Aesthetic and Scientific Epistemologies of the Occult in the XIX Century
Online Lecture Series - Spring Semester 2021
We invite you to the Spring 2021 edition of our ongoing lecture series, as we continue our enquiry into aesthetic and scientific epistemologies of the occult during the long nineteenth century. On Tuesday evenings in May, through our second online series, we present approaches to the subject that combine methodologies drawn from art history, religious studies, media theory, anthropology and science studies. In our first lecture, anthropologist, Ehler Voss will take a look at the opposing views of two Californian magicians by relating them to nineteenth-century debates surrounding the credibility of magical practices. In the second lecture, with an approach similarly grounded in religious anthropology, Erin Yerby will investigate the role of the body as medium in the American Spiritualist tradition, which she contextualizes within broader Protestant-inflected iconoclastic tradition. In our third lecture, art historian, Victoria Ferentinou will explore the influence of esoteric discourses on artistic theory and practice of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her focus will be on the painting and theory of the Greek symbolist, Frixos Aristeus (1879-1951). Finally, in the fourth lecture, historian of religion, Marco Pasi will consider the presence of occult-related themes in the oeuvre of the late contemporary artist, Chiara Fumai (1978-2017).
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"Magic Tipping Points. On Deceptions and Detections"
Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Speaker: Dr. Ehler Voss, external page Universität Siegen
Time: 18:00 CEST.
Venue: Zoom
Mentalists often speak of tipping points that occur during their practice. These are events in which something unexpected happens, that is inexplicable at first glance and seems like a small miracle. Most of them interpret such events as coincidence, even if they do not always reveal this to the audience, but some also interpret these unexpected events as actual paranormal phenomena, or they deliberately leave the decision in suspense.
In the 19th century, European and American entertainment magicians and cultural anthropologists, in a process of mutual mirroring, tried to transform such ambiguities into unambiguity through establishing the asymmetrical distinction between stage magic and occult magic, the former being perceived as modern and secular because it explicitly admits to the skillful and science-based production of illusions, and the latter as primitive and religious because it either believes that it manipulates or pretends to manipulate forces (for good or evil) that are not scientifically approved and thus usually claimed to be supernatural. Therefore, stage magicians usually dismisses all the phenomena people often experience in altered states of consciousness as deceit or self-deceit, and many stage magicians derive from the distinction between stage magic and occult magic a moral duty to publicly expose people who practice occult, i.e. „real“ magic. Based on anthropological fieldwork in California among skeptics and parapsychologists who perform as mentalists, this presentation explores the controversies and paradoxes that result from the attempts to purify magic from its ambiguities.
"The Body as Spectral Shape: Spiritualist Mediumship and Anglo-American Iconoclasm"
Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Speaker: Dr. Erin Yerby, external page Rice University
Time: 18:00 CEST.
Venue: Zoom
This presentation emphasizes Spiritualism as the shadow-side, or perhaps heretical edge, of a broadly Protestant iconoclastic semiotic tradition in North America—a shadow that, paradoxically, illuminates the spectral logics of North American settler experience. My approach is not so much historical, as a way of constellating shared affinities between Spiritualist mediumship’s emphasis on the body and bodily experience, as the authoritative center of mediation, and the mythical foundations of Anglo-North American settlement (specifically, the centrality of conversion experience, alongside conceptions of the body as spectral Shape or figura among settler Puritans).
"Colours are Things: The Visionary Art of Frixos Aristeus"
Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Victoria Ferentinou, external page University of Ioannina
Time: 18:00 CEST
Venue: Zoom
The lecture will focus on the underrated Greek painter Frixos Aristeus (1879-1951) whose work reflects a religious and epistemological search responsive to the turn-of-the-century occult revival. It will contextualise Aristeus’s oeuvre by highlighting the historical specificities of the interaction between occultism and Greek symbolism in the early twentieth century. It will be specifically concerned with the ways Aristeus integrated theosophical and spiritualist ideas into his art theoretical treatise, Light from Darkness and Darkness from Light (mid-1930s). Aristeus preferred a representational art expressive of spiritual ideas that also characterised the work of other theosophically-influenced artists of his era. In this theorising, he absorbed occult concepts about colours and their qualities elaborating on their value as spiritual principles. The lecture aspires to situate Aristeus’s theoretical enterprise in the context of modern art theory, shedding light on questions of figuration and abstraction, and by extension the aestheticisation of occult tropes by contemporary visual artists.
"Witchcraft with Capital W: The Magical Art of Chiara Fumai"
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Marco Pasi, external page University of Amsterdam
Time: 18:00 CEST
Venue: Zoom
The presence of occult or esoteric elements in contemporary art has become quite visible in recent years, and can be observed in the work of artists featured in major international art events such as Documenta or the Venice Biennale. One can find references to a broad variety of occult materials in these works, and especially to currents and authors from the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Spiritualism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and Aleister Crowley’s Magick and Thelema. Among the artists who have made a strong impact on the international art scene while using these materials, one of the most significant is certainly the Italian Chiara Fumai (1978-2017). Especially after exhibiting at documenta 13 in 2012, her work began to attract international attention. Her tragic, untimely death in 2017 did not make interest in her work fade away, quite the contrary. An important retrospective exhibition dedicated to her work is now touring across Europe, going from the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva to the Centro Pecci in Prato and then on to other important venues. Fumai’s work is full of references to magic, witchcraft, occultism, and spiritualism. This is combined with a very strong feminist discourse inspired especially by 1970s radical feminism (Valerie Solanas, Carla Lonzi). The juncture between radical feminism and the occult operated by Fumai is fascinating and requires some reflection. To what extent is Fumai’s work paradigmatic for the whole occult trend in contemporary art? And what is the occult doing in contemporary art anyway? This lecture will address these questions by casting a glance on Fumai’s intriguing, thought-provoking work.