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The idea and belief that photographs invoke a presence is increasingly compromised by the haunting sense of an absence.
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We used to believe that photographs always “refer” to something beyond themselves that already exists, like an actual place, space, object or person(s). Even though this was never always true or completely convincing, such strongly held convictions have been profoundly shaken by the effects of popular digital culture. It is no longer a matter of any specific photograph itself being unreliable, so much as the whole edifice of social and cultural life, and its media platforms, being taken over by a pervading sense of doubt.
The idea and belief that photographs invoke a presence is increasingly compromised by the haunting sense of an absence. As explored in this work, a house in Germany is the site of a machinic vision, whose “consciousness” is implanted as an instrument of human vision.
David Bate is an artist, theorist and teacher who has exhibited and published extensively on photography. His own practice and writings engage with contemporary culture and the history and theory of photography, often refusing the common division between critic and photographer. His monograph books include Photography as Critical Practice: Notes on Otherness (London: Intellect 2020), Photography: Key Concepts second edition (Oxford: Routledge, 2019), Art Photography (London: Tate Publications, 2015), Zone (London: Artwords, 2012) and Photography and Surrealism (London: IB Tauris, 2004). Alongside the many atworks, exhibitions and publications of his artworks and writings he is also a co-founding editor of Photographies theory journal since 2008. He has given lectures all over the world. He was recipient of the Royal Photographic Society Education Award in 2018 and is currently Professor of Photography at the University of Westminster, London, UK.
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Among the several regional shamanism traditions practiced in South Korea today, Hwanghaedo shamanism is widely acknowledged as the one that retains the magio-religious traits that are the spiritual essence of Korean shamanism’s belief and practice.
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The project shows the Korean shamans of the North Korean Hwanghaedo tradition in liminal moments. These are periods in which they experience ecstasy and trance because they seek contact with spiritual entities or are possessed by gods, spirits, or ancestors. They are in an intermediate position “betwixt and between” that is very difficult to describe and is in fact experienced in a manifold of ways. The shamans that came as refugees after the Korea war imported the Hwanghaedo tradition from North Korea to South Korea. The ecstatic and wild ritual practice survived in South Korea because many refugees perceived this tradition as part of their culture and identity. Among the several regional shamanism traditions practiced in South Korea today, Hwanghaedo shamanism is widely acknowledged as the one that retains the magio-religious traits that are the spiritual essence of Korean shamanism’s belief and practice.
Dr. Dirk Schlottmann is a photographer, visual anthropologist, and ethnologist. After 10 years of living, working, and researching at several universities in Korea, he currently lives in Berlin, where he founded the Institute for Korean Shamanism. Dr. Dirk Schlottmann has conducted fieldwork and research in South Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. His interests range from the very specific investigation of spirituality in East Asia, ritual and theory, to researching cultural development and change in modernity. His photographic work circles around Asian spirituality, religious culture, and altered states of consciousness (trance, ecstasy, and spirit possession) and centers essentially on the relation between man and the sacred. “Korean Shamanism” is a long-term project from the beginning of the millennium. Its goal is to give an impression of ecstatic rituals, ceremonies with elements of trance, and shamanic practices.
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She chose to be possessed and then dispossessed by the seven spirits associated with the planets of classical antiquity.
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Karen Smith (1966–2017) had long been interested in altered states of consciousness. In seeking help with her own psychiatric illness, she came across Agrippa’s works on occult philosophy and the use of spoken-word formulas for entering and exiting differential states of being. These steps over the psychic threshold are known as adorcism and exorcism – the summoning and banishing of demons or spirits. Over the course of a week in 1999, she decided to try out some of Agrippa’s techniques. She chose to be possessed and then dispossessed by the seven spirits associated with the planets of classical antiquity. She documented one ritual per day. For each action, she used the same devices – a bathtub filled with water, a lamp and an audio cassette player with a tape featuring incantations pre-recorded by a ceremonial magician. Published here are the results of these ontological experiments.
The Karen Smith Archive is devoted to the work of the artist Karen Smith (1966–2017). Little is known about her early life. She briefly attempted an art career in the 1990s in London, whilst working as a cleaner. Multiple nervous breakdowns contributed to her isolation and disillusionment with the art industry. She moved to Hastings, on the South Coast of England, where she continued to produce artworks with no attempt at exhibition or publication. Subsequent to her suicide, a large collection of work was discovered, comprising documentation of performances, photography, writings and collage. The archive is curated and overseen by her former lover Victoria Halford.
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The sacred geometric angles and the variety of the wavelengths of electromagnetic vibrations created intimate, meditative space that gives birth to these unique photograms.
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Liszi’s work creates visual signs derived from spherical forms of sacred geometry on photograms. Her camera-less images focus on Oneness – universe and us, based on the Light of the Soul. She works with her voice that creates ripples in water. Her experiments began with exploring the Bija mantras Aum, RaMaDaSa, and lastly SaTaNaMa that describes the eternal circle of life: birth, life, death, rebirth. Her experimentation led from mantra vibration in still water (life symbol) to light vibration (life symbol) as information carrier. The fundamental connection between water waves and light waves inspired extra stimulus in her experimental work. Quantity of water, shapes of bowls, colours of light, angles of light – are all various avenues of exploration. The sacred geometric angles and the variety of the wavelengths of electromagnetic vibrations created intimate, meditative space that gives birth to these unique photograms. Her initial experiments were with B&W positive papers then 5 × 4″ and 10 × 8″ B&W negative films. The orthochromatic negatives allowed her to work in safelight, which led to the creation of enlarged images mixed with other wavelengths. Thus, monochrome was reborn through colour.
Renáta Liszi is a photographic artist born in 1981 and raised in Budapest, Hungary. Whilst studying Programming at John von Neumann Computer Specialty School, she daydreamed of analogue and darkroom photography. She left algorithm writing and became a photographic practitioner in 2003. Technical developments conveyed her to digital portrait and architectural images, which were published in editorial and advertising publications. However, since 2014 she has concentrated on art and research projects. These propelled her to pursue master’s studies in Photography Arts, University of Westminster, London, England, and graduate in 2020. Renata Liszi’s art responds to her pursuit of the spiritual within visual art. For the past two years, she has been concerned with the coalescing of light beams, vibrations, and secret geometrical signs. She works with analogue and digital cameras, camera-less techniques, and mixed-media. Exhibitions: One way (2016), 7th Chakra & Turban, Budapest (2017), Inner light (2018), Oneness, London (2019), Dimensions, ZiggY Art Fair, Budapest (2019).
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Since Magic involves using analogies to weave links between a representation and its object in order to affect it, what kind of magic system is invoked when we summon action with contact prints?
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An ex-voto is a votive offering to invisible forces, mainly given in fulfilment of a vow after being healed. It often takes form in the mold of the wounded member, a print that has been directly in contact with the body of the helped. This cyanotype was made with a radiography of my sick lungs, and plants I found dead in an exploited forest. In this photograph, I link the wounded wilderness – the French call forests “Earth lungs” – with my wounded lungs. Since Magic involves using analogies to weave links between a representation and its object in order to affect it, what kind of magic system is invoked when we summon action with contact prints? I tied this photograph to the terrible arsons devastating Amazonia, and more recently Australia, echoing with the disastrous impacts of global changes on the fragile balance of Earth life.
Lia Villevieille is a young multidisciplinary artist born in the South of France. Her creative work is linked to her occult praxis, where intuition is used to heal and reclaim neglected obscurity. She has a contemporary approach to rural traditions and superstitious beliefs. Her work is about how archetypes, tales, and other mythic representations set our perception of the world, and so can transform reality. As a disciple of Bachelard’s thinking on material imagination, she pays attention to the dependance between human cognitive process, phenomenology, and cosmogonic musing. With a Master’s degree in Art & Philosophy, she now explores ceramic sculpture, watercolor paintings, engraving, and installations. She also works as a publisher in the women artists’ collective Sororae.
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The project explores how we are affected by and entangled with the stories that come before us in social-spiritual-material-magical ways.
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ARFR is a generally generation-transcending principle for everything living, ranging from culture to biology. It is an old Norse word believed to have its origin in Latin or Greek. It means Arv in Danish – inheritance in English. The project explores how we are affected by and entangled with the stories that come before us in social-spiritual-material-magical ways. In the words of feminist thinker Karen Barad:
To address the past (and future), to speak with ghosts, is not to entertain or reconstruct some narrative of the way it was, but to respond, to be responsible, to take responsibility for that which we inherit (from the past and the future), for the entangled relationalities of inheritance that ‘we’ are, to acknowledge and be responsive to the noncontemporaneity of the present, to put oneself at risk, to risk oneself (which is never one or self), to open oneself up to indeterminacy in moving towards what is to-come.
(Karen Barad “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come” in Derrida Today 3.2 [2010]: 240–268)
Lene Hald is a Copenhagen-based photographer with a Ph.D. in Photographic Design Anthropology. She is interested in visual remediation and research agendas within design, participation, storytelling, and sociomaterial practices.
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