Spirits in the Material World

Convening with deities and spirits has historically been dependent on, and mediated by, architecture. Churches, mosques, synagogues and temples choreograph encounters with the realm of the unknown, the divine, and are perceived as legitimate processes in which our belief systems are reinforced by social and political powers.

Spirits have been woven into the fabric, stories, and daily life of cities, and in many places around the world are considered equal and rightful inhabitants. Yet, under certain circumstances their alleged presence elicits a consensual view on a place as being “haunted.” For some communities, the ghost of a person who died violently continues to inhabit the house they occupied in life, causing untold misfortune for the new residents. As a result, ghosts may not only leave the property vacant but also bring down its value. A “haunted” apartment could decrease the price of all the flats on the same floor, of apartments above and below it, and even of the entire building. By depreciating homes to between 20% and 30% below average, spectres have become an unpredictable disruptor in unaffordable real estate markets such as Hong Kong, where banks even refuse mortgages for “haunted” properties. Spirits, rumours, financial and real estate logic converge to shape the imaginaries and markets for the architecture of contemporary housing.

Spirits in the Material World explores a sphere of architecture that is not easily explained or understood—the relationship between the spirit and material worlds. Conceived by artist Heman Chong, the installation and public programme reflect on spaces that exist in the darkness, the slippages into the netherworld, places haunted by aswangs, hantus, jinn, yokai, and other unnamed spirits.

Chong collapses three diverse situations into one single physical grid within Het Nieuwe Instituut. The first is a fully functioning bookshop with around a hundred titles that oscillate between books that claim to offer sound, logical advice for investing in real estate, to books filled with ghost stories. This bookshop explores the cold, hard home of late capitalism where everything, including the intangible, can be commodified and mobilised for profit. 

The second involves a chance encounter with Mr Teo, a mysterious real estate agent in Singapore claiming to be a ghost whisperer. The artist hired Mr Teo to communicate with a spirit who refuses to leave an empty plot where the Rochor Centre, an iconic brutalist public housing estate, once stood. Transcriptions of this conversation accompany a structural video of the Rochor Centre; demolished and forgotten, the remains are filmed through the small holes in a temporary fence around the lot. 

The third strand of the exhibition is a public programme including the screening of horror films selected by the artist. 

Spirits in the Material World is curated by Marina Otero Verzier (Director of Research, Het Nieuwe Instituut) and is on view at Het Nieuwe Instituut from October 10 to December 29, 2019. The exhibition title is derived from a 1981 song by The Police from the album Ghost in the Machine.