9. They need to be haunted

“I want you to know that this fuck you isn’t about you as an individual. It is, however, a fuck you to all of the above institutions, which through their exclusivity continue to reproduce inequality.”

- Reni Eddo-Lodge, About Race: Shout Out Miss Beep part 2. Available online at https://www.aboutracepodcast.com/6-shout-out-miss-beep-pt-2

***

A couple of weeks after the haunting of Toynbee Studios, we – Rohanne and Paul – were invited to join the Artsadmin team for one of their weekly staff lunches. They are a chance for the staff to keep each other up to date on what they’re working on. There was extra time made for us to speak about the Ghosting project. We chose to spend most of it listening.

Someone mentioned that since Ghosting – when certain other organisations were mentioned – the staff would sometimes say to each other: “they need to be haunted!” We asked: what does that mean? What are the qualities of an organisation that ‘needs’ to be haunted? They cited a lack of transparency, conservative attitudes, complacency. The conversation moved on. We wish we had asked: do you think Artsadmin needed to be haunted? Does it still need to be haunted now?

At the end of the lunch, we spoke a little about our own experience, and the major insights we were taking away from the project. We told them about a habit we had noticed in ourselves: that when in conversation with institutional staff, we instinctively try to put them at ease. We let them know that we do not hold them, personally or organisationally, responsible for the widespread bad feeling and systemic failures in the industry. We casually, continually, and unconsciously exonerate them of any guilt.

We ask ourselves: what might happen if we stopped this habit? Not to loudly castigate or accuse: but simply to interrupt this continual practice of forgiving, easing, soothing, comforting. What would this look like? What would this risk?