« Charlotte Queen was lying in bed this morning when she started to feel a violent pain in her back. Along her spine a shake electrified her from top to bottom. Was a Preharmonic Pain expending in her entire body, or was it the anger of her intestine? Later, an eruption was recorded. »
A research about geosensology initially started during a 3-month residency at Stichting Project Space 1646 in The Hague, that ended with a solo show and a theatrical performance, acted by Jay Tan and Marnie Slater. It was compounded by a set design, a video and a theatrical performance.
♦ The residency
♦ Press release
This research explores the phenomenon of Geosensology through fiction, facts and scientific experiments and depicts the story of Charlotte King reintroduced as Charlotte Queen in a performance mixing different writings and genre: testimonials (forum, interviews), scientific papers and fiction. Charlotte King is an earthquake sensitive best known for her accurate prediction of the major eruption of Washington’s Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. She currently resides in Salem, Oregon where she maintains a mailing list and website dedicated to biological earthquake prediction and sensitivity. Indeed, a physical condition would allow some people to feel in their bodies impending telluric changes. This phenomenon is called biological seismic prediction, or geo-sensology, whose definition is the study of the senses and biological systems related to geological dynamics and events, also called the “Charlotte King effect”.
The first part of the research focused on the documentary evidence of people who have experienced telluric movements in their bodies. These testimonials propose a large inventory of different voices, of different literary genres: from the international forum portraying broken and non-native English, to Charlotte King’s personal site written in contemporary American, based on scientific evidence. The second part of the research deals with the rest of the living world, particularly animals. Indeed, many studies are interested in the effects of catastrophes (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions) on animals. In Japan, in particular, numerous studies have shown that the strange behaviour of snakes before the arrival of an earthquake could perhaps help geologists to decipher disaster prediction. Pets are often missing when earthquakes strike. All these scientific and non-scientific studies are debated, and propose both anecdotal and factual forms taken into consideration by the scientific body.
Pictures of the Performance////with Marnie Slater and Jay Tan
