Panel Discussion
Wednesday 20 October
6 – 7:30pm
The Hub, Toi Pōneke
FREE
Join Pip Adam (writer, novelist), James Gilberd (Photospace Gallery and Ghost-hunter) and Claire Harris (Visual Artist) in a discussion about themes in the exhibition Wound Whistled Air.
Biographies:
Pip Adam is the author of three novels: Nothing to See (2020), The New Animals (2017), which won the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction, and I'm Working on a Building (2013); and the short story collection Everything We Hoped For (2010), which won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction in 2011.
Pip's work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas. In 2012 she received an Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award.
Pip is the 2021 Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence
Pip facilitates writing workshops in universities and other settings, including with people affected by crime in prisons and communities. She makes the Better off Read podcast where she talks with authors about writing and reading.
James Gilberd is a professional photographer and has run Photospace Gallery since 1998.
He sidelines as an amateur paranormal investigator, having co-founded The New Zealand Strange Occurrences Society in 2005 (then Strange Occurrences). His specialty in the paranormal field is examining photos and videos of a possibly paranormal nature and attempting to explain them in terms of photographic anomalies and personal interpretation (psychology). He receives many emails of photographic documents and accounts from all over the world. In his experience to date, all anomalistic photographs can be explained by physics, psychology, or a mixture of the two; but he prudently leaves the door partially open to the possibility of a genuine paranormal event or communication having been captured. Context is crucial and it is unwise to claim certainty of causation from an outside viewpoint. If the occurrence is local, James and members of his team sometimes go to investigate; examining the site, interviewing witnesses, and recreating the photograph if possible. They also often attempt to communicate with any spiritual presence that may be present, usually without much success. Despite having had some unexplained and unsettling personal experiences, James remains agnostic about such things.
Strange Occurrences is probably unique in the paranormal investigation world, having been established in the main part as a kind of long term live art project, and the group has remained open to collaborations with artists, documentary filmmakers and such since its inception.
With Dr Jo Davy, James co-authored 'Spooked - Exploring the Paranormal in New Zealand' (Random House, Auckland, 2011).
Claire Harris
Claire graduated from University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 2005, majoring in photography, and completed a Master of Fine Arts at Massey University in 2019. As a practising video and performance artist her work has a recurring focus on humour, trauma and longing particularly as expressed through celebrity and fan culture.