Output details

'Dreams of Jelly Roll' - Solo Exhibition and Catalogue

Photo-digital prints, video, 32 page catalogue and Augmented Reality installation

In this series Goto explores the relationship between biography, history and the unconscious, through an examination of the life and work of Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton - the self-proclaimed founding father of Jazz.

Initial research involved extensive reading on Morton, early jazz and the culture and history of New Orleans. Musical and picture research included locating early sound recordings and trawling photographic archives. Central to the project became the eight hours of recorded interviews Morton made in 1938 with Alan Lomax, Folk Music Curator at The Library of Congress, in which Morton gave a strange, meandering account of his life.

For many commentators these recordings raise serious questions concerning Morton’s credibility; he was a renowned phantasist and was accused of self-aggrandisement and braggartry in these recollections. Goto brings psychoanalytic interpretations to Morton’s tall stories, in an attempt to sympathetically understand the motives and mechanisms behind his fabrications.

The series is constructed using historical documents, which have been imaginatively reassembled to generate new innovative associations, in a manner akin to the dream. Elements from historical photographs are incorporated into fictional scenarios based on Morton’s pronouncements. Goto mixes people from Morton’s musical and social circles, for example, with significant figures from the world stage to which he aspired. The settings are derived from the dream-like virtual world of ‘Second Life’.

The Freud Museum, London, which was the primary exhibition venue, offered additional opportunities and challenges. Goto relates Morton to Freud in the catalogue text and installation, which involved Freud’s library (for published account of the methodology, and further venues see portfolio).

Through the conjuncture of psychoanalytic concepts and historical biography, Goto creates coherent and complex literary narratives in these unique contemporary history paintings, which insightfully develop understandings reached in the work of RB Kitaj, Jörg Immendorff and Dick Bengtsson.