GMU:Life in an aquatic ecosystem/Cosmo Schüppel

GHOSTS FINDING GHOSTS

A strange sensation has begun to settle in my chest, a constant tug at my memory, but also a push toward something undefined. Perhaps it’s the memory of a moment just past. Perhaps it’s the fact that there are more than one, more than one layer, one whisper, one echo — still here but distant, felt but not understood. In all cultures ghosts haunt places, humans, whole societies. We can talk of ghosts as shadows cast from times lost, places forgotten. But what if it’s not the ghost that haunts us, but rather, we who haunt ourselves? The ghosts we encounter are never the past itself. Instead, they are–in their most concrete form traces and effects– and in their most abstract, what we imagine the past to be, what it means to us now, what we need it to be. In any case, it is the space between past and present, presence and absence where ghosts become almost. In all cultures ghosts haunt places, humans, whole societies. They lean over from the in-between to haunt the human realm. Rarely we find stories of ghosts haunting each other in their natural habitats. But for humans it seems different. It is our own past that seems to haunt us, our own actions, mistakes, traumata and hopes.

The book Ghosts Finding Ghosts explores the omnipresence of anthropocentric ghosts through the lens of the wildfires in Nea Penteli (Athens) summer 2024. Through essays, exercises and interviews asks Ghosts Finding Ghosts: Which ghosts haunt a burned landscape? Where do ghosts come from and where do they disappear to? What is the human role in creating ghosts? How can ghosts be experienced? Where are the borders of human sensing? And what is absence? What are traces?

How alive is the dead?
What colours live in the Grey?
Ghosts are almost like Memories - They disappear when I try to hold on.
Eat un-nutritious food.
Stare at a digital landscape.
Stuff yourself with Expectations.
Find hope in simple Ideologies.
We are imprisoned and shielded by Ghosts.
Is this, what being haunted feels like?

STATE OF WRITING

Essay: I am the Ghosts that haunt themselves

This essay explores the notion that haunting emerges as a confrontation with ourselves, where ghosts are not the past but traces shaped by our memories, traumas, and needs. They dwell in the in-between, blurring the line between presence and absence, reflecting how humans are haunted by their own actions and histories.

File:I am ghosts that haunt themselves.pdf

Essay: Haunted by Systems, Haunted by Loss:

Memories, ghosts, and systems intertwine to shape our haunted existence, blurring the lines between past, present, and imagined futures. As the Anthropocene disrupts natural and cultural rhythms, haunting becomes a way to understand our disconnection—where nature, systems, and memory act as almost-living agents, challenging human orientation in a fractured world.

File:Haunted by Systems, Haunted by Loss.pdf

Exercises I-V (first draft):

File:I am ghosts that haunt themselves-2.pdf

STATE OF DESIGN

PDF: Tests for DesignFile:241216finding ghosts tests.pdf

Cover: The text (Ghosts Finding Ghosts...) will be printed on a separate, translucent paper - functioning as a cover for the book.

Sample: Text page (Essay/Interview)

Sample: Text page (Exercise)

Inspiration

<Fantasma - Jannete Mark

<Editor: Unknown

New Document: Typical Organisation for Standards and Order >

VIDEO-MATERIAL

SCREENSHOTS OF : Wasteland of post-wildfire NEA PENTELI, Athens

In a broader scope the project should develop to an experimental documentary film. In it, the site is used as an anchor point to collect perspectives on ghosts and the destruction organic habitats. Scientists, Philosophers, Ghost Hunters, Farmers, Firemen, Poets and others explore the site through their own means of research and explain their perspective on this. This creates a divers, poetic image of a haunted place - moving between reality and fiction and science and art.

The footage will be edited to a larger scale 3 channel, narrative, video Installation.

EXPERIMENTS

The following experiments are conducted to explore the sleeping life in the ashes of the Nea Penteli Wildfires. They are to be seem rather symbolic than scientific, as the ashes were probably contaminated on their travel to Weimar. Nonetheless, the image of colours growing from grey; life rising from the dead ash -- is a powerful one.