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

Fri Nov 22 08:51:18 AEDT 2019

Yes, thanks Margaretha and empyre.

Spellwork
<https://squareup.com/store/lrlx/item/spellwork-technologies-and-conjurings>
as a whole attempts to answer some of the questions posed at the end of the
last post, with a variety of artists and writers. It provokes the
possibility that technology and magic have always been entangled rituals.
Magic is a tool for knowing: a way of seeking the unknowable, an
alternative nature to what is, a conjuring. Post-industrial society has
largely erased the practices of sorcery that came before it, but high-tech
is its own version of sleight of hand. Taking seriously the magic in
technosocial life might help unhinge the concept that technological
practices are only sleek, shiny and synthetic. It might demystify current
attitudes that consider all problems as requiring new technological
solutions, all systems as things to “disrupt” with technological innovation.

In her essay in Spellwork
<https://squareup.com/store/lrlx/item/spellwork-technologies-and-conjurings>
titled “She Who Sees the Unknown”, Morehshin Allahyari introduces us to
Aisha Qandisha, the most “fearsome and honored” jinn from the Arab world.
Allahyari writes of Qandisha,

*For the Moroccans she is known as the ‘opener’. To possess a man, Aisha
creates a crack in his body. She breaks him.*

*Divides him.*

*Opens him.*

*Invites him to an outside.*

*When she possesses a man,*

*She does not take over the host*

*but rather opens him*

*-now the lover-*

*to a storm of incoming jinn and demons; Making him a traffic zone*

*She never leaves*

*She resides in the man to guarantee his utter openness*

*“Feel me”*

*She says*

*And through his opening he does.*

*The only way to feel sane with Aisha Qandisha is to participate with her.*

*to bend; to bond.*

*In an unwinnable war *

Allahyari’s ongoing practice of refiguring challenges conventional
histories and technologies that reify magic, goddesses, and monsters.
Situating them in a new--or perhaps very old--way. If we are to take
refiguring as a serious strategy to intervene in our own mythologies
(technological and otherwise), what other cracks must we create?

-- Elia + Liat + Rose

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:31 AM L R B <liat.berdugo at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> 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)*
>
> \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
>
>
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

-- 
Elia Vargas
www.eliavargas.com
www.livingroomlightexchange.com

*LRLX Publication 4: Spellwork: Technologies and Conjurings* is now
available HERE
<https://squareup.com/store/lrlx/item/spellwork-technologies-and-conjurings>
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