Follow your lit candle down the dark corridors of WISE to the LRC… where you will find something lurking between the book stacks…
…dark, mysterious artefacts…
…exhumed and re-animated for your studying pleasure…
…relics of the past, returning once more from the gr-
– I’ll stop that now. Basically, we’ve got some new media, cinema and fiction books in, namely of the Gothic and Horror slant. The Gothic, possibly the broadest of artistic umbrellas, has been comprehensively utilised through architecture, cinema, TV, literature, poetry, painting, photography, fashion – pretty much everything, really.
But the Gothic is more than just vampires, dungeons and mad women in the attic. It is a representation of the psychological; trepanning the human condition to reveal madness and misunderstanding beneath the façade of our civility.
From the varying representations of insanity suffered by characters in Dracula, to the sense of early-twentieth-century isolation and helplessness felt by many of H. P. Lovecraft‘s protagonists, and even right up to the digital haunting Elliot commits in Mr Robot, lurking behind people’s lives and dressed in black like someone else’s shadow, the Gothic remains versatile and cutting edge.
Like the vampire living on through the blood of others, digital dissemination has meant the Gothic has achieved what it always set out to: immortality.
So why not come to the LRC and delve into the Gothic. You never know what might inspire you….
(PS: LRC Alys and I have produced two posters for you to tear-down-and-keep from the walls, if you like. One just wasn’t enough).
Leave a Reply