Health Through Sports
FAKSIMIL, de Ateliers, 2009
'She Who Speaks' at SMART Project Space, Amsterdam
''She Who Speaks'' is the first solo exhibition in the Netherlands of Carl Johan Högberg (1979, Eskilstuna, Sweden). Högberg is based in Amsterdam where he is currently participating in the De Ateliers programme.
Point of departure of the exhibition is the story of Hélène Smith, a young Swiss medium who gave celebrated séances for the high society at the end of the 19th century. In 1900 Smith rose to fame with the publication of Théodore Flournoy’s book ''From India to the Planet Mars''. As Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva, Flournoy documented her various incarnations and experiences of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) as well as her contact and ability to communicate with Martians.
The first spirit to be in contact with Smith was the ghost of Victor Hugo, one that would last for several years. Through Smith Hugo would recite poems to a much delighted audience. Later, when Flournoy joined her spiritualistic circle, Hugo had lost his dominance and slowly Marie Antoinette figured as her main spirit. Flournoy calls this phase the "Royal Cycle" and soon followed what Flournoy describes as "Indian-", "Oriental-", "Martian-" and "Ultra Martian Cycles". During her last seances she spoke in the so-called language of the inhabitants of Mars, and to this day, linguists are amazed of how consistent and structural her ability to speak "Martian" was under the seven years the cycle lasted.
In an article from 2000 the American Professor of History Daniel Rosenberg writes the following about the relation between Smith and Flournoy: "She who speaks and he who writes and interpret. It is a story that has been repeated many times over centuries of confrontation between mystics and their (friendly or unfriendly) interpreters. It is a story of original misrecognition, of speech taken for language." Balancing on the edge of performing glossolalia himself through his eclectic use of styles and mediums, Högberg's interpretation of the story of Hélène Smith is primarily sprung from a fascination in recontextualization, hermeneutic circles and media archeology. By juxtaposing the story of Smith with images from cultural history, NASA footage, literature and near-historic events (like last year in Thiruvananthapuram, India, where 50 people got blind after staring into the sun hoping for a solar image of Virgin Mary), Högberg attempts to come to terms with the concept of circumstantial reading of images and text, especially in situations where reason has conquered superstition yet the fiction outlives the facts.
Henry Assen's Magnet Mystery Tour
'Mumler's Trick' from 'Taming the Untamable' at Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem
