Every Stratified Thing on Earth: John Anderson and the ‘Kingston Tapes’

Every Stratified Thing on Earth: John Anderson and the ‘Kingston Tapes’ was presented in September 2008 at the Artel, in Kingston, ON. This exhibition allowed me to combine my interests in the histories of Kingston, Ontario; Canada's artist-run centre movement; as well as the field of parapsychology (and the hoaxes of Ted Serios, Uri Geller, etc.)

The exhibition was staged as a quasi-museological survey of a fictional incident in the early 1980s in Kingston, where a film technician at Queen's University was purported to have the ability to imprint his thoughts on VHS tape, through a process of "psychic thermography". Three channels of video were on display in the exhibition, in addition to associated ephemera, such as screening posters and advertisements, archival documents, and newspaper clippings. A 52-page book accompanied the exhibition, which included a detailed history of the "Kingston tapes" along with related texts exploring the scientific possibility of imprinting thoughts on VHS tape, the relationship of the tapes to early artist's video, and the "subhistory" of Kingston. The full publication can be downloaded here.