Simon. Sounds like Summon, and like Someone.

by FLORENCE WILD

Reflections on HAUNTING THE SPECTRE AND THE METAPHOR

I approached the presentations/symposium as a myriad of perspectives swirling around and weaving in and out of these ideas of spectrality. In this way my reflections are both broadly vague and highly detailed, a connection between words, images and actions. I was struck by the repetition and musicality in Annie’s (Lowe) voice in the darkness, and the chanting and unison of Ectoplasmic Materialism, thinking a lot about the shifts between the physical and spectral — the chewed-up paper blending with Eva C’s saliva, the soundless gestures of the ghosts Esther (Peeren) showed from the film ‘A Ghost Story’ with focus on their own ‘bodies’, instead of embodying things or causing other objects to move. The body constantly recurred, as strands of hair or nail clippings via Vera (Knútsdóttir), the things that continue to grow, to contain life, after death.

There was discussion around time being out of joint, about dissociation, about the deconstruction of the spectre and the metaphor, and of the spectral metaphor. With so much play on language and fluidity I started to think of the separation of the words spectre and metaphor, and how everything hinged on the metaphor itself. The metaphor as noun, as being or object, and spectral as descriptor, adjective, verb, action. What happens if these roles (as happens in re-enactments) are replaced, reversed or switched? What becomes of the ‘metaphorical spectre’ in this case? It is perhaps another path to travel down in the disjointed future.

I was struck by the repetition in the auto-composed texts, as we had touched so often on repetition as a dissociation of time, and as a presence of haunting. The cyclical nature of predicting or predictive (text) is an exploration in mediocrity, tracing the most common combinations of words, the most standardized of phrases. Is this predictive texting, the following of suggested words in a sequence, to be the downfall of the metaphor? Can predictive text write metaphors?

Simon. Sounds like Summon, and like Someone. Simon as verb, “to summon someone”. I thought of the 2002 film Simone where the name Simone stems from Simulation One; Simone is computer generated actress directed by Al Pacino. I haven’t seen it since probably 2002, though the wikipedia entry is almost demanding a revisiting. Already, via Simone’s wikipedia page, I have been introduced to the phenomena of ‘the Streisand Effect’ which may have some bearing on spectrality. For example: The Streisand effect has been observed in relation to the right to be forgotten.

//FW.

Florence Wild (New Zealand) is an artist and writer currently based in Stockholm. Interweaving everyday materials with poetic imagery, she reflects upon fragmentary, tenuous structures with the potential to collapse or dissolve. Acts of translation, transformation, recurrence and repetition are important points of departure, and points to revisit. She received her MFA from Konstfack in 2017.