Deadline: May 20th, 2024

no. 276 – Autumn 2024 (publication date November 25)

In recent years, more and more content on the occult and secular esoteric practices has crept into daily life. In an article published on the Huffington Post blog platform, the author Pamela J. Grossman called 2013 “the year of the witch” and dissected the symbolism of the number 13, as well as the parallel between milestones in contemporary feminism and the resurgence of the figure of the witch in popular culture. Referring to 2012, which signalled the apocalypse in the Maya calendar, Grossman asked, “Yes, the world is supposed to end, but what next then?”[1] The end of the world, which was happening several centuries ago and is still going on today, bears a striking similarity to colonists’ genocidal regimes on several continents. Grossman’s question is still pertinent, especially in this “post-pandemic” era, and many people have taken it as food for thought. The activist and author adrienne maree brown, for instance, evokes it in a recent essay collection, saying, “[The] act of witching is about putting our attention behind our intentions. And being willing to invite and shape the unseen forces of the world … to align with the highest good for ourselves and the whole.”[2] If witchcraft is rooted in social action, what is being invoked for the near future? The resurgence of prophetic traditions testifies to our sustained attraction to them: their omnipresence allows us to envisage certain sociopolitical, economic, and psychosocial issues on which they are based and even to try, sometimes, to respond to them. The incantations of kindness and resistance that are currently flourishing bespeak a changing contemporaneity, a shaken community awareness. So, we could conclude that a new bewitching is possible.

From the appropriation of ancestral gifts for some to a return to pre-colonial knowledge for others, such methods allow for the integration of belief systems that alleviate the violence of heteropatriarchal and capitalist models dominating societies. But how do they affect the world of culture? When artists express a desire to attain a kind of well-being that echoes a need for collective healing, how do their practices manifest in the field? And what are their effects? Through a multitude of means – performance of rituals, initiation to meditation or somatic therapy, creation of altars for contemplation, manipulation of symbols or religiously connoted materials, offers of medicinal plants and talismans, or archival videos on practices from time immemorial – artists are creating a space for self-reconstruction. In these introspective openings, vulnerability, ancestral knowledge, compassion, and tenderness become decolonial catalysts.

As spiritual and medicinal practices and precepts once condemned or disdained gain ground in contemporary culture, a number of questions arise. What is the role of these traditions today? What do they activate and what do they feed within the social fabric? What are the art disciplines or currents that, through esoterism and alternative healing methods, participate in the production of new transformative languages? More than simply a trend, this cultural metamorphosis is deeply grounded in re-engagement in a practice of personal care that, by extension, expands into the community. It also encompasses the emancipation of historically dispossessed peoples and their claims of territorial and physical sovereignty. The occult opens spiritual channels that transform our science-fiction stories and narratives of reality, while responding to a deep desire for affectivity.

This call for texts is aimed at gathering diverse points of view on the genesis or the many debates surrounding the integration of alternative medicine, witchcraft, and esoterism into feminist and queer art practices, among others, but also in deepening our understanding of their social scope and their political role in our constantly evolving era.

All submissions for the section must include a note of intention related to the theme, including the anticipated subject (350 words), a list of artists and artworks that will be analyzed, three excerpts of previous writings (published or not), and a short (25 words) biography of the author. Submissions must be sent to redaction@viedesarts.com before May 20th 2024.

Please note that at this stage, we want to receive notes of intention (350 words) and not complete articles. Also, proposals written by artists about their own work will not be prioritized. In the interest of encouraging a plurality of voices and of views of contemporary art, Vie des arts offers a specific – though not exclusive – invitation to Indigenous people and people from culturally diverse backgrounds to submit article proposals.

[1] Pamela J. Grossman, “The Year of the Witch,” Huffington Post (July 15, 2013, updated September 14, 2013), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-year-of-the-witch_b_3599081.

[2] adrienne maree brown, “Introduction,” in Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2022), 1.