I’ve previously made work that touches on HaunTiki style. Here’s some of the better examples.
February 15th is John Frum day in Vanuatu – the anniversary of the god’s first appearance at an all night kava drinking session in the early 40’s. John promised that if the locals gave up western life and went back to the old ‘kustom’ the local volcano would erupt with endless wealth. Which they did, but it didn’t.
Until the US Navy arrived to set up base in 1942, filling warehouses with cargo and employing the locals for good pay. And there were black faces amongst the service men, unlike the missionaries. Surely John Frum was an American. And once the war was over; surely the best way to bring back John was to build airstrips, planes and wear what passes for the US uniform. He has yet to come home, but then again so has Jesus.
“Ghosts of Lunches seems a silly title — but it has a reason. We see ghosts all the time, in photographs, on television and anywhere where recordings of departed people can be found. Some cultures find recordings of dead people offensive. In our own culture the philosopher Jacques Derrida coined a term ‘hauntology’ for those presences that still impact on our thinking, simply by being replayed from stored media.
In general both spectral and electronic ghosts ‘live’ mundane non-existences. They float up and down stairs, tap on walls and in the case of photographs tend to be captured uncomfortably staring at the camera seated at the dinner table. Most of the ghosts I have seen are ghosts at lunch.
Late last year I inherited family photographs going back to the mid 1800’s. There being so many I decided the only way to manage was to scan them and keep only the important pieces.
Nearly 7000 scans later I realized the crazy task I’d taken on and was very grateful for the Picasa management software I used to organise the tidal wave of images. Picasa has face recognition; once you’ve identified Aunty Mary, it will try to find her in every photograph. More interesting were all the incidental people — in the background, standing nearby, or just too far removed to say who they might be. I decided to categorize them as one person I called ‘Everyone’.
An unknown person floats over the eternal sea, passing from cradle to grave. The soundtrack is from the Music Server series. The imagery was inspired by the ghostly legend of the SS Watertown.
This is a set of ‘Channel Idents’ designed in 2012. They were intended for TV programming and would have logos overlaid – the project didn’t go ahead but the combination of Luna Park and birds was based on an intuition of HaunTiki styles.
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