PARANO-SCÉNARIO

2015

While on residency for the month of July, 2015 at Plug In ICA in Winnipeg, I was introduced to the Hamilton Family Fonds, which is located in the special archive at the University of Manitoba. Between 1918 and 1945, Dr. T.G. Hamilton and his wife Lillian became internationally renowned for their work with the supernormal; specifically with their communication with the spirits of Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Connan Doyle, and Harry Houdini. At their home in Winnipeg, Dr. Hamilton investigated psychic phenomena by conducting séances, rappings, clairvoyance, trance states, telekinesis and ectoplasms.

Using this archive as a research starting point, I combed through scrapbooks, séance attendance records and registers, affidavits, correspondence, speeches and lectures, newspaper clippings, journal articles, books, photographs and glass plate negatives. This material served as the primary resource for the subsequent script I wrote entitled Parano-Scénario. Developed though an approach of automatic writing, this script will serve as the foundation of a series of films entitled Cinematic Séance.