Dane Mitchell is responsible for a number of curses. For this group exhibition, however, he elected to collaborate with an initiated witch and a deceased artist to open a portal to the spirit world for the duration of the exhibition. He also set up a series of empirical devices for measuring the invisible spiritual resonance of the building: thermometers, microphones and the like.
The two aspects of Mitchell’s project encapsulate the dualism at work in the wider exhibition, between belief, faith, romanticism, the desire to experience the unknown on one hand and empiricism, rational thinking, scepticism, cynicism, on the other. Rather than set these positions up as opposites, exhibition curator Natasha Conland, set herself, the artists and viewers the much riskier challenge of getting up close to mystic truths without slippage into either side.
In an interview after the exhibition had closed, Conland explained that the show was an experiment, particularly in her approach to research. She asked herself, ‘“Can I take on a subject that is capable of undermining my sense of seriousness?” I found that [these mystic traditions or alternative practices] were affecting my empirical research, instead I adopted method research. I wanted to get myself into an uncomfortable situation, in a participatory way, to ask, just how magnetic are they?’
The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue were attractive in a particularly cerebral way. The project did not dwell on aesthetics. It celebrated scholarship, even when it was comprised of alternative research, and there was a distinct theoretical and philosophical cast to it. The project stemed from a pure curatorial vision, no doubt sharpened by collaboration on New Zealand artist et al’s 2005 Venice Biennale project the fundamental