Published by Contraband Books, Territories is a collection of texts and images based on a series of site-specific expanded cinema performances staged between 2015 and 2018 by Yvonne Salmon and James Riley.

Each of the texts deal with ‘occulted’ or otherwise obscured spaces. As Salmon and Riley put it in their introduction:

“Working on the basis that space, place and architecture absorb, remix and transmit resonant signals, we try to tune into these cultural leys. Of particular interest are the border zones between fact and fiction: real locations referenced in fictional texts, favourite haunts of writers, spaces of superimposition. Conspiracy sites. Places that seems to invite acts of speculative mediumship.

The walls are recorders. Every action, thought and deed leaves a trace. Writers have the ability to channel and to manipulate this residue. But what happens when the writers disappear, and their books are forgotten? What emerges when they are brought back from the dust? This is the terrain we try to map. We’re both interested in exploiting the séance as a performance mode. Part reading, part exploration: we attempt to dig into the foundations of a space to raise the voices of its ghosts.”

The book is available now. For further information see:

https://www.contrabandbooks.co.uk/product/territories-yvonne-salmon-james-riley/