Logbook
Château de Fourgeret, France
6 – 8 October 2024
Chief operator Edouard Lemiale
Production Galerie Albarran Bourdais
and with the support of the curator Chiara Markov
It is often said that a place keeps the memory of those who have gone through it. Haunted houses are part of our common imagination and many stories refer to spectral presences in castles and houses. From the town of Corliano in Italy, which inspired the writer Mary Shelley for her character Frankenstein, to the colonial dwelling «Zevallos », said to be haunted by the ghosts of black slaves massacred before the abolition of slavery in 1848, to the famous mansions in England, where tourist tours dedicated to ghosts are organized. This fascination for these substanceless beings without matter exceeds our cartesian mind with which we thought we could bury the inexplicable.
With this new project entitled Haunted House, the artist Angelika Markul, wishes to go to the discovery of the Castle of Fougeret, built between the fourteenth and sixteenth century, considered to be the most haunted castle in France. The artist’s objective is not to question the truth behind the history, but to explore the memory of the place — the interior of the house, its relics and its surrounding environment. It’s about making resurface, through slow and silent sequence shots, the invisible that hides within this ancient architecture, thus revealing what slips from the grasp of the rational mind.
«The spectral, they are these others, never present as such, neither alive nor dead, with whom I speak» said Jacques Derrida. In her movie, Angelika Markul wishes to spend time with these «ghosts», aiming at weaving links and exchanging between past and present, nature and artifice, forgetfulness and memory. By choosing the video as the medium, the artist returns to the origin of the cinematographic art which has always spoken to us of ghosts because it too is only pure apparition. The image is a trace that repeats itself and in this repetition we find the death drive which is also the drive of haunting and revenge.
