Jesse Jones’ 16mm film The Spectre and the Sphere evokes the spectres of ideology and amplifies residual voices that haunt the cultural vessels of history. It examines how the spaces of our popular imagining, such as the theater and the cinema, are also containers of historical and political impulses. The Spectre and the Sphere conjures up a particular moment in the early twentieth century through the use of cultural artifacts, imagining the various historical potentialities of the time and how this residue may be present in our construction of the future.
The film features a performance by Lydia Kavina, the celebrated musical protégée and great niece of the inventor Leon Theremin, who is the first and only persona character in The Spectre and the Sphere. Opening against a backdrop of theater, the improvising musician performs for a brief period a haunting refrain from the socialist and communist people’s anthem, The Internationale, capturing for a moment the web of relations and references that have woven this particular fabric of history. [Jesse Jones]
