Sensation – intimacy – interaction: lantern performances in religious and socio-political education

Abstract

In 1912, the Anglican missionary organization the Church Army reported that open-air meetings in Blackley, a Manchester village, had been particularly successful because of ‘the great gun of the lantern’ (Church Army Gazette, 20 April 1912, 8). Taking up this military expression, this article deals with the question why and how diverse organizations active in social work utilized ‘the’ lantern as a ‘weapon’. The focus is on lantern performances in events designed for religious and socio-political education in Britain: I identify the exhibition practices that the Church Army and the Co-operative movement utilized to attract, to impress and to (permanently) bond their audiences. The main suggestion is that these organizations, establishing a strategy which consisted in providing their audiences with sensory, intimate and interactive experiences, tremendously contributed to establish the ‘screen’ as a centre for visual communication. From a more global viewpoint, social organizations contributed to establish basic mechanisms of bonding audiences to visual media.

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