Project:  Haunts and Related Incidents

Description: Inspired by the W.P.A. Georgia Writers Project collection (housed at the University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library), Haunts and Related Incidents is a modern interpretation of early twentieth century Georgia folklore and mythology. Told though the hybrid means of diptychs, overlaid polaroids, archival materials, and more, Alec Kaus’s approach creates a “nebulous yet self-contained constellation” of images, “evoking mood rather than narrative, raising more questions than answers.” By revisiting the work of the Georgia Writers Project today, considering it in abstract and contemporary terms with his lens, Kaus simultaneously interrogates the role of the artist, viewer, researcher, and subject. In both explicit and subliminal ways, Kaus’s work seeks to ask, as he suggests: “What are the boundaries of the archive’s presumed objectivity? What was the role of folklore in Georgia previously, and how has it changed? How much latitude does an artist have in weaving together truth and fiction before sowing distrust in the viewer?”