An Archival Séance with Marina Otero Verzier

An evening talk at the Van Alen Institute styled as a séance, staged as part of its fall exhibition Open Access: Exploring 130 Years of American Design. Exhibition participants — Annie Barrett, Daniel Pittman, Paula Vilaplana de Miguel, Friends Making Work, and Gillian Waldo — present materials from Van Alen's archive through a performance of light and shadow. Moderator Marina Otero Verzier and respondent Mark Wasiuta guide the audience through the hidden histories these materials represent and exclude, exploring how scholars, historians, and critics reinterpret official architectural archives. The séance format draws on Paula Vilaplana de Miguel's research into the 19th-century North American Spiritualist movement, and an interpretation of 'the psychic cabinet' from the exhibition serves as the stage.