"Everyone has memories and histories. In all sorts of ways ‘who you are’ is shaped by what is passed on - generation after generation. It might be the memories in your family, the type of work that was done where you live, the things around you, the big events that have changed lives. All of these things shape us as people and communities.
Read MoreFor me, the Ghost-Lab (G-L) should really emphasise its role as a laboratory: a place of experimental thought and practice, a place where we test out new ideas, and a place where things might not turn out as we expect. Geoff’s assertion that the G-L be a ‘safe space’ resonates with this sense of exploration:
Read MoreTo be honest when I first heard about social haunting, social ghosts and a ghost lab in Barnsley my thoughts weren’t what does it mean to me but more like what the hell does any of it mean! I attended the first meeting in Barnsley and was surprisingly touched by the emotion of each individuals ‘haunted object’ stories.
Read More"Musing on this question I have been thinking about the film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, in which a diverse group of people experience what Freud might have called “Uncanny” compulsions to gather at a vast crater in a remote landscape. A magnificent space ship lands
there.
More haunted objects from Barnsley
Read More"Ghost Labs, to me, seem almost like a synonym for the poem, for the page, for the written word. If we think of poetry as something through which the subconscious speaks, then this is maybe what the ghost labs can do- call upon the past, imagine a future, distil all the violent ephemera and hand it back to people as something useful.
Read MoreHaunted objects Barnsley
Read More"Too often it is easy to take the presence of ghosts for granted because one does not possess the means by which to understand them. For me, the ghost lab is something of an experiment; one which permits a lens to be put upon the hidden, the unseen, the unknown, the unspoken.
Read MoreI want the Ghost Labs to be places where all who become part of them – researchers, partners or participants – come together with their senses fully open to the ‘blind field’ of what we normally regard as knowledge, with their hearts open to whatever it is the ghosts are trying to tell us, and with their wills set to see if we can begin to imagine what it is that needs to be done which is different to what’s been done before in AG’s words.
Read MoreGhost Lab Barnsley 1st Meeting
Read More"The aspect of the Ghost Lab I’m most excited about is how it can help us understand, and respond to, the ‘ghost’ Avery Gordon describes as being, “primarily a symptom of what is missing”. So in the most obvious sense, that might be something like a pit head that isn’t there anymore, but it may also be a journey no one takes, or words that are no longer used.
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