The belfry - now run as an off-site project
formerly at St John on Bethnal Green
200 Cambridge Heath Road
E2 9PA
London
United Kingdom
Europe
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w: www.thebelfry.org.uk
GHost Hosted by the belfry project Guest-curated by Sarah Sparkes & Ricarda Vidal
In 1953 Marcel Duchamp made an artwork titled “A Guest + A Host = A Ghost”. The mysterious phrase was inscribed on the tinfoil wrappers of candy that was handed out during an opening in Paris.
Etymologically “guest” and “host” go back to the same roots. The Middle English (h)oste meant both “guest” and “host”. It also meant “stranger, alien” and it is only a small step from there to “ghost”, to the disembodied spirit, the shadowy or evanescent form wandering among the living like an uninvited guest.
For this show we take Duchamp’s calculation literally: with the belfry project in the role of Host, and artist/curator Sarah Sparkes and curator Ricarda Vidal in the role of Guests, we have put together a night of Ghosts. Continuing the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories on the long dark winter nights, and in the footsteps of Charles Dickens, M.R. James and the BBC, this will be a night of spooky yarns to warm you up on a chilly winter evening.
The show will spread over the whole of St John’s Church, spilling from the cobwebbed dark alcoves of the belfry into the entrance hall, past the red velvet curtains and into the church. There will be performances, video, sound and scent installations, and sculptures in the foyer and the belfry. The church itself will open its doors later in the evening, when we will screen a programme of artist films followed by Jonathan Miller’s “Whistle and I’ll come to you” (1968), an adaptation of the eponymous M.R. James story.
Mulled wine and mince pies will be served.
NB: There is no heating in the church or the belfry or the foyer, so bring warm clothes!
