A syllabus for ancestors, apparitions, inherited objects, and the thinning veil ... examining how the dead remain embedded in ordinary life: in tables, recipes, handwriting, houses, landscapes, family habits, and objects no one can quite discard.
THEMES: falltime, studying our past and lineage, ghosts embedded in domestic life, inherited objects, family archives, old houses, rituals, gothic, with more room for lineage, inherited knowledge and remembrance, thinning veil, liminal spaces, Halloween, pumpkins and gourds, skeletons, what remains hidden, ghosts, haunted houses, communication from the other side, ancestor practices, cemetery culture, Victorian mourning objects, spirit photography, family archives, memento mori, Día de los Muertos, Samhain, decomposition, fungi, first frost, the annual dying-back of the natural world, the afterlife.
SEASON: Autumn equinox through late November
“This time of year just feels like grief I think,” a friend told me.
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CONTENTS:
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Putting together this reading list made me wonder how many artists’ work has been influenced by seances and the Ouija board—and of them, how many disclosed this behind-the-scenes inspiration?
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films, TV shows, series, & shorts for spooky season
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/555490935311496808/
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songs, records, playlists, field recordings
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/134qshy2gw8ygnhjn3l7Di?si=36440b06a8a74ff9
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5fjd4OLch9WHolXz4oN6Du?si=b94ef2d8d32f4e5e
ALBUMS
“Blackstar” — David Bowie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRIDL2JxFMk
Requiem Mass — Mozart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmttZ-BnwaI
“The Ape Of Naples” — Coil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INMo0sj9AMw
“+/-” — Boys Noize
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKZnjnSdqdI&list=PL5KXIEmcWgIF0BCDdzLy4RGWZIw6-uoKT
“Hounds of Love” — Kate Bush
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhD5Gs4A1GM
“Lust Lust Lust” — The Raveonettes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeXzjF8VbNU
“OK Computer” — Radiohead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TneMW2fd0dc
“The Inevitable End” — Royksopp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ_OfHE24bg&list=PLwuDkSjK4vJ8KPSXpbk383Uw3VWd2dbbD
“Heaven or Las Vegas” — Cocteau Twins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbbUeLkZt74&list=PLfimnwaZdumjABvYHnq7nXUU41YVqPA3i
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Louise Bourgeois’ spiders
SOURCE: Jordi Martorell/Flickr.
“The spider—why the spider? Because my best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and as useful as a spider … I shall never tire of representing her.” —Louise Bourgeois
Victorian spirit photography
Plates of spirit photographs from Georgiana Houghton’s “Chronicles of the Photographs of Spiritual Beings and Phenomena Invisible to the Material Eye" (1882). SOURCE: Public Domain. An article by Jennifer Higgie explores mourning, séances, abstract art, and Victorian spirit photography.
Gothic architecture
Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula by night in Brussels, Belgium. SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G94jFWH8NSM
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Ghost floating dance from Russia
Ghost dance origins explained #dance
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“Mud and Antler Bone” :: mythologist Martin Shaw on story, land, and ancestral severance. His central idea: “If you don’t have ancestors, you have ghosts.”
“Post-Mortem Photography” from Conversations on Death :: postmortem portraiture, spirit photography, séances, and the relationship between technology, power, and visual representations of mourning.
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David Lynch
Both his visual artwork and film sense are decidedly dark or at the very least mysterious. His work embodies the “behind the veil” and what might be found on the other side.
David Lynch - Art & Prints for Sale | Artsy
José Guadalupe Posada
Mexican printmaker and lithographer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_Catrina
SOURCE: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Public Domain
Betye Saar
Betye Saar at MoMA: Prelude to a Revolutionary Breakthrough (Published 2019)
Tim Burton
Beetlejuice (1988) Edward Scissorhands (1990) Sleepy Hollow (1999) Corpse Bride (2005) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) Dark Shadows (2012) Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) ——— (Note: While widely associated with The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Burton produced it and wrote the story/characters, but Henry Selick directed the film).
Marie Laveau
Marie Catherine Laveau was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo, a herbalist, and a midwife who was renowned in New Orleans. Her daughter, Marie Laveau II, also practiced rootwork, conjure, and Native American and African spiritualism, as well as Louisiana Voodoo and traditional Roman Catholicism. An alternate spelling of her name, Laveaux, is considered by historians to be from the original French spelling.
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