<span style="font-size: 12pt">Monday 12th May</span>
12:00 - 18:00 - SYMPOSIUM
Hauntology Now
<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><strong> <span style="font-size: 14pt"></span></strong></span>

At the <a href="http://www.museumgardenhistory.org/" target="_blank">Museum of Garden History</a>, Lambeth, London SE1 7LB
£8

<em>[For an introduction to musical hauntology, see <a href="http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/arthur/44/an-invitation-to-the-electric-seance" target="_blank">The Electric Seance</a> by John Coulthart] </em>

<em><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><strong><span style="font-size: 12pt"></span></strong></span></em><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><em><strong><span style="font-size: 14pt"></span></strong></em>In the past two years, the concept of                            ‘hauntology’ has emerged as a name for the                            zeitgeist. The shades of the past become more vivid                            than anything turned up by the present.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">The                            spirit of the times is itself spectral. Faced with the                            apparent triumph of global Capital and the collapse                            of cultural innovation, artists and critics impatient                            with postmodern culture’s ‘nostalgia mode’                            are forced back to a time before the End of History.                            They engage in mourning and melancholia for what has                            disappeared and what never came to be. Everyday life                            becomes ghostly… a saturated culture is unable                            to forget that things were not always like this.</span>

<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"></span><!--more--><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Coined                            by Derrida in his Spectres Of Marx, ‘hauntology’                            now has an unlife of its own. It is in relation to sound,                            in particular, that ‘hauntology’ has gained                            its second – or should that be third life.</span>

<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Recent                            releases by Burial, the Ghost Box label, Mordant Music,                            The Caretaker, Philip Jeck, Gavin Bryars and Chris Watson                            have in their different ways exemplified a hauntological                            sensibility. The revival of attention upon the post-vinyl                            status of groups like Joy Division, The Gang of Four,                            The Fall etc. presents a parallel narrative that conditions                            development in the present. </span>

<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">This                            May 12 event will be the first to deal with the relation                            between sound and hauntology, and will focus in particular                            on the role of space in generating hauntological effects.                            Why do certain places retain the traces of past sonic                            events? Why is so much hauntological music tied up with                            particular spaces? What has the disappearance of the                            concept of public space to do with hauntology? </span>

<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">The                            day will be divided into afternoon and evening sessions.                            The afternoon will be devoted to theoretical explorations                            of sonic hauntology, with presentations by Mark Fisher                            (The Wire, k-punk weblog), Jon Wozencroft (Touch, Royal                            College of Art), Paul Devereux (author, researcher into                            Archaeoacoustics, Royal College of Art), Christopher                            Woodward (Director of the Museum of Garden History)                            and Steve Goodman, better known as Kode9 (University                            of East London). The evening will be given over to performances                            and interventions, with The Caretaker, Kode9 and The                            Spaceape and Philip Jeck headlining. <strong>£8</strong></span>