Alchemist’s Shack V: The Rural Uncanny, High Strangeness, Panics and the Hummadruzz

July 23 – August 5

2-week session, $2000.

Robert Williams and others soon to be announced. 

In the UK of late there has been an upsurge of interest in what has become known as The Spectral Turn, the British Folk Horror revival, the weird and the eerie. Recent academic work has begun to map these related cultural forms and the newfound interest in the strange and the uncanny and the folkloric. 

The Alchemist Shack project – OM: Theatrum ChemicumBritannicum, has, over the past twenty years, been at the forefront of these enquiries, work at Mildred’s Lane with artist and academic Robert Williams during the Alchemist Shack sessions prefigures developments at home, leading to projects such as An Ordinall of Alchemy (2011 - Mark Dion & Robert Williams with Fellows from Mildred’s Lane Projects)  for Cabinet Magazine; Dis Manibus: A Taxonomy of Ghosts (2013 - Robert Williams, Hilmar Schäfer, Natalie Wilkin, Cory Riddell and Mildred’s Lane Fellows); Cumbrian Alchemy (2014-18 Robert Williams & Bryan McGovern Wilson), and the book Calvariae Disjecta: The Many Hauntings of Burton Agnes Hall (2017 - Robert Williams & Hilmar Schäfer with Kate Briggs and James Brook). 

For the Alchemist’s Shack Session V – Williams will revisit The Rural Uncanny and explore high strangeness at Mildred’s Lane, and search for the Great God Pan. Through building and art making, reading, discussion and excursions, he will examine the tropes of the rural uncanny within the land, and drawn from popular cultural sources. In this, the final phase of the Alchemist’s Shack, the great work will be completed.