Shannon Taggart American, 1975

In a practice room at Arthur Findlay College — the Spiritualist institution housed at Stansted Hall, Essex, often described as the movement's unofficial university — hands rest lightly on a planchette fitted with a pencil. The instrument predates the Ouija board: it emerged in the 1850s as a writing device, decades before letters were ever printed beneath it. Automatic writing is among Spiritualism's oldest experimental techniques: the sitter surrenders conscious control, and the resulting marks are read as messages passed through, rather than authored by, the body. Taggart's photograph holds the moment of suspension itself — before meaning arrives, when the script is still only motion. The image asks the question that runs through the whole of Séance: where does intention end, and what moves in its place?