Spell/ing: Art as Spellcasting, Language as Becoming

Our Project, Spell/ing, made in collaboration with the Film M.F.A graduate Irene Gil-Ramón, was selected for the REEF Residency. The residency included an economic incentive, shared studios to use during the year, and a gallery space to be used for the project. The group gallery show Spell/ing took place from May to June of 2023. As co-curators, we selected the artists from an open call, decided on the curation of the pieces in the gallery, films to screen, and the performances for the opening and closing of the show. 

The artists who participated were:

Film

Terrence Li

Maria Belen A. Golac

manuel inacker

Visual Art

Rema Ghassan Shbaita

Christine Gaffney

Jenny Nirgends

Brian Ffrench

Sohyong Lee

Kathi Schulz

jimmy vega

Readings and Performances

Rema Ghassan Shbaita

jimmy vega

Logan Wolfe 

Nikki Ochoa

Jules Hyun

Artists recwived to the following open call:

Sorcery and magic have long been subjected in the Western tradition to the study of the Other: what is outside, exterior or deviant from the foundation of language, society, institutionalized religion or rationality. How can magic liberate us from the narrow lens of socio-psychological phenomena in an alienating, neoliberal world? How can magic be released from anesthetizing entertainment and be unleashed as a force to imagine the world otherwise? How can we re-enchant the world, after its demystification? Deleuze and Guattari ask “to what void does the witch’s broom lead?”, as becoming is a molecularly radical process and once it starts it’ll stop only when it becomes imperceptible. We ask the same question, what unexplored configurations of the self, of the world, and of our relationships to each other can be transformed through magic? What has been discarded, otherized, excluded and how does it reflect the monstrous apparatus of exclusion? What force, wisdom, or power has been cast aside and how could these bring the shattering of this monstrous reflection so necessary and urgent? Some other provocations that we cast in our call for work that resulted in these pieces are: 

How can one engage with magic artfully? 

How can art be magic? 

How can a secret be secreted in a way that enlivens, heals, breaks the curse of the modern world? 

How can becoming other, shape-shifting through language, performance, art, video, music, etc. become an escape from the complacent solipsism of consumer capitalism? 

How can magic invert the deadly logic of western civilization?

More on my experience curating and images on Blog.