‘Michael Reeves Directs’ is a twenty-minute Magic Lantern show comprised of original projected images, spoken word and musical soundtrack, conveying a form of narrative journey through the brief life and carreer of the sixties horror film director Michael Reeves. From its beginning, the show follows a strict, ritualistic pattern in its observance of Lantern operation, the use of scripted text and the strange, evocative lament of a funereal song at the close of the performance which draws matters to a conclusion. The show best operates under complete black-out conditions and within a small-medium sized space, giving the whole performance an atmosphere of unease, authenticity and intimacy.

Mark Ferelli became interested in the art of the Magic Lantern whilst working in antique restoration with ‘Automatomania’ sellers and restorers of collectable automata and stage magic. Through making his own slides, he found the Lantern the perfect vehicle from which to weave a performance that embodies both visual and sound elements in a ritualistic operation. ‘Michael Reeves Directs’ is the third part of a Magic Lantern trilogy which has seen several performances over the past seven years, and was initialy a commission for the 2007 Bloomsbury Festival.

My practice explores my relationship to specific groups and individuals who are connected with marginalised belief systems, such as witches, clairvoyants and shaman. Part of my interest in these belief systems is to position myself as both participant and observer when making the work, and to test the extent and nature of my own beliefs and preconceptions. My performative work explores how the ritualistic activities of these groups and individuals can be extended into an action (one that itself hovers on the border between immersion and a more self-conscious, knowing state), and how, in turn, this action can be interpreted in a moving image work.

My series of stereoscopic photographs used cameras from the 1950s; the images reference spirit photography and were displayed in Victorian stereoscopic viewers. This work was included in Seeing is Believing at the Photographers’ Gallery, London. My performances in part mirror spirit séances and occult salons at the turn of the 19th century, including Presence (2008), for which I invited two psychics to give a live demonstration of clairvoyance and stage a séance, Close to You (2008) in which I attempted to demonstrate clairvoyance to a group of trainee psychics, and the collaboration Conversations with the Other Side at the David Roberts Art Foundation (2009). In March 2010 I staged Concerning the Difference Between the Delights of Pleasure and True Happiness at the Swedenborg Society, London, which further explored notions of belief and immersion, and incorporated a live magic lantern show, operated by Mervyn Heard. The rotating chromotrope images acted as metaphors for the visions described by Emanuel Swedenborg in his writing, which were spoken and sung by actors and musicians.