The Others

A woman named Grace retires with her two children to a mansion on Jersey, towards the end of the Second World War, where she's waiting for her husband to come back from battle. The children have a disease which means they cannot be touched by direct sunlight without being hurt in some way. They will live alone there with oppressive, strange and almost religious rules, until she needs to hire a group of servants for them. Their arrival will accidentally begin to break the rules with unexpected consequences. Synopsis: IMDB.

Spirits in the Material World

In Spirits in the Material World, artist Heman Chong reflects on spaces that exist in the darkness; the slippages into the netherworld. The installation is on view in Het Nieuwe Instituut from 10 October 2019 to 29 December 2019.

The installation and program reflect on a sphere of architecture that is not easily explained or understood - the relationship between the spiritual and material world. Through a fully functioning bookshop, a film series and a video work, Chong reveals how certain events trigger a consensual view on certain spaces as 'haunted,' and how the alleged presence of ghosts becomes an unpredictable disruptor in unaffordable real estate markets such as Hong Kong, New York, or Dubai. Spirits, rumours, financial and real estate logic thus converge to shape the more-than-human imaginaries and markets for the architecture of contemporary housing.