Article by Elizabeth Martin
Photos by Susan MacWilliam

Video artist Susan MacWilliam has been haunted by the bizarre world of 19th and early 20th century spiritualist movements. The interest began when she had been accepted for a show in England called Haunted. "I looked into spiritualism and got very interested in Victorian spirit photographs. That started me on to basically what I've been doing ever since--investigating mediums and spiritualism, especially those who yield ectoplasm, the substance that materialization mediums produce when they are performing a sCance. This substance emanated from the mediums' bodily orifices and was thought to take the form of the dead relative that the sCance participant was contacting."

Researching spiritualism from its 1848 beginning in Rochester, New York to its subsequent spread throughout Europe led her to the Belfast Central Library, The National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Library, and The Journalsfor the Society of Psychical Research. The artist focused on the cases of Helen Duncan, Kathleen Goligher and Mollie Fancher creating several videos about these women's anomalistic experiences with "spirits" and how the press treated them at that time. Did the seances involve fraud or manipulation? MacWilliam explains, "obviously there was a lot of debate as to whether it was real. It was mainly women who were the materialization mediums and, interestingly enough, it was primarily men who were doing the research, trying to capture (literally) the ectoplasm and analyze it to see if it was real or not--whether it was muslin, linen or cloth, or if trickery was involved."

MacWilliam is not interested in ascertaining the veracity of these tabloid-esque events. On the contrary, she explores the ambiguity and illusion in the medium's repertoire. Parallels exist between the mediums she studied and her own contemporary artistic process. "I was interested in whether these women were essentially an early version of performance artists, and was intrigued by the notion of the audience's role. The people attending the sCance wanted to see something--there wre clearly ideas of theater and audience participation occurring."

MacWilliam's work exists within the larger context of conceptual art and its progeny, video art. In the '60s, as a subset of the conceptual art movement, video emerged as a form that enabled artists to defy formalist categories in the attempt to demystify the artistic process. More accessible by its affordability and increased mobility, video enabled direct, powerful and instantaneous transmittal of images. Video emphasizes the notion of time, both as a concept and as a physical reality. Physically, video releases the image from a single screen and extends the image possibilities into both time and space.

The parameters of video art have grown from Nam June Paik's early assault on mainstream TV conventions to these presen stylists: Mathew Barney's post-modern cinema-styled narratives; Carl Pope's politicized issue-oriented art; Doug Aitken's desolate urban-landscape meditations and Pipilotti Rist's gender-and-media focused videos. Ranging from abstraction to performance recordings, the form is evolving.

Current video art darling Bill Viola has further extended the personal nature of this electronic art by developing ghostly narrative work that is both personal and mythic, not unlike MacWilliam's own work.

MacWilliam's videos consistently reflect her concerns with theater and audience participation. The artist uses her own body in her work like the video artists who documented their own "happenings" and performances as some kind of inner diary. Her work recreates scenes from history performed within staged environments, rife with accurate historical detail, yet paradoxically obscure in meaning. The artist presents an enigmatic diorama that remains unrelentingly ambiguous; her art is about ideas and questions, not simplistic answers.

This red-haired dynamo never doubted her choice of a career path; she always wanted to be an artist. MacWilliam studied painting at Manchester Polytechnic in England. BFA in hand, she returned to her hometown Belfast where she continued to paint. Gradually moving toward sculpture and installation work; video began to dominate her practice. She exhibited widely in Ireland, England and the US. Short listed for the prestigious Irish Museum of Modern Art's Glen Dimplex Artists Award in '99, she was then selected for Long Island City's PS1 International Studio Program residency. This past spring, PS1 showcased studio program artists' work at the Clocktower Gallery in lower Manhattan. In a post-exhibition talk, the earnest, engaging artist spoke about the process, influences and inspirations in her recent work.

"My approach to video today incorporates what has been a longstanding thread of interest in cinema and television; the work reflects my attraction to theatre, performance and the notion of audience participation within it. Switching from the medium of painting to other disciplines, I started to wonder if I could make moving images myself. I bought a camera, and that's how it began."

Experiment M examines Goligher, a Belfast woman born in 1898 and living into the '60s. Coincidentally, both Goligher and MacWilliam lived on Ormeau Road in Belfast. "She specialized in the levitation of tables, producing ectoplasmic rods that emerged from between her legs and levitated the table.'' William Jackson Crawford, a mechanical engineer who lectured at Belfast's Queens University was called to investigate. Intrigued by the connection between a "man of science" and a female materialization medium, MacWilliam was interested in the development of an increasingly personal relationship between them beyond the quasiscientific documentation recorded by the scientist. During his six years attendance of her presentations, "he would analyze the ectoplasmic rods that caused the table to move, working in close proximity to the medium in order to ascertain if she was using her body in any way to produce the levitation. The relationship between medium and researcher seemed to have a very sexual aspect as well, which is really common throughout all the medium documentation. So the piece became less about his scientific findings and more about his rapport with the medium."

During her 1998 artist-in-residency at Dublin's Irish Museum of Modem Art, the videotrix researched hysteria, fainting as a symptom of hysteria and the frequent sexual diagnosis of such hysterical women. In her research MacWilliam found Charcot's photographs of women hysterics in an asylum in Saltpetriere, France--a fitting inspiration.

Her subsequent video Faint depicts the recurring image of a swooning woman (MacWilliam) in a lush garden set against the background sound of birds. Juxtaposed with the exterior footage of the fainting woman are close up shots of the artist shown with her hand on her stomach, alluding to the connection between hysteria and the womb. "The Creeks believed the definition of hysteria was that the womb was traveling freely around the body.'Hysterical' comes from the word hyster. Connected to this is the notion of some sort of sexual thing going on in the body. Choking and convulsing were seen as sexual so when mediums were producing ectoplasm and gasping, the actions were interpreted as being indicative of hysteria. When mediums go into trances they might have been speaking in these different voices. It can seem like there is something trapped in their body trying to get out. There's an emphasis on all these oral, sexual aspects."

While in the P.S.I Program, MacWilliam oreated her latest video, The Persistence of Vision (from where the images illustrating this article come). The artist came across a book, Mollie Fanche~ The Brooklyn Enigma (A.A.Dailey). MacWilliam recreates the mood and feel of its story through reconstruction, repetition and abled 19th century soul emerge as we enter her emotionally and physically cloistered world. "I was drawn to [it] because of the words 'Brooklyn' and 'enigma'. In 1866 Brooklyn resident Fancher fell off a horse and in another incident was dragged down a street when her crinoline petticoat got caught in a streetcar. She suffered massive body and nervous system injuries and was bedridden for 50 years. For the first nine, she remained in a heavy trance and reportedlysurvived without food. Throughout her confinement, Fancher exhibited multiple personalities and entered into many trances and spasms. Medically and technically she lost her vision, but she was able to see things clairvoyantly."

Recreating scenes from history performed within staged environments leads to videos rife with detail yet obscure in meaning. Employing her own body throughout her work, MacWilliam symbiotically creates and becomes the subject of her work. As a result of her exacting efforts and technical abilities, the viewer shares in her intense, transforming journeys. "I became fascinated by this curious movement and was intrigued by the way the women were treated. The way in which their sexuality was regarded and controlled offers an insight into how male society perceived such women."