[-empyre-] Welcome Special Guests Liat Berdugo and Elia Vargas :: On Spellwork -- Technology and Conjurings

[L R B]

Thank you to Margaretha and -empyre- for having us.

As Margaretha mentioned, we co-edited the Living Room Light Exchange’s
fourth annual publication, Spellwork: Technologies and Conjurings
<https://squareup.com/store/lrlx/item/spellwork-technologies-and-conjurings>,
along with Rose Linke, which was released this past fall. It is a book that
calls forth the techno-witches, wizards, sorcerers, animists, and
magicians, and provokes the possibility that technology and magic have
always been entangled rituals. In short, its artists and writers explore
the double bind of magic in technology and the technology of magic.

We thought we’d use the invitation to post on -empyre- to share some
excerpts from the book, which we hope will spark dialogue.

So to start things off, here’s an excerpt from Ingrid Burrington’s essay
“Alchemy and False Gods” which posits that the “medieval discipline of
alchemy was perhaps the original annihilator of time and space.” Burrington
writes,

"While transportation technologies are more legible as technologies that
also transform the natural world (or at least the human experience of it),
communication technologies' alchemical materiality is somewhat less
appreciated. Which is odd, since that alchemical materiality is also
arguably what makes those technologies often feel like magic. Patterns
etched on silicon crystal circuits channel programmatic incantations into
ashes of lightning, memory lives in the vacillations of magnets, love and
anguish and horror are rendered into beams of light traversing oceans and
reconstituted anew in seconds, a soothing voice from far beyond tells you
to turn left onto Fourteenth Street as a blue dot on a screen nudges
onward."



We wonder, how is technology like alchemy in its annihilation of space? How
is it not? And what of the ineffable mutability that alchemy and circuit
boards share, which are both more than the sum of their parts?



-- Liat + Elia + Rose

--
liat berdugo // @whatliat <https://twitter.com/whatliat> // liatberdugo.com
<http://www.liatberdugo.com/>

/////////////////////////////////////////////

*recent + upcoming thing(s)*

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Nov 1-15 — Digital Art Festival Die Digitale 2019, NRW Forum Düsseldorf,
Düsseldorf, Germany. My work, "Unpatentable Multitouch Aerobics" will be
presented and performed by a local German artist (who I have trained by
Skype!) at the fourth annual festival for digital art.


Nov 14 - 15 — MoneyLab #7: Outside of Finance
<https://networkcultures.org/moneylab/events/moneylab-7-outside-of-finance/>,
Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam. My collective's video work, *The Insufferable
Whiteness of Being*, will screen at the seventh edition of MoneyLab, which
considers feminist economics, social payments, corporate crime, and the
"blokechain."

Dec 9-13 — Residency at the Media Archeology Lab
<https://mediaarchaeologylab.com/> (MAL), University of Colorado, Boulder.
I'll be working on a new video series on the rituals of 'unboxing'
technological devices.
Feb 12-15, 2020 — College Art Association Annual Conference
<https://www.collegeart.org/programs/conference/conference2020/>, Chicago,
IL. I will be presenting two papers: "Eternal Boy Playground: an artistic
critique of cryptocurrency, colonialism, and gender in a post-Maria Puerto
Rico" and "The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East: Video, Politics, and
the Visual in Israel-Palestine." I will also be co-organizing a series of
events, panels, and workshops for the New Media Caucus
<http://www.newmediacaucus.org/>.

Mar 3 - Apr 8, 2020 — Studio Visit: The Art + Architecture Faculty
Triennial, Thacher Gallery <https://www.usfca.edu/thacher-gallery>, San
Francisco, CA. More information forthcoming,

Mar 2020 — Heavy Breathing <https://heavyheavybreathing.com/>, San
Francisco + online. I will be producing a video-based version of "Internet
Aerobics" as part of Heavy Breathing's HB/AV, a series of artist-led
movement seminars designed for audio/video download.

Apr 2020 — Military Powerpoint Karaoke
<https://archive.org/details/MilitaryPowerPointEvent> returns to the
Internet Archive, presented in partnership with Charlie Macquarie. More
details forthcoming.


On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 7:49 AM margaretha haughwout <
margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear -empyre-,
>
> Greetings to two special guests: Liat Berdugo and Elia Vargas, who
> recently published *Spellwork -- Technology and Conjurings* through their
> *Livingroom Light Exchange* publication in San Francisco. I am so delighted
> that they are willing to spend some time sharing their thoughts on Magic
> and Technology with us today.
>
> ...
>
> Liat Berdugo (US) she/her/hers
> Liat Berdugo is an artist, writer, and curator whose work -- which focuses
> on embodiment and digitality, archive theory, and new economies --
> interweaves video, writing, performance, and computer programming to form a
> considerate and critical lens on digital culture. Berdugo has been
> exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, and her book, The
> Everyday Maths, was published by Anomalous Press in 2013. She is the
> co-founder and curator of the Bay Area’s Living Room Light Exchange, a
> monthly new media art salon, and one-half of the two person art collective,
> Anxious to Make. Her writing appears in Rhizome, Temporary Art Review,
> Institute for Network Cultures Longform, and others. Berdugo received an
> MFA from RISD and a BA from Brown University. She is an assistant professor
> of Art + Architecture at the University of San Francisco, and is currently
> writing a book about the weaponization of cameras in Israel/Palestine
> (forthcoming, Bloomsbury). More at www.liatberdugo.com/.
>
> Elia Vargas (US) he/him/his
> Elia Vargas is an Oakland based, globally situated, artist, curator, and
> scholar. He works across multiple mediums, including video, sound,
> projection, writing, and performance. He is co-founder of the Living Room
> Light Exchange, a monthly salon on art and technology, and a Ph.D.
> candidate in Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. Vargas has a long
> history of community radio broadcasting and place-based projects following
> an interest in transmission and human/non-human cultural formulation. He
> collaborates widely with artists, musicians, and institutions. His current
> work argues for refiguring crude oil as media. More at www.eliavargas.com.
>
> --
> beforebefore.net
> --
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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