Acrylic and vinyl paint on old magic lantern plates, super 8 loop projection (3 minutes), photographs, old file cabinet, paper documentation
The artwork was created as part of the exhibition “Here We Are – The Place Is Always Specific” at the PAC - Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Ferrara. The exhibition featured works related to the territory and history of Ferrara. I was interested in using the tool of the urban legend to measure the transmission of culture from the space of institutional or "high" culture, the museum, to the popular culture of the local territory.
The artwork was presented to visitors as my investigation into the urban legends and ghost stories surrounding a former psychiatric hospital for children located in Aguscello, in the province of Ferrara. The building is well-known among “ghost hunters” and has generated a wealth of horror-related urban legends. Although I conducted real research and consulted historical materials to reconstruct the building's history over two centuries, the report presented during the exhibition - which visitors could take as printed material - was partly fabricated. I introduced a new urban legend of my own creation, along with some fake historical facts, to observe if and when these elements would migrate from the institutional space to the popular sphere (such as online social spaces and websites specializing in ghost hunting, etc.).
The work consists of a set of 20 antique magic lantern slides, chosen as the medium typically used to tell folk tales. These slides were used to narrate the “reconstructed” story presented in the documentation. I created images for an imaginary magic lantern projection, where the slides would be accompanied by a narrator’s vocal explanation. I cleaned and repainted most of the slides from their original scenes, though some were kept intact, preserving the original art of the period.
The slides are accompanied by a short Super 8 video I made in the building of the former psychiatric hospital, as well as a file cabinet containing 60 photographs from 6x6 and 35mm film negatives I took at the same site, some of which feature “orbs” that ghost hunters sometimes interpret as ghostly presences. The title of the work refers to the French term Phantasmagoria, the earliest word used to describe this type of performance.
The artwork was presented to visitors as my investigation into the urban legends and ghost stories surrounding a former psychiatric hospital for children located in Aguscello, in the province of Ferrara. The building is well-known among “ghost hunters” and has generated a wealth of horror-related urban legends. Although I conducted real research and consulted historical materials to reconstruct the building's history over two centuries, the report presented during the exhibition - which visitors could take as printed material - was partly fabricated. I introduced a new urban legend of my own creation, along with some fake historical facts, to observe if and when these elements would migrate from the institutional space to the popular sphere (such as online social spaces and websites specializing in ghost hunting, etc.).
The work consists of a set of 20 antique magic lantern slides, chosen as the medium typically used to tell folk tales. These slides were used to narrate the “reconstructed” story presented in the documentation. I created images for an imaginary magic lantern projection, where the slides would be accompanied by a narrator’s vocal explanation. I cleaned and repainted most of the slides from their original scenes, though some were kept intact, preserving the original art of the period.
The slides are accompanied by a short Super 8 video I made in the building of the former psychiatric hospital, as well as a file cabinet containing 60 photographs from 6x6 and 35mm film negatives I took at the same site, some of which feature “orbs” that ghost hunters sometimes interpret as ghostly presences. The title of the work refers to the French term Phantasmagoria, the earliest word used to describe this type of performance.
