‘Spirit Messages’ is aemi’s 2024 touring programme, an annual selection made to bring together some of the most exciting new moving image work by Irish and international artists. Alongside a variety of other concerns, the artists featured in this programme employ a diverse set of creative strategies to reveal an interconnected world, one in which the medium is not just the message but the means through which the paranormal can engage our attention. From folk tales to esotericism, poppers training videos, horror flicks and sci-fi, the films in ‘Spirit Messages’ draw from an eclectic array of sources to suggest that the idiosyncratic forms of communication we adopt are often choices that are as subversive as they are functional.

Film information

Running Time: 66 minutes

Dan Guthrie, Coaley Peak (A Fragment)

2021, United Kingdom, 16mm/digital, 6.5 minutes
Dan Guthrie’s idea with Coaley Peak was to make a film about Blackness and belonging in the English countryside, taking a family photo of some of his relatives at the Gloucestershire viewpoint Coaley Peak as a starting point. Whilst making the film, something happened.

Jamie Crewe, False Wife

2022, United Kingdom, digital, 15 minutes
False Wife is a poppers training video, but its material is obscure. Its narrative is drawn from a variety of folk tales in which transformation occurs, and relationships happen. Its footage is scavenged from sources that reflect these themes, reduced to slivers of significant imagery, rubbed together.

Amanda Rice, The Flesh of Language

2023, Ireland, 16.5 minutes
The Flesh of Language examines humanity’s impact on Earth’s ecosystems through the lenses of two interrelated mechanics of capitalism: extraction and overproduction.

Niall Cullen, The Dog Who Became a Frog

2023, Ireland, digital, 6.5 minutes
The Dog Who Became a Frog delves into the interconnectedness of our world by exploring the idea that every living thing shares the same energy force.

Luis Arnías, Terror Has No Shape

2021, Venezuela / United States, 16mm/digital, 10 minutes
Terror Has No Shape follows a mysterious and grotesque, viscous creature. The film fragments the American horror and sci-fi genres to bring the terror of the lived personal and collective experience of racial trauma to the surface. Through effigy, these horrors materialise and are burned.

Ross McClean, Echo

2023, Ireland/United Kingdom, 16m/digital, 12 minutes
An operation 10 years ago left Allister with damaged vocal cords and an obstacle to communication. His unusual solution reminds us that community thrives in surprising places.