Deanimated The Invisible Ghost (2002)

This piece was designed as an installation piece for projection as a 60minute loop in gallery spaces Deanimated is literally displaced from the theater environment typical of film spectatorship slightly blurring the boundaries between the spaces of projection and reception Deanimated The Invisible Ghost is based on the 1941 horror film The Invisible Ghost with the lead actors Bela Lugosi Polly Ann Young and John McGuire In Deanimated the actors are gradually eliminated and thus the narrative loses its coherence What remains are backgrounds erratic camera movements that seem to move without focus throughout the room capturing ghostly changes in light and shadows In this project Arnold asks fundamental philosophical questions about human existence and presence in absence Although the actors are missing they leave behind traces such as smashing bullets together dust stirring up and are experienced precisely in their absence as a ghostly unreal present