A Public Meeting to Address the Phenomenon of Materialisation, 2005

staged event, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, London, commissioned by Man in the Holocene (Tom Morton and Catharine Patha)

The event borrows a nineteenth-century educational format – the popular lecture, incorporating science, spectacle and entertainment. Members of the audience were treated to a whole day of presentations, including a talk by a representative of the Society for Psychical Research, comedian Ken Campbell’s thoughts on religious cults and time travel, artist Nick Laessing’s research into the perpetual motion machine, Spiritualist hymns and film screenings. The presentations at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club were delivered from a lectern specially designed by artist Matthew Darbyshire.