In the Room Alone

2025

In the Room Alone is a body of work consisting of a kinetic sculpture and a short film, initially shown in the 2025 CAFKA Biennial in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.  

The project functioned as a speculative response to a curious thread in Kitchener’s history: a group of Spiritualists, organized around spirit medium Thomas Lacey, who conducted weekly séances in Kitchener for decades between the 1930s and 1960s, leaving behind an extensive record of transcriptions and audio recordings.

Born at a critical juncture of the Industrial Revolution, during a period of global upheaval, Spiritualism’s fringe-religious project was defined just as much by the era’s technological and political imaginations as by occult curiosity. In keeping with this history, Lacey’s group cohered around a shared interest in science, technology, spirituality, and progressive politics. Lacey worked as an engineer by trade, and often channeled the spirits of famous scientists and technicians, while the group would often experiment with technological devices custom-made to enhance their contact with visiting spirits.

By the end of their time together, at the height of the Cold War, the Lacey group’s Leftist political overtones took on a new tenor, as their weekly discussions coincided with news of political assassinations or nuclear threats.

While researching this history, I was struck by a curious parallel to another subject I had been looking into for some time: a series of experimental military research programs, operating around the same time, across the United States, Russia, and China, exploring how psychic or extra-sensory human abilities might be used as means of prosecuting the Cold War, on both capitalist and communist fronts.

Using a small leap of specualtive fiction, this project examines these two histories in tandem, viewing this high-profile Cold War-era engagement with political occultism as a continuation of a long-evolving historical thread connecting political, technological, and metaphysical imaginaries.

This project was made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the CAFKA Biennial