The following text was presented by Jacqueline Ferrara at the AGM of the International Necronautical Society on June 26, 2000. The event was hosted by the Lux Gallery in London:   On November 18, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, nearly the entire population of the religious community The Peoples Temple, which had fled there from California, committed suicide by ingesting (or being injected with) purple Flav-or-aid laced with Potassium Cyanide and tranquillisers. The exact number and identities are unknown, but at least 914 men women and children died, including the community leader Jim Jones.   The Jonestown Reenactment is an inclusive, collaborative art project, created by the artist, Rod Dickinson. It involves degrees of participation from many individuals and focuses on performances reconstructing episodes characterised by artifice and representation. They open to examination the complexities of The People's Temple.   It launched on May 26 at the (ICA) with a reenactment of one of Jim Jones' powerful political and religious sermons, including a so-called miracle healing, and was surrounded by media controversy.   Depending on funding, the re-enactment will continue sometime next year with a day long event in a public park in London. It will reconstruct elements of Temple life with hundreds of reenactors, with a Living History Display, narration and other events. It will portray the sequence of internal struggles and external disruption to the community, that culminated in the White Nights, rehearsals for mass suicide.   During the rise of the Temple in California, until its public image was destroyed by the press, Jones was a respected, charismatic leader with a mission to help alienated Americans: He preached a radical doctrine of racial equality and was also a communist and anti capitalist.   The Peoples Temple had purchased land in Guyana by 1977. The same year the US Inland Revenue Service began to pursue the Temple for tax evasion, using the same tactics used to gain long prison sentences for hard core gangsters such as Al Capone. At this point Jones moved the whole community to Guyana but became convinced they were the target of a conspiracy by the CIA, US government, media and Concerned Relatives. He introduced the White Night suicide rehearsals that generated the emotional intensity for the final performance in November 1978, which closed with the deaths of over 900 Temple followers.   Strong debate remains over whether the deaths were suicide by ingestion or murder by injection. Medical evidence of the presence of cyanide in the dead is lacking.