The Bun house, Peckham, London October 2011 Curated by Karl Weill
"EVP"
Karl Weill Alta ego of Venessa Mitter stated, “What is the performative tactic if it is not a calculated assault on the audience? It is forbidden to forbid.
I want you to imagine, for a moment, an audience who are not entertained. I am walking backwards. Ennui. The slow rustling of a paper bag. Talking. A man swears. The crowd breaks out in laughter. Voices heckling...the audience falls silent. A fear of engulfment precedes attack. The shouting then begins. Intervention. All the while, my back is turned.” *
* Chronologie de l’Art, Issue 29, Autumn 1968
This is the documented result of six years' arduous research into an astounding scientific phenomenon.
In collaboration with Phill Wilson Perkins
In some way, and for reasons not yet fully understood, voices of dead persons linked by affection or interest with the experimenter, appear during playbacks of recordings on which no such voices were audible at the time of the original recording.
These voices always state their names and may be identified as male or female, but all speak very much faster than is normal and employ a curious speech rhythm.
The gallery space, located in a tiny room through the back of a classic old man's boozer on Peckham High Street (just opposite Peckham Space) is one of a host of spaces making the area one of London's most artistically exciting.
Run by two DIY innovators, exhibitions here tend - as you might expect - towards the experimental and the unconventional, and occasionally spill out into the pub itself, much to the delight of the long-supping locals.