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Carl Abrahamsson, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, ...: »Kunst sollte dazu aufrufen, Schamane oder Priester zu werden«
»Kunst sollte dazu aufrufen, Schamane oder Priester zu werden«
(p. 40 – 56)

Carl Abrahamsson, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Susanne Witzgall

»Kunst sollte dazu aufrufen, Schamane oder Priester zu werden«

PDF, 17 pages

  • artistic practice
  • imagination
  • occultism
  • contemporary art

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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

(1950–2020) was a poet, musician, performance artist, occultist and one of the most dazzling figures in recent music history. In 1969 s/he cofounded COUM Transmissions, a subcultural group of British musicians, underground filmmakers and action and conceptual artists, which led in 1975 to the ground-breaking 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). In the early 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 Pandrogeny Project has been continued by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, even after the death of Lady Jane in 2007 www.genesisbreyerporridge.com

Susanne Witzgall

has been the academic head of the BMBF-funded cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich since 2011. She studied art history, theatre studies, psychology and art pedagogy at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and the University of Stuttgart, where she received her doctorate in 2001. From 2003 to 2011 she taught in the department of art history at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. She has worked as a freelance curator, and was a curator at the Deutsches Museum Bonn and the Deutsches Museum München from 1995 to 2002. Susanne Witzgall curated or cocurated Art & Brain II (1997/1998), Das zweite Gesicht/The Other Face (2002), Say it isn’t so (2007), (Re)designing nature (2010/2011) and other exhibitions, and is the author and editor of numerous books and essays on contemporary art, the relationship between art and science, and subjects of current interdisciplinary debates. These include her monograph Kunst nach der Wissenschaft (Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2003) as well as the publications New Mobility Regimes in Art and Social Sciences (ed. with Gerlinde Vogl and Sven Kesselring, Ashgate, 2013), Power of Material/Politics of Materiality, Fragile Identities, The Present of the Future (all three ed. with Kerstin Stakemeier, diaphanes, 2014, 2016 and 2017 respectively) and Real Magic (2018). Since 2019 she is member of the advisory board of the Piet Zwart Institute/Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam as well as of the Institute of Modern Art Nuremberg.

Other texts by Susanne Witzgall for DIAPHANES
Susanne Witzgall (ed.): Reale Magie

Susanne Witzgall (ed.)

Reale Magie

Softcover, 264 pages

PDF, 264 pages

Gerade in den westlichen Gesellschaften lässt sich derzeit ein erneutes und sehr lebendiges Interesse an magischen Prak­tiken und okkultem Wissen beobachten. Das Magische und Okkulte scheint sich derzeit nicht nur zu einem gesamt­gesellschaftlichen Populärphänomen zu entwickeln, sondern wird auch im akademisch-wissenschaftlichen Bereich intensiv diskutiert. Das Buch »Reale Magie« untersucht die gegenwärtige Realität des Magischen und die Wiederentdeckung von Magie und Okkultismus in den Künsten, den Wissenschaften und der Alltagskultur. Es fragt nach den aktuellen westlichen Residuen und Praxisformen von Magie, nach möglichen Potentialen magischen Denkens in einer weitgehend von ökonomisierter Zweckrationalität bestimmten Welt, aber auch nach den Kehr­seiten des Okkulten.


Mit Beiträgen von: Carl Abrahamsson, Melanie Bonajo, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Mariechen Danz, Demdike Stare (Miles Whittaker und Sean Chanty), Karianne Fogelberg, Susan Greenwood, Christoph Keller, Marietta Kesting, Verena Kuni, Annika Lundgren, Kadri Mälk, Jussi Parikka, Marco Pasi, Kerstin Stakemeier, Michael Taussig, Jeremy Wade, Susanne Witzgall.

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