Dr William G Roll 1926 - 2012
Poltergeist Investigator
My dear friend Bill Roll sadly passed away yesterday 9th January 2012 aged 85.
A brilliant spirit in life, Bill Roll was an animated, curious and wonderful man - an academic and researcher with a beautifully playful soul and great generosity. I have enjoyed wonderful times with Bill as he relayed anecdotes of the famous medium Eileen Garrett, of his investigations on RMS Queen Mary and of the flying lemons that occurred during the poltergeist activties surrounding Tina Resch. Bill has been a kind and most interested supporter of my work and it has been a privilege and honour to have known and to have worked with him.
I first met Bill Roll in 2007 when I attended the Parapsychology Association Convention, Halifax, Nova Scotia, again in 2008 at the Parapsychology Foundation's International Conference, Utrecht and in 2008 I had the great pleasure of spending a week with Bill in Atlanta, Georgia as I recorded him and developed work for my 2009 Venice Biennale exhibition. Bill has featured in a number of my works and is subject of my 2009 work 'Some Ghosts' - a video portrait of Bill recorded at his home in Atlanta and at the University of West Georgia.
A great loss to 'The Field' and to his friends and family, I will miss him dearly and will always smile at the memory of myself and Bill (with a joint age of over 120) being 'ID'd as we bought 6 bottles of beer in the Atlanta Kmart.

Born in Bremen 1926, where his father was American Vice-consul, Roll possessed Danish and American citizenship. He was part of the Danish Resistance during World War II, and held a BA, in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, an MLitt from Oxford University and PhD from Lund University, Sweden. His MLitt thesis, 'Theory and Experiment in Psychical Research', has been published in the U.S. His  PhD thesis is entitled 'This World or That: An Examination of Parapsychological Findings Suggestive of the Survival of Human Personality After Death'.

During his time at Oxford, Roll was president of the Oxford University Society for Psychical Research, in 1957 he joined the staff at the Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University, North Carolina, where he worked under Dr. J. B. Rhine; in 1961 Roll became Project Director of the Psychical Research Foundation, Duke University and in 1964 was President of the Parapsychological Association. In 1996 Roll received the Outstanding Career Award from the Parapsychological Association and in 2002 was awarded the Dinsdale Memorial Award by the Society for Scientific Investigation for his RSPK studies. Over the course of Roll’s extensive career he has written four books including 'Unleashed: Of Poltergeists and Murder; the Strange Story of Tina Resch' (with Valerie Storey) and over 200 scientific articles; he continues to present papers at conferences worldwide, and is currently writing a book with Bryan Williams - 'The Psychic Brain'.

Following his investigation in 1958 of moving objects at a home in Seaford, Long Island, with J. G. Pratt, Roll and Pratt coined the term RSPK / Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis. Throughout his career Roll has investigated cases of OBE / Out of Body Experience, ESP / Extrasensory Perception, hauntings and poltergeist activity including those of Tina Resch, Sean Harribance, Keith Harary, Roger Callihan, Julio Vasquez, Renate Beck, and Heidi Wyrick. In 1991 Roll investigated RMS Queen Mary (then a hotel and museum in Long Beach, California) following reports by the ship’s engineer of mysterious nighttime sounds from her bow. Roll has worked with many respected and established researchers within the field, including Michael Persinger, Dean Radin, Gertrude Schmeidler, Raymond Moody, William Joines, Stephen Baumann and Hans Bender.
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Susan MacWilliam - Current Exhibitions

'Wunder', Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 23rd Sep - 5th Feb
Francis Alÿs, Kader Attia, César Baldaccini, Joseph Beuys, Dara Birnbaum, Cosima von Bonin, Olga Chernysheva, Nathan Coley, Ellen Gallagher, Ceal Floyer, Hans Graf, Andreas Gursky, Susan Hefuna, Susan Hiller, Jonathan Horowitz, Sven Johne, Helmut & Johanna Kandl, Martin Kippenberger und Albert Oehlen, Julia Kissina, Terence Koh, Igor & Svetlana Kopystiansky, Philipp Lachenmann, Mark Leckey, Armin Linke, Ingeborg Lüscher, Susan MacWilliam, Melanie Manchot, Kris Martin, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Henri Michaux & Eric Duvivier, Joseph Ignaz Mildorfer, Julia Montilla, Timo Nasseri, Paul Nougé, Reto Pulfer, Julien Prévieux, Walid Raad / The Atlas Group, Johann von Schraudolph, Thomas Schütte, Shirana Shahbazi, Katharina Sieverding, Roman Signer, Thomas Struth, Alina Szapocznikow, Larry Sultan und Mike Mandel, Fiona Tan, Javier Téllez, Jalal Toufic, James Turrell, Timm Ulrichs, Erwin Wurm
Curated by Praxis für Ausstellungen und Theorie, Berlin [Hürlimann | Lepp | Tyradellis]


'Afterlife', Tot Zover, Funeral Museum
Cemetery De Nieuwe Ooster, Amsterdam, 2nd Nov - 1st July
Xu Bing (CN), Melanie Bonajo (NL), Kim Boske (NL), Nathalie Bruys (NL), Yuhsin U. Chang (TW), Nick Hullegie (NL), Susan MacWilliam (IE), Dane Mitchell (NZ), Oscar Muñoz (CO), Femmy Otten (NL), Satin Panyigay (NL), Valeska Soares (BR), Sarah van Sonsbeeck (NL), Leonid Tsvetkov (RUS)

to be - to see - to be seen, James Merrigan's essay on Susan MacWilliam's F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N
Susan MacWilliam's essay 'Double Take' on Jordan Baseman's "Natures Great Experiment"