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Holy Ghost
2005
Installation with back-projected DVD
3 min loop

This piece was produced for a 'Street Archaeology' project that set out to uncover hidden cultural narratives along Belfast's Donegall Street during a one-week public art event.

A short DVD loop featuring a male character in 1920's attire was back-projected onto a second floor window at 120 Donegall Street. The figure is based on Padraic B. Gregory (1886-1952), an architect and poet who worked in the building between 1913-23. Gregory was well known during his lifetime for his collections of ballads and his ecclesiastical architecture, but is now largely forgotten. The video was shot so that, when viewed from the street outside, it gave a convincing illusion of a ghostly figure seated at the window. The Gregory character appears caught in some reverie, occasionally leaning forward to peer out the window, before finally disappearing as he rises to go.

The projection was elaborated through an accompanying website outlining Gregory's unusual double career and documenting my own investigations of some of his extant church buildings. Overall, the project was designed not as an attempt at a critical revaluation or recuperation, rather, as an attempt to investigate and reenact Gregory's disappearance from the city's collective vision.

holy ghost.mov (13MB)

pbgregory.markorange.com