[-empyre-] Touched

[Jennifer Fisher]

Hi All,

What an inspiring array of posts. The Age of Aquarius, as Arshiya has notes, marks an epoch of expanded consciousness and individual freedoms. This planetary alignment arrives as a moment of promise in expanded intuition where at the same time privacy is in danger of being eroded by the surveillance capitalism of big data. I resonate with Sally’s perception that the mood is at once “super-charged…and vulnerable.”

It is interesting that Spiritualism arose at an affective climate of collective grief (the American Civil War) coinciding with emancipatory social movements, in particular abolitionist feminism. The current paranormal opening, likewise, arrives at the crest of collective grief stemming from the pandemic and Black Lives Matter. The tone of the moment was presciently anticipated by Okwui Enwezor whose posthumous Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America is now on exhibition at the New Museum (https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/grief-and-grievance-art-and-mourning-in-america-1).

But I wanted to pick up the thread of Renate and Tim’s work on sense/sensation signalled by Ann. It appears that touch and the tactile interface operate in relation to intuitive technologies such as the séance (where hands are held in a circle to create a current supporting mediumship), to Chrysanne’s aura photographs (which involved a tactile biofeedback interface to generate images), to the relationality of the Tarot reading (where the handling of cards has operated emblematically in allegories of touch since Caravaggio).

In regard to the performativity of intuition: Ruth, I’d be interested in hearing more about the staging of the playing card cartomancy of the Canadian clairvoyant you mention; and Bev, might you envision the role touch in reading your new Tarot cards?

And on the documenting of the séance: Serena, do the mediums in the Hamiltons’ photographs directly address the photographers when in a spirit circle? Chrysanne, how did you orchestrate the aura photographs to have non-English-speaking subjects peer directly at the lens (as many of your compelling subjects do) with their hands on the biofeedback interfact.

Warmly,

Jennifer

Jennifer Fisher
Professor Contemporary Art and Curatorial Studies
Department of Visual Art and Art History CFA 252
York University 4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario  M3J 1P3
jefish at yorku.ca

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