Visits with Joseph Cornell CD
Though often described as a recluse, Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) nonetheless received countless visitors at his lifelong home in Queens, New York. The mysterious charm and wisdom of CornellÕs shadow boxes, collages, and films attracted the curious: art collectors; artists as well-known as Warhol, Rauschenberg and Duchamp; ballerinas; poets; Francophiles and Cinephiles were witness to Cornell’s eccentric hospitality and voluminous archives. Thirty years after his death, we are the curious visitors.
During five seances at the Whitney Museum of American Art, we attempted to contact Cornell’s spirit, each time employing a different professional spirit medium to translate and interpret. Three works by Cornell were present during the seances: Celestial Navigation, Custodian — for M.M, and Rose Castle.
A Visit with Joseph Cornell is the third volume of the Art After Death cd series (release date August 2002). This cd is a dense mix of recordings taken from the seances, and our own observations about the process of communing with a spirit who may be identified as Joseph Cornell. It expands on the nine-minute audio work we created for the 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibition, also titled A Visit with Joseph Cornell.
A little about the mediums and their impressions of Cornell:
Valerie Winborne is a dance therapist and trance medium. For Winborne, the trance state allows the spirit to communicate directly through her body. During this seance, the spirit contacted seemed particularly interested in word games and music, conducting invisible orchestras and humming.
Karl Petry is a medium whose work includes assisting in criminal investigations. We brought Petry to the Whitney based on his history of seeing artists’ spirits when he visits museums. While waiting outside the DirectorÕs Conference room for our seance with him, Petry told us he was watching the building be built. During this seance, he saw Cornell at work in his basement workshop, and told us that Cornell felt these were not among his finest works.
Paula Roberts, an expert graphologist and medium, calls herself ‘The English Psychic.’ When we first contacted her by telephone from California, she reported receiving what we could verify as a very accurate image of Cornell, the man. Once in the seance, Roberts was particularly sensitive to what she identified as CornellÕs unmistakable speech patterns.
Adam Bernstein is a medium who specializes in a kind of spiritual therapy, especially valuable for the bereaved. He practises a style of mediumship that involves a sustained attempt at ÒverifyingÓ the exact spirit contacted: Bernstein mentioned numerous names and images that came to him, many of them consistent with CornellÕs life and art.
Clyde Derrick both channels and interprets spirits. As a channel, he speaks in the voice of the spirit. As an interpreter, he offers lively impressions of the spirit that he is contacting and the space that the spirit inhabits.