Feature

A Colossal Soul: The Story of Swedenborg                      (A Documentary)


Cartwright and Jordan filming in Stockholm

In honour of our bicentenary year, award-winning filmmakers Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan have been commissioned to make a 60 minute documentary about Swedenborg. Filmed on location in London and Sweden, the work seeks fresh insight into the life, ideas, contradictions and fascinations of a 'colossal soul'.

The documentary is scripted and presented by Philip Makatrewicz, a London-based writer and musician (and erstwhile employee of the Swedenborg Society). The artist Kurt Benbenek has contributed the soundtrack to the work, using a diverse - and sometimes unexpected - range of music, including a radical edit of 'Jerusalem'. The documentary not only visits the places Swedenborg lived and worked, such as his summer house in Hornsgaten, but also includes readings from his personal diaries which are kept in the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Renowned experts on Swedenborg's thought, including Lars Berquist, Gary Lachman and Devin Zuber are interviewed about his ideas and influence in their many contexts. The work thus attempts to present Swedenborg's complex development from visionary scientist to mystical savant; its scope is both conceptual and biographical.

A premiere screening of 'A Colossal Soul: the Story of Swedenborg' will be held at the Society in April 2010 and will include a Q & A session with its creators. Manchester and Stockholm will host further previews of the documentary. The exact dates are yet to be confirmed, but keep checking our website for more information.

Retrospective: Cecil Collins: Fools and Angels

Central St Martins College of Art and Design

No admission fee

The artist Cecil Collins, is widely identified as the William Blake of the 20th Century. Indeed there can be no doubt that he was heavily influenced by the aesthetic style and transcendental philosophy of the radical Blake - and thus by the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg. Unlike most artists of his generation, Collins' interests were as much spiritual as they were artistic. He claimed that there is no such thing as art for art's sake. In fact, the artist carries a sacred responsibility; art is the lifeblood of the relationship between mankind and the Divine.

In his work Collins depicts an 'unseen world', which can be compared to Swedenborg's spiritual world. This world is defined by emotive, often mystical landscapes suggesting the regenerative power of nature and its source in the Divine; a white cloud appeared to him as 'the gateway to paradise'. In this way Collins' imagery recalls both Swedenborg's vision of a 'New Jerusalem' and his belief in 'correspondences' manifest in nature. Collins' motifs of the 'angel' and the 'fool' also echo the ideas of Swedenborg. He understood angels as 'the spiritual intelligence that connects all worlds', whilst the fool is the ideal state of man - receptive to angelic influence and to the spiritual meanings which abound in nature. As the critic Peter Fuller explains, 'the fool does not see the world with the disillusioned knowingness of the scientist; rather he marvels, with the eyes of a child'. As in Swedenborg's heaven, the ego is not welcome in Collins' 'unseen world'. One must seek meaning elsewhere.

See the Tate website for images of Collins' work. And see Central St Martin's website for directions to the art college. The show is only around the corner from Swedenborg House so we highly recommend that you come see us both!