Night Visit by Sally Pomme Clayton

"I'd heard my Grandfather's stories of spirits many times, but they were so strange, I was never sure if I'd really heard them, exaggerated them, or invented them myself."
Performance storyteller Sally-Pomme Clayton grew up hearing stories of spirits, the stories haunted her, until she brought them back to life. She tells her family's ghost stories, interweaving her live voice with recordings of her grandfather. She traces the cultural history of spiritualism, from the 1800's when science and photography tried to capture the invisible, to the mass bereavement of two World wars. The ideas of 18th Century mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg contrast with her family's exploration of the supernatural. Fragments of Swedenborg's dazzling visions are conjured, as he travels through the cosmos searching for evidence of other worlds. Dreams and biography, combine with history and myth.

This is a special site-specific performance created for the remarkable Asylum Chapel. Film and photographs will be projected onto crumbling architecture and mottled walls, manipulated live by digital artist Fotios Begklis. Quadraphonic sound will surround the audience, as musician Panos Ghikas improvises live on acoustic and electronic instruments. Part of the Night Visit story takes place in Peckham, and Sally-Pomme brings local Peckham history vividly to life. Come and travel through the night, encounter spirits, voyage beyond death, as sound and speech fracture and fuse, narrative and noise cut-up and coalesce. Night Visit summons a world of sounds, stories and images - a séance of voices from the past.