Centuries before haunted house attractions or horror films, audiences thrilled to magic lantern shows. Also known as phantasmagorias, these performances featured hand-painted glass slides illuminated by candles, projecting fantastical and macabre images—grinning demons, bleeding nuns, the political dead—onto darkness or thick smoke. By the 1790s, phantasmagorias had become true multimedia spectacles: images rose from the floor and disappeared, thunder crashed, and disembodied voices echoed around the room.

Manual Cinema, established in Chicago in 2010, makes work that feels like the phantasmagoria’s great-great-grandchild. The group’s central technology—the humble overhead projector, the kind you might remember from school—functions like a magic lantern, casting silhouettes, cut- paper sh

See Full Page