The Season of the Witch
Witchcraft in the digital age
For the first IMPAKT event of the year, we take you into the mystical world of digital witchcraft. Join us on 20 January 2022 to hear more about the subject from artists and researchers working with digital witchcraft. Speakers include artist and ‘digital witch’ Ginevra Petrozzi and feminist writer, artist and founder of The Digital Witchcraft Institute Danae Tapia and black queer non-binary storyteller and cyber witch Cy X.
Claim your tickets here
The event will be live-streamed at planet.impakt.nl
From personal digital healing practices to a universal story of changing narratives about technology, digital witchcraft examines the fantastical dimensions of lived digital experience. The figure of the witch in its contemporary form has come to stand for many things, including: queer empowerment, renewed connection to nature in a world ravaged by the climate crisis and resistance against the subjugation of marginalised peoples. In the form of indigenous cybernetics witchcraft can be a tool for the re-indigenisation of our lives, a return to our ancestral knowledge. In this way the witch can become a magically imbued symbol of resistance against patriarchy and white supremacy, at once threatening and disrupting established orders in a renewed feminist revolt. Meanwhile, in a broader sense the craft can be interpreted as applied cybernetics, as ordained witch Mark Pesce once imagined. For it is the technopagan who equates cyberspace to magical space, both manifestations of the imagination.
However, can the current appropriation of the witch, a term invented by the prosecutors and tormentors of women, subvert the misogynistic visions of childless crones and satanic nymphomaniacs once inseparable from the archetype? Is it just the last resource of the oppressed in a time of desperation? How can an ancient archetypal boundary figure offer concrete and not merely symbolic aid in our deeply frightening and individualised online hellscape?
From spell-casting as ludic protests to creating the necessary support structures formed by alliances between struggles, the witch offers great potential for change in the digital age, be it speculative or practical. IMPAKT brings together a group of artists and researchers working with digital witchcraft to discuss the presence and possibilities for the witch within their own practice and the world beyond.
The Season of the Witch is curated by Inez de Coo and will be livestreamed on Planet IMPAKT
Planet IMPAKT is our virtual building for online events.
In addition to the livestream, for each event you will find extra content, links and articles to dive deeper into the themes. You can ask live questions to the speakers via the chat and afterwards you are very much welcome to join us in the Rooftop bar to meet other visitors (and often speakers). As the cherry on top, your online ticket gives you access – for 1 week after the event – to an exclusive selection of video artworks on demand, specially curated around the theme of the event.
The exclusive videos will be:
-Aflame, A Singing Sun (2019) by Naomi Blacklock
-Digital Esoterism: a techno-divinatory practice (2021) by Ginevra Petrozzi
-In Pursuit of Black Noise (2021) by Cy X
-How to Read a Spread with The Pendant Tarot Deck (2021) by Mayis Rukel
More occult rituals?
Check also our IMPAKT Webproject Weird Gnosis
With a selection of video and performance art, Weird Gnosis curates a dialogue with artists and thinkers whose practices radically disturb the familiar by invoking the truly weird, from the occult rituals of witchcraft to esoteric psychedelia. With contributions by: Camille Barton, Zach Blas, Yin-Ju Chen, Joshua Citarella, Erik Davis, Geoffrey Lillemon, Juliette Lizotte, Agnes Momirski, Suzanne Treister and Ellie Wyatt.
Weird Gnosis is curated by Inez de Coo and Marc Tuters.
Image: Ginevra Petrozzi, Design Academy Eindhoven. Photography: Pierre Castignola