Dreaming in the witch house

Lecture Performance

»Gilman’s room was of good size but queerly irregular shape; the north wall slanting perceptibly inward from the outer to the inner end, while the low ceiling slanted gently downward in the same direction. Aside from an obvious rat-hole and the signs of other stopped-up ones, there was no access—nor any appearance of a former avenue of access—to the space which must have existed between the slanting wall and the straight outer wall on the house’s north side, though a view from the exterior shewed where a window had been boarded up at a very remote date« (H.P. Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House, 1932).

Dreaming in the Witch House is a lecture that combines different materials in a performative presentation. It centers around the short story The Dreams in the Witch House written in 1932 by American author H. P. Lovecraft. The lecture concentrates around the theme of research, where one tries to find out something, that he or she doesn`t know yet. The architecture of the witch house serves as a catalyst for different topics that are combined with the representations of in-game borders, border-glitches, the Out-of-Bound space and the level architectures of different video games.

The lecture will evoke the fear of the unknown, where uncertainty prolongs the exploratory movement and where the angles, corners and walls of the witch house create a passage for artistic endeavors beyond the borders of the architecture. The journey will lead to different outcomes: From the ecstasy for the things that lie beneath, to interspecies dreamers and the geographic position of the modern-day witch houses. In a performative act, these topics are combined with a sculpture, with different voices and with game engine architecture. The witch house is calculated and summoned within the point-cloud forest that surrounds its walls and roof.