ISSUE 46: GHOST
Callout prompt text by Xanthe Dobbie
For full information, visit https://runway.org.au/callout-ghost/


 
Ghost/Ghosting/Ghosted
 
A ghost is a body dispersed across time [1]  


Temporal dislocation
Horizons fused
A glitch
An anti-body – surviving through mutability [2] 
A past which haunts a present
Possibly a future
 
Unfinished business
Low opacity purpose 
Earthbound by…
Obligation?
Love?
Vengeance?
Seems romantic
 
I have ghosted many men in my life
I didn’t know that it could hurt them
Until I discovered my queerness
And realised that people have feelings
Do ghosts!?
 
Ghosts are everywhere 
On the internet
Little shrines
Erected to the living
(And the dead of course)
The Snapchat logo is no coincidence 👻👀
 
Myspace is the teething ghost of an entire generation


Second Life was living ghosts
The Metaverse is an army of ghosts 
Bred in captivity for capitalism
 
All avatars are ghosts
Beings made of pixels and light
 
Cinema is the art of ghosts
A battle of phantoms [3]
Uncanny Valley murmurations
Written in code
Blurring the lines
Between truth and illusion
 
Hybrid beings
Post-truth cyborgs
Freed from the body
 
The body is a ghost in waiting
 


[1] Jesse Darling, “Intimacy Keynote,” Google Doc, June 2, 2015, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LfaD6Zas5vhitkbzhLdSmyYj6pulwYjsfczOgO0FnFw/edit 
[2] Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (London: Verso Books, 2020).
[3] Jacques Derrida playing himself in Ghost Dance, directed by Ken McMullen (Mediabox Limited U.K., 2008).