News From Where We Are #3 Art, Technology and Witchcraft. The Furtherfield Podcast. Friday, January 8, 2021.
Welcome to Furtherfield's third Community podcast - a cultural discussion grounded in the news from where we are. So far we have Artist, Kate Southworth and Stewart Home, pending a couple of other featured guests. Please send me your spells and rituals in mp3/flac/wav -- no longer than 3 minutes :-) Also, your music, no longer than 3 minutes. The last two podcasts featured voices sharing their experiences about the conditions of lockdown during the Covid-19 virus. This time around, even though Covid-19 remains a part of the dialogue, we focusing on this podcast on art, technology and Witchcraft. Many artists are demonstrating their imaginations in different modes of magical engagements. My first experience of witchcraft was through my mother when I was a kid. Strange visitors, usually women, would visit her either to ask for to do spells and or to collaborate. I never got a chance to see what was happening and heard odd noises while locked away in my bedroom. Now and then I did sneak a peek at her witchcraft books, but as time passed by, my curiosity for witchcraft and magick faded. One reason was that I wanted to be grounded and not sucked into what I felt was a diversion from the challenges in the everyday world as a working-class boy. However, I have always had a soft spot for individuals and groups exploring their identities and alternative societal contexts via witchcraft. For me, it has always seemed to be a political shift away from the hegemonic orientated constraints in society. In her comprehensive study, Caliban And The Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Federici writes that the emergence of the witch hunts was ‘one of the most important events in the development of capitalist society and the formation of the modern proletariat’. In combination with arts and technology, wherein contemporary witchcraft and its practice do we find new stories dealing with the big issues of the day? Such as climate change, the disappointment that technology has become a surveillance and marketing tool for the elites, and the break down of democracies due to extreme right-wing infiltration? Or is it a new mystical movement engaged in connecting to a deeper level of spiritual understanding with the world beyond the dominant confines of official religions? Reference: Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, (New York, NY: Autonomedia, 2004), p. 164. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
