About
What we choose to remember—and how—has a profound impact on how we understand ourselves and our world.
In 2019, Margaux Crump and Jake Eshelman travelled across present-day America to document the locations where records indicate fifty-four individuals were accused of witchcraft and executed by the state. Operating on the premise that places hold memory and that cultural memory can be deeply political, this project investigates how the land and the people in these sites have honored, altered, hidden, perverted, or neglected the memories of these persecutions.
Richly imagined by Western culture, the archetype of the witch occupies the liminal spaces between past and present, real and fantasy, fear and desire. It exists in the periphery—a metonym for danger and difference. Hag, healer, beggar, heretic, seductress; the witch has long haunted our stories. Yet we have not made it a priority to remember those who were condemned and executed. Why is this? Why does the witch thrive as a cultural construct, while individuals executed for witchcraft are largely forgotten or excluded?
By confronting these questions, Echoes of the Witch strives to help bring these memories back into our collective consciousness, contributing to the process of (un)learning, healing, and evolving together.
In 2019, Margaux Crump and Jake Eshelman travelled across present-day America to document the locations where records indicate fifty-four individuals were accused of witchcraft and executed by the state. Operating on the premise that places hold memory and that cultural memory can be deeply political, this project investigates how the land and the people in these sites have honored, altered, hidden, perverted, or neglected the memories of these persecutions.
Richly imagined by Western culture, the archetype of the witch occupies the liminal spaces between past and present, real and fantasy, fear and desire. It exists in the periphery—a metonym for danger and difference. Hag, healer, beggar, heretic, seductress; the witch has long haunted our stories. Yet we have not made it a priority to remember those who were condemned and executed. Why is this? Why does the witch thrive as a cultural construct, while individuals executed for witchcraft are largely forgotten or excluded?
By confronting these questions, Echoes of the Witch strives to help bring these memories back into our collective consciousness, contributing to the process of (un)learning, healing, and evolving together.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who has extended their enthusiasm and
support for Echoes of the Witch—especially those who graciously offered their
time, resources, skills, and hospitality over the course of this project.
Carol and David Allen
Beth Caruso, author of One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America’s First Witch Hanging
Tasha Dorsey
Bob and Carolyn Florek
Susan Graham
Paul Joy of Goody Bassett’s Ice Cream
Daniel Pagan
Elizabeth Rose
The Fairfield Museum & History Center
The Salem Police Department, especially:
Chief Mary Butler
Chief’s Asst. Robert Mulligan
Officer Ryan Arundel
Kristina Stevick and The History Alive Theater Company
David Wright
Beth Caruso, author of One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America’s First Witch Hanging
Tasha Dorsey
Bob and Carolyn Florek
Susan Graham
Paul Joy of Goody Bassett’s Ice Cream
Daniel Pagan
Elizabeth Rose
The Fairfield Museum & History Center
The Salem Police Department, especially:
Chief Mary Butler
Chief’s Asst. Robert Mulligan
Officer Ryan Arundel
Kristina Stevick and The History Alive Theater Company
David Wright
The Artists
Margaux Crump
is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the slippery relationship between agency and structural power. She believes the rich expanses within culturally imposed binaries are fertile spaces to trouble hierarchy, dualism, and anthropocentrism. Recently, she has been working with power as expressed through the constructs of gender and nature, using hunting and sexual desire as a way to trace the complex movements of power between bodies. With a desire to re-enchant the world, her current work builds on these themes, focusing on blurring the distinctions between what we define as magic or science; spirit or matter; and nature or culture.
You can view her work at margauxcrump.com
and keep tabs via instagram
Jake Eshelman
is a photo-based artist and visual researcher whose work explores the complex relationships between humans and other-than-human beings. He asserts that our curious dissociation with the natural and spiritual worlds provides a palpable backdrop in which we can more fully (re)consider humanity’s role in ecology. Through a documentary and intuitive practice, his recent work investigates interspecies relationships in industry, agriculture, and conservation in order to question the tenets of anthropocentrism and the implications behind the Enlightenment rationalization of “nature.”
You can view his work at jakeeshelman.com
and keep tabs via instagram