Tues 13th November, 7:30pm Horse Hospital, London.   Talk / Screening: Rod Dickinson The Jonestown re-enactment   On the 18th November 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana nearly the entire population of the religious community The Peoples Temple committed suicide by ingesting purple Flav-or-aid laced with Potassium Cyanide and tranquillisers. Nine hundred and fourteen people died including the community leader Jim Jones.   The Jonestown re-enactment is a project instigated by artist Rod Dickinson which will reconstruct elements of the lives and deaths of The Peoples Temple. Embarking on a journey through the complexities and paradoxes of Jim Jones and his followers.   The project launched on the evening May 26 2000 at the Instititute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London, UK, with "The Promised Land" a reenactment of one of Jim Jones' (pictured left) powerful political and religious sermons from the mid nineteen seventies. This included a reconstruction of a 'miracle healing' that was performed many times during the sermons.   Actor Graeme Edler portrayed Jim Jones (pictured above). He was supported by a small number of other Jonestown Reenactment participants. This first reenactment was surrounded by controversy drummed up by that ever reductive institution; the british media, who were intent on misunderstanding the projects motives.   The re-enactment will conclude at some unspecified point in the future in a day long event in a public park in London, UK which will reconstruct other elements of Temple life with hundreds of reenactors supplemented by a Living History Display, a narration and other events. The day will conclude with 'White Nights' a reenactment of the last few hours of the Peoples Temple, culminating in the suicide and death scene at Jonestown.   Rod talked about the aims and motives of the Re-enactment and his progress towards bringing the day long event to fruition. He also screened for the first time the film of the "Promised Land" reenactment.   Talk / Demo / Screening: Rod Dickinson Milgram's obedience experiments   Controversy surrounded Stanley Milgram for much of his professional life as a result of a series of experiments on obedience to authority which he conducted at Yale University in 1960-1963 early in his career. He found, surprisingly, that 65% of his subjects, ordinary residents of New Haven, were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks - up to 450 volts - (pictured above left) to a pitifully protesting victim, simply because a scientific authority commanded them to. The victim was, in reality, an actor who did not actually receive shocks, and this fact was revealed to the subjects at the end of the experiment. But, during the experiment itself, the experience was a powerfully real and gripping one for most participants.   Rod is currently developing the Milgram re-enactment project which will focus on Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments. The project will be realised at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Glasgow in Febuary 2002. He screened footage related to the experiments and talked about the aims and motives of the project. He also demonstrated a replica of the equipment (pictured left) used to administer the fake electric shocks in the original experiments.   "With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. SA substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority" Stanley Milgram (1965)   Related Links: jonestownreenactment.org   top