Date: 8 July 2026
Time: 7.00 - 8.00 pm
Location: Chapel of the Grauwzusters, Lange-Sint Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp - Antwerp University city campus
​Free admission, but registration required - link will become available soon.
Relict: A Phantasmagoria is an experimental documentary performed with antique magic lanterns and hand-drawn animation. Invoking the history of magic lantern phantasmagoria as an exercise in belief and perception, Relict considers the zeitgeist of pseudoscience, fake news, religion, and documentary ethics collapsed within contemporary cryptozoology. Adapting modern cryptozoological lore to hand-drawn magic lantern slides, Relict employs the visual language of phantasmagoria through slides based on antique designs, including rackwork slides and dissolving views. These slides are infused with the aesthetics of veracity in current nonfiction filmmaking, including CGI speculative animated documentary, thermal imaging, and interventions of rotoscoped documentary re-enactment. Inspired by the magic lantern’s historical role as a tool for scientific lectures, Relict wanders through histories of documentary animation used to visualize and legitimize monstrous creatures. The performance is nested in a collage of soundscapes, including interviews with Dr. Brian Regal (Kean University), a historian of science on the politics of skepticism in cryptozoology; a recent creationist sermon; and excerpts of pseudoscientific wildlife documentaries.
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About Melissa Ferrari
Melissa Ferrari is a moving image artist, magic lanternist, and Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at College of the Atlantic (Maine, USA). In exposing peripheral histories and folklores of the past, she aims to unveil the wonder that lies in the shadow of nonfiction, rather than fiction. Her practice engages with the mythification of science, pseudoscience, and phantasmagoria. Melissa’s films and magic lantern performances have been shown internationally in venues such as Hot Docs, The Exploratorium, UnionDocs, Hauser & Wirth LA, Baltic Analog Lab, Ottawa International Animation Festival, and Ann Arbor Film Festival. She received an MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts.