Miles Rufelds presents In the Room Alone, a site-specific experimental essay film about Waterloo Region's deep and fascinating history of spirit communication communities, specifically drawing from a community of gathers circa 1930's - 1960's centred on spirit medium Thomas Lacey.
In its essayistic voice, In the Room Alone traces how spiritualist communities grew in response to developments of colonialism, capitalism, and the attendant deconstruction of communal space and time. The film aims not to litigate the truth claims of the occult phenomena this community sought, but to examine their rituals of imagination, creativity, and aesthetic experimentation, and to consider how they resonate with contemporary capitalist conditions, contemporary art, and the unique enchantment of the CAFKA Biennial.
Miles Rufelds is an artist, filmmaker, and writer based in Toronto, whose exhibitions, films, and lecture-performances pull narrative threads from wreckage of capitalist modernity, mixing extensive factual research with speculative reinterpretation. His projects critique the braided histories of industrialism, science, technology, and aesthetics, and explore the social forms that have arisen to make sense of the world in their wake, from occultism to conspiracism.
Rufelds holds a Master of Visual Studies in studio art from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa. Rufelds exhibits widely in Canada, abroad in the US and Iceland, and is a co-founded and co-director of 'the plumb' in Toronto.
