DANSE MACABRE AFTERPARTY DETAILS
Saturday, September 7, 2024
8 pm - 11:00 pm
Philosophical Research Society (3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027)
Join us in the lovely courtyard of the Philosophical Research Society, and connect with the Morbid Anatomy community in person, over drinks! Enjoy a phantasmagoria-inspired magic lantern show by Melissa Ferrari and Epitaphs, an audio-visual performance by author and podcaster Al Ridenour, while DJ SV68 and the Mystical Sea Hag spin dark disco and other oddities for a Danse Macabre in the courtyard.
Beneath the Spectral Oak: A Phantasmagoria Revival
Beneath the Spectral Oak summons the tradition of magic lantern phantasmagoria, an 18th-century form of horror theater that used hidden lanterns to project apparitions and mythical creatures, embracing the art of ghost-raising. Tracing the conceptual framework of historical Phantasmagoria, this revival traverses scientific, supernatural, and spirit realms, anchored in themes of memento mori, belief, and wonder. Performed with 19th-century magic lanterns projecting hand-painted and antique lantern slides, light and shadow are woven into haunted landscapes, ethereal specters, and conjured visions, including spiritualists, alchemists, and incorruptible bodies.
Epitaphs
Author and podcaster Al Ridenour walks us through a churchyard of the imagination, reading an assortment of actual epitaphs from a favorite 19th-century collection. Ranging from the melancholy to the absurd to the catastrophically caustic, the epitaphs will be accompanied by a specially created video backdrop and soundscape adapted from his folk-horror and history podcast, Bone and Sickle.
Performer & DJ Bios:
Melissa Ferrari is an experimental animator, nonfiction filmmaker, magic lanternist and educator who seeks to acquaint folklores of the past with contemporary culture. In exposing peripheral histories, she aims to unveil the wonder that lies in the shadow of nonfiction, rather than fiction. Her practice engages with the mythification of science and pseudoscience, the preternatural, and histories of phantasmagoria and documentary. Melissa also creates commissioned animation for documentaries, specializing in handmade animation for films addressing social issues.
Al Ridenour writes and produces the podcast Bone and Sickle, now in its sixth year. Each meticulously researched episode features historical source texts read by co-host Sarah Chavez (Cabinet of Curiosities, Death in the Afternoon) and backed by lavish original soundscapes. Topics include dark folklore and folkways, fairy tales, medieval legends, peculiar or macabre histories, Gothic literature, Victoriana, and the like.
Similar interests led Ridenour to write his 2016 Feral House publication, The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas, the only in-depth English-language study of the yuletide devil. The book has been praised by LA Times critic Elizabeth Hart as “gleefully erudite,” a work that “deserves to become a classic.” Since 2013, he’s also crafted Krampus masks and suits and organized Krampus events, plays, and parades in his hometown of Los Angeles. In early 2025, Feral House will publish his second folklore book, A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnivals.
Ridenour also worked for a decade as a digital animator, an interest occasionally rekindled for projects like tonight’s video backdrop.