What do psychologists, spiritualists, and filmmakers have in common? Each is in some way concerned with the making-visible of what is normally invisible, whether it be the hidden recesses of the unconscious, the voices of the dead, or the world of human passions as they manifest themselves on our faces and in our gestures. For over two decades, Zoe Beloff has been using cinematic technology as a probe into the collective fantasies of our visual culture, which are not so far removed from the 19th century as we sometimes think. Her work is a sustained exploration of the concept of “medium,” which is never simply a mechanical device but a point of juncture between past and future, here and elsewhere, the visible and the invisible, the living and the dead. The arcane devices she often employs—such as stereoscopic film, 78rpm phonographs, and slide projectors—are more than just quaint relics of a bygone era. They are conduits through which we, too, might commune with the past; they conjure up something of the wonder and the ritual that the earliest spectators of moving images might have felt. As an artist and a thinker, Beloff asks us to ponder what Freud and Coney Island share, what it means to “project” an image into the world, and why the French still refer to film screenings as séances.

Artist In Person!

Curated by Seth Watter