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Spellbound (volume 42 Nº 1/2, 2021) was a publication by Kunstlicht Journal for Visual Culture. In collaboration with artist & performer Naomi Collier Broms, we created a series of “poetic spells” on the theme of magic, rituals and spiritual practices:
SPELLS FOR SKY SERENADERS & WATER WORSHIPPERS: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE MOON, THE SEA, AND SHAPESHIFTING VOICES
I. Forgotten Magic: Day to Day Childhood Rituals.
II. Spell for Liminality.
III. Sex Spells.
IV. The Witch & The Siren: Chapter 2.
V. Mouthwhippers & Mooncussers.
These experimental interventions, scattered throughout the issue, resonated with and reverberated off the academic essays that composed most of the publication. The spells invoked liminality, remembrance and playfulness, desire and sexual liberation, academic contempt, and contemporary mythological monsters who wielded their voice as a weapon.
You can find the issue here.
The Spellbound publication was launched in a livestream hosted by Amsterdambased culture house Felix Meritis. For this occasion, we performed a Farewell Ritual, which transformed our office space into a ritual site where we moved, chanted, whispered, murmured, danced, shaked and ranted. This second piece was an hour-long performative invocation enacting the idea of “ending” as shapeshifting. From host-ed to host, from visitor to ghost, from isolated body to in-between-spaces. A recorded conversation between the witch and the siren on endings and hospitality is played over this ritual loop.
1. Ask yourself how old you are in mountain years.
2. Make a wand from a tree branch. Ask the tree for permission first.
3. Keep a pebble in your pocket.
4. Know that stuttering is an ideology.
5. Tell the future through a yoyo.
6. Tell a story through a compass.
7. Make a wish on a white butterfly, holding the wish until it disappears from your
vision.
8. Acknowledge the moon as something that sits with you, touches you, is near
you, follows you everywhere, an indelible friend.
9. Collect soil, rocks, earth, stone from the landscapes you find yourself in (You
keep mountains in your pocket.)
1. Smell rosemary and keep it in the folds of your clothes – for a bit of luck.
2. Talk to crows, talk to dogs, talk to plants.
3. Trace your sigils by the sea.
4. Draw spirals where you can, or even better, perform the spiral dance.
5. Find a public space to store your whispered secrets. (Mine is a park swing).
6. Keep flowers that open at night as guardians – a conversation that can only happen after sunset.
7. Caress your plants.
8. Know that cosmological entities guard your thoughts and memories – have a conversation across time with the night sky.
9. Build a portal into the ghost world.
10. Feel empathy for blueberries.
11. Attend to the kinship between women, animals and fruit.
12. Make a poem from the bits of language you’ve picked up from past encounters.
13. Rubbing the right textured hand of a stuffed bear.
14. Feeling enchanted by numerical synchronicities and coincidences.
15. Tapping glasses on the table for the people you wish were present.
16. Feeling that God can see me through every camera.
17. Emulating pigeons.
18. Wondering if fish worship is wrong.
1. Smell rosemary and keep it in the folds of your clothes – for a bit of luck.
2. Talk to crows, talk to dogs, talk to plants.
3. Trace your sigils by the sea.
4. Draw spirals where you can, or even better, perform the spiral dance.
5. Find a public space to store your whispered secrets. (Mine is a park swing).
6. Keep flowers that open at night as guardians – a conversation that can only happen after sunset.
7. Caress your plants.
8. Know that cosmological entities guard your thoughts and memories – have a conversation across time with the night sky.
9. Build a portal into the ghost world.
10. Feel empathy for blueberries.
11. Attend to the kinship between women, animals and fruit.
12. Make a poem from the bits of language you’ve picked up from past encounters.
13. Rubbing the right textured hand of a stuffed bear.
14. Feeling enchanted by numerical synchronicities and coincidences.
15. Tapping glasses on the table for the people you wish were present.
16. Feeling that God can see me through every camera.
17. Emulating pigeons.
18. Wondering if fish worship is wrong.
Erotic Fortune Telling In A Sublime Parallel To Medusa Squirting At Death Through a Ludicrous Yet Superficial Descent of Womanhood Into Enraged Sexual Magic From The Ancient Coordinates From A Top Secret Location Only Seen Only Known By The One On The Margins The Wolf Woman Who Howls In A State Of Ekstasis Who Declares Orgasm As Monument To
Oblivion And Divine Excess And All That Is In Between But Make No Apologies Your Warfare Is My Weapon My Sex the Truth At The End of All Chronologies.
