The Spectre and The Sphere

dublin | arts and media | news report Tuesday June 10, 2008 00:46 by Pollytix

"How do you recognise a ghost? By the fact that it does not recognise itself in a mirror.

Since all of a sudden [the mirror] no longer plays its role, since it does not reflect back the expected image, those who are looking for themselves can no longer find themselves in it. Men no longer recognise in it the social character of their own labour. It is as if they were becoming ghosts in their turn.

These ghosts that are commodities transform human producers into ghosts. And this whole theatrical process (visual, theoretical, but also optical, optician) sets off the effect of a mysterious mirror."

'Spectres of Marx' 1994, Jacques Derrida

Jesse Jones' commissioned 16mm film The Spectre and the Sphere evokes the spectres of ideology and amplifies residual voices that haunt the cultural vessels of history. It examines how the spaces of our popular imagining such as the theatre and the cinema are also containers of historical and political impulses. The Spectre and the Sphere conjures up a particular moment in the early twentieth century through the use of cultural artefacts, imagining the various historical potentialities of the time, and how these residues may be present in our construction of the future.

This show has been extended by one week and ends on June 21st.

Lydia Kavina, the celebrated musical protégée and great-niece of the inventor Leon Theremin plays The Internationale on the Theramine, a classic cult B movie instrument, or more correctly an instrument which became one. A whispering choir whisper parts of Marx's Communist Manifesto hauntingly echoing 'all that is sacred is profaned'. And right beside the Communist party bookshop on Essex Street. Coldn't be more appropriate.

This piece is well worth going to see in the Project Arts Centre Monday to Saturday 11am to 8pm. Check out the link below for more info, go on you know you want to.