----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Hi All,
The week has flown by. I’ve been distracted by the practical demands of moving
(exhausting) and by a flurry of renovations to get us back in the house
(distracting) after the catastrophic flood in July that had us living up the
street in a rental for 8 months. Over the winter, Jim and I interviewed Linda
M. Montano about her Tarot readings during her durational work 14 Years of
Living Art. When we related our dislocated state, she suggested that we speak
to the house and meditate on the meaning of water, of flooding. But since we’ve
been back, we have yet to pose this art/life contemplation to the space, or
hold it in a meditation. Hopefully soon…I’ll draw inspiration from Erika’s
remarkable investigations holding objects at Hospitalfield and seeing what
feelings and images emerge.
Ann – thank you for sharing authors that have inspired your thinking on
alternative ways of knowing through the senses. In a recent talk by Dylan
Robinson I was struck by his description that, for Indigenous people, going to
museums to see historicized ancestors (ritual objects which are considered to
be living beings) behind glass vitrines was like visiting a relative in prison
where glass separates and privileges the visual sense. Decolonizing museums
will involve negotiations and practices of de-incarcerating indigenous
artifacts, which will mean providing access to Indigenous communities to once
again handle historicized ancestors during ceremony, and ultimately returning
them to their communities.
I’m eager to relate some thoughts about intuitive practices that, in Ann’s
sense, “linger in the shadows of scholarly work.” Years ago, it was a great joy
for me to walk the circuit of Winnipeg Tarot readers with Bev Pike, whose
remarkable post this morning brought me back to that time, particularly a
gifted, tactful and insightful reader named Trevor, then working out of a
bookstore. These adventures occurred during my stint as a Mentor for artists
under the auspices of Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (an amazing artist-run
organization in Winnipeg). The sheer thrill of these investigations, the
readings themselves and being hosted at the home of Serena Keshavjee, a scholar
of Spiritualism, in many ways seeded what was to become Technologies of
Intuition (which arrived in fits and starts several years later). My passion to
explore intuition and the paranormal is longstanding and has involved childhood
intuitive epiphanies, my father’s near-death experience, two psychic
grandmothers, which led to decades of engagement with spiritual teachers and
yogic traditions (including Neem Karoli Baba, Swami Nityananda, Swami
Chidvalasanda and Mata Amritanandamayi). But until now I have held back on
speaking directly to these experiences in my writing, choosing instead to
explore such interests in relation to artists who engage with aspects of spirit
and spiritual practice. While intuitive practice has sustained me, I tended to
retain these engagements within a kind of shadow trajectory (after Ann), a
parallel CV of travels, studies and turning points, a much-sustaining life
obscured from my academic career. I found Alex’s research on the “declarative
self-presence and spectrality” of voice fascinating, particularly in its
recognition that voices can be embodied and disembodied. Finding an appropriate
standpoint and authorial voice to embody has been a challenge for me. Looking
back, I have found that moving from more distanced observation towards a first
person standpoint has allowed for more immersed perceptions that I now
understand as autotheoretical.
Warmly,
Jennifer
Jennifer Fisher
Professor Contemporary Art and Curatorial Studies
Department of Visual Art and Art History CFA 252
York University 4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3
jef...@yorku.ca
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
