Can ghosts haunt ghosts? In Heather Dew Oaksen‘s installation
Still Point (through Thurs Feb 12, Jack Straw Productions,
Mon–Fri 9 am–5 pm, free), projected figures loom beside and
behind each other in darkness. Faces and silhouettes hung as
tapestries undulate like Byzantine icons, distilling depth from
wavering light and bodies, which though seemingly frozen can’t keep
still. A succession of ordinary people appears: All are young and blank
and, eerily, easily forgotten. Faces split into diptychs, then echo
backward in the room. Many stare ahead or into the distance; a few turn
around and walk away. Most try to talk or to sing, a futile choir
sounding too translucent to join the installation’s enveloping chorus
of cicadas and the hum of what might be outlying freeway traffic.
Amid Still Point‘s wall of sound, a keening tone rises and
falls; akin to feedback, it’s the only sound that breathes,
tracing and following the images as they vanish and reappear.
Oaksen’s installation feels compressed, cramped even. Unlike the
grand corridor of Gary Hill‘s Tall Ships—an
unforgettable gallery of azure phantoms who stand, shuffle, and recede
into the distance—Still Point battens in the viewer.
Feeling cornered, I do my best to look straight ahead down a narrow
pathway that bisects the hanging scrims, but overarching darkness
confuses any sense of perspective. There’s an utterly ambiguous sense
of dimension.
In 1968, Konstantin Raudive published the book
Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication
with the Dead, the summation of thousands of hours of
recordings in which, through shrouds of static and fuzz, words from the
dead—dubbed “Electronic Voice Phenomena”—could supposedly
be discerned. As heard on The Ghost Orchid: An Introduction to
EVP (Ash International), which collates examples from three EVP
researchers active in the 1960s and ’70s, including Raudive,
Freidrich Jürgenson, and Raymond Cass, it’s hard to
confirm communication from beyond with garbled, gnomic utterances such
as “Only Sonja will make it” and “We can see Edith by radio.”
The DIY séances presented by Raudive and company as “evidence”
still hinge on interference and the listener’s desire to believe.
Still Point fascinates not through the prospect of a personal
revelation, but in the relationships between the spectral bodies we see
haunt one another. Still Point is a séance for ghosts and
we get to watch. Don’t miss it.
Other notable performances this week include pianist Ann
Cummings (Sat Feb 7, Chapel Performance Space, 8 pm, $10/$15), who
performs works by Brahms, Debussy, and Copland alongside Seattle
composers Richard Karpen, Gavin Borchert, and Ken
Benshoof. The fine improvising percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani
accompanies Butoh dance company Danse Perdue (Sun, Feb 8,
Rendezvous, 10 pm, $5–$15). The doctoral recital of bassist
Bren Plummer (Thurs Feb 5, Brechemin Auditorium, UW Campus, 7:30
pm, free) serves up music by Schumann and Webern as well as his funky
jazz combo, the Paradigm Quartet. 
