Meeting with Thomas Weynants in Ronse, Belgium. Discussing Phantasmagorie and early projection techniques. We get a huge amount of information on how a historical Phantasmagorie actually took place and about the life of Robertson. Thomas also explained how he found an original lantern and how it ended up in a museum in the Middle East. There’s a kinship between a lot of early forms of entertainment: projection, magic, fairs, early cinema…

Especially the projection techniques could be interesting. The idea of recreating a ghost show seems outdated. But we can work conceptually with the projections, the fact that they got shown in a completely dark space, the creation of white shadows, smoke projection, retro projection, 3D projection and transparent cloth.

We have a discussion afterwards in a local restaurant (oh yes, this is Belgium, we’re eating again). We draw up a ‘to do’ list, including setting up a brainstorm session, creating a longlist of song with timings and keys, contacting a VJ collective, set up the timeline…

From our conversation with Thomas, it gets clear we need a VJ who can make an autonomous visual contribution to the music. We’re thinking about Legoman from Anti-VJ collective. We’ll get in contact.