Spring 2023
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Lead Curator: Jaclyn Quaresma
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Images Festival Toronto
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For the Images Festival: (G)host catalogue please click here.
The 2023 Images Festival presents a nestling of two concepts: ghost and host. though inlaid, these two words suggest entirely separate ontological states: one of spiritual liminality—an ethereal in-between on the way to elsewhere and the other consequential, rooted and embodied. This complexity echoes the stuff of moving images: present yet past, visible yet elsewhere, physical yet representative. And, despite their veracity, moving images can evoke powerful emotional responses. The medium itself does away with temporal binaries; a sort of once was and here and now sit together in ripe tension. A theme such as (G)hosts invites you to consider the links between spectrality and moving image culture, both in form and in content. [1]
Entwined, ghost and host have equal footing in the programs presented at the 36th Images Festival. Together they not only ask “What remains?”, but also “where might we find it?” One might wonder about a spirit’s complex tethers: Can one conjure or haunt without a location, whether a body, place, or through an object? What or who can act as a host? What might the role of a host be, if not to receive something or someone? Must a thing be received (as opposed to perceived) in order to exist? Do only phantoms haunt? Can one conjure more than a memory? To engage with (G)hosts is to suspend disbelief, at least for a short while. As Jacques Derrida said, “you believe without believing, but this believing without believing remains a believing.” If this is the case, it leads me to wonder: is faith a pillar of moving image culture?
- In a casual interview with the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, Jacques Derrida speaks about the “links between spectrality and filmmaking.” Images Festival is expanding this original connection beyond cinema and filmmaking to encompass moving images as a whole.
Jaclyn Quaresma 