[-empyre-] Touched

[Bev Pike]

Sorry - forgot to sign last night's post.  Here are the tarot cards that I posted Tuesday.   https://bevpike.com/works/androcene-antidote-tarot/  Only up for till the end of the month....fear of Patriarchal Grant Adjudicators!

Bev Pike
Winnipeg

On Mar 25, 2021, at 10:31 PM, Bev Pike <bevpike1 at icloud.com> wrote:


What an interesting week it's been.  I am indeed honoured to be part of it.

My role is that of the eccentric artist from mid-continental Winnipeg.  There are a lot of us.  Why is that?  Well, Hamilton's drive to photographically prove paranormal activity was partly based on ley line beliefs originating in England.  Where I live and work is under, or on top of, a convergence of several of these lines.  (Do a ley lines image search for some beautiful other-worldly cartography.  https://northernwilds.com/ley-lines-earths-energy/ )

This means that nearly everyone in Winnipeg's art scene has paranormal sitings that involve clairsentient experiences.  Mantel pictures jumping over ornaments.  Mirrors extruding, then abruptly sucking in, spirits in the forms of light.  Old men so angry at the mistress with the punk decor that they terrorize householders.  Mean male ghost who prevents the old Masonic Hall from being sold, used or renovated.  The Victorian apartment building that recently mysteriously burnt down was colloquially called, if I remember rightly, Exorcist House.  Ghosts in our provincial legislature, built a hundred years ago using all kinds of mystical symbols from the Hermetic Code, thrive.  There are gazillions of haunting stories in Winnipeg.

So, paranormal integration is part of our cultural fabric.  It is easy to visit the clairsentient realm here.  It produces quite wonderful and surprising insights, like those Erica described in her residency.  I've learned to float in it now, listening to animals, conversing with trees and smiling or snearing at objects.  Very good for the studio practice!  See Sunken Seance Meeting Hall here https://bevpike.com/

In the tarot cards I created for this forum, sensuality was important to the words I chose.  However, since these cards are born digital, actual touch is absent so far...unless readers clasp their cheeks in a giggle as they read, let's say...

On Mar 24, 2021, at 4:52 PM, Jennifer Fisher <jefish at yorku.ca> wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
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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