Annual theme "Real Magic"
Interdisciplinary Lecture Series (2015/16)

10.11.2015

The (Im)Mediacy of the Magical

with Demdike Stare

Miles Whittaker/Demdike Stare

Demdike Stare is the name under which Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker make music since 2009 – music influenced by, among other things, occultism and spirituality, which opens up a sense of otherworldly mysteries and affords insights into the incomprehensible. Released under the Modern Love label – thus far including the four albums Symbiosis, Tryptych, Elemental, and Wonderland – their music has already been used as film score for a number of productions, among which the Kiss of the Damned (2012) and Joe (2013). Furthermore, the music duo from Manchester have performed internationally in numerous theatres, museums, art spaces and clubs, and with selected projects such as the live re-scoring of Häxan – Witchcraft through the ages, Benjamin Christensen’s witch film of 1922, commissioned by the British Film Institute, or the piece Concealed, a collaboration with the Cracow Sinfonietta and video artist Michael England for the Unsound Festival, of which a version was last performed in early 2015 at the Barbican Theatre in London.

Annual theme "Real Magic"
Interdisciplinary Lecture Series (2015/16)

27.10.2015

Occult (Counter)Culture

with Carl Abrahamsson and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Skype) 

Carl Abrahamsson is a Swedish writer living in Stockholm and an “occultural entrepreneur.” Since the mid 1980s he has worked with a number of artists as editor, music producer, filmmaker, photographer, and curator. For instance, he has worked with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge in the “occultural network” Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth and on the production of records and books. Abrahamsson edits the annual publication The Fenris Wolf, which is dedicated to the interface between art and esotericism. In addition, closely associated with The Fenris Wolf is Abrahamsson’s The Institute of Comparative Magico-anthropology, a combination of archive and think tank. Alongside writing and teaching, his current focus is on filmmaking, above all with the documentary series An Art Apart, which portrays radical artists. www.carlabrahamsson.com

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is a poet, musician, performance artist, and occultist and one of the most dazzling figures in recent music history. In 1969 she cofounded COUM Transmissions, a subcultural group of British musicians, underground filmmakers, and action and conceptual artists, which led in 1975 to the groundbreaking industrial band Throbbing Gristle. After the breakup of the band, Breyer P-Orridge founded the experimental band Psychic TV in 1981 with Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and participated in the founding of the occult network Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY). At the beginning of the 1990s Breyer P-Orridge and Lady Jane Breyer P-Orridge initiated their Pandrogeny Project, in which both altered their appearances to appear more like each other, striving to challenge or suspend gender divisions and identifications. The Padrogeny Project is being continued to this day by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, even after the death of Lady Jane in 2007. www.genesisbreyerporridge.com