/their work is, in this sense, the primary object of investigation as it creatively and reflexively links past and present, tradition and modernity. However, not only has spiritualism been an object of attention for literature and literary criticism: visual practices have been developed through textual techniques, such as automatic writing. Spiritualist photography thus needs to be understood through a multidisciplinary perspective. There is then, a cultural history of technology and mysticism, yet it is one that remains largely unwritten. Furthermore, communication between visual practitioners, academic researchers, and non-academic specialists in this field remains under-developed. In response to this situation, the project is designed to bring together participants from, and to foster novel communication between, the department of English and the department of photography at the University of Westminster, independent visual artists and curators, and specialists and archivists in the field of spiritualism. There are two key collections in this field: that of the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature at Senate House, London; and that of the Society for Psychical Research, at the University of Cambridge. The Society for Psychical Research would be our partner organisation in this project. Members from this non-academic institution would be involved as specialists in the field.The project has two linked forms: five seminar workshops and a larger public event. Through the seminars, the project aims to foster links and communication between academic researchers, practitioners and archivists, facilitating novel contact between individuals and institutions that would otherwise not be brought together. Through this, the project aims to develop the research of individual specialists, and to provide the basis for ongoing networks of researchers. Through a public event, a colloquium presenting theoretical and visual material, the project aims to open itself to wider public involvement. The colloquium will be accompanied by a catalogue that will contain visual examples of historical and contemporary spiritualist photographic practices and that will publish articles by project participants that have been developed through the seminar workshops. The Society for Psychical research would provide archival material for photographic reproduction in the catalogue alongside the work of contemporary photographers. Thus, the aim of the project is to facilitate ongoing research and to develop multidisciplinary understanding and public knowledge concerning relations between technology and spiritualism in historical and contemporary culture.