Detail and Final Installation images, They are always watching, 2023, RMIT. Photo Final Installation by Ceri Hann
They are always watching
Tracing paper, foam core, wire, 12V lighting, wireless speaker, plywood, white pens.
This work began as an investigation into a purportedly haunted space at RMIT.
I began the investigation using special sound monitoring equipment, microphones, and software that could help me analyse the sounds and recordings I made at the site.
I spent many hours, late at night, with this equipment, recording and observing. In conclusion, I can neither confirm nor refute the presence of a ghost. Even after sitting alone, in the dark, and asking for the ghost to make its presence known – nothing happened. In all my recordings the only definite spoken words in the room were my own. This caused me to consider that the presence of a ghost or spirit is possibly a very fragile thing. I believe it may be easily disturbed by living forces. Living forces have much more energy, power, and intention. I felt that my presence, my searching/measuring/recording presence, would probably be enough to drive any remnant spirit away.
Detail and Final Installation images, They are always watching, 2023, RMIT. Photo Final Installation by Ceri Hann
The work I have created, as a response to the investigation, is an exact scale replica of the site. I wanted to create a world from the perspective of the spirit or spirits for whom I was searching. It is constructed primarily of the most lightweight material I could think of - tracing paper. I imagined a world that was separate from me by the very thinnest of margins, a world that was just beyond my reach. In this world just on the other side of the paper walls, are the spirits - not presenting themselves, existing just outside of my perception, on the threshold, listening, watching. On the inside is a light, illuminating the tracing paper walls and their detailing, and a small speaker playing a recording of me asking spirits to present themselves that was recorded at the site. I want the audience to feel as though they are colluding with the spirits by keeping silent by a sense of eavesdropping on my thoughts/incantation to the spirits and revelation of the story about the ghost cat and the accompanying self-doubt. I am not attempting to represent the presence of spirits with this work but am representing their absence and my inability to make them manifest.
This work was wholly researched, created and presented on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. I pay respect to their Elders past and present. I acknowledge and honour the unbroken spiritual, cultural and political connection they have maintained to this unique place for more than 2000 generations.