Spellbound #6
Techno-Trance-Devices: Mediums and Media

Monday, 2 December 2019, 7.30 pm, diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery

– THE WORKSHOP IS NOW FULLY BOOKED –

Workshop with
Tabea Briggs | Nadine Hartmann | Clio Nicastro | Hannah Proctor

How do spirits communicate in the age of the internet? What do a phone and a possessed person have in common? Can we consider the question of human consciousness alongside that of the consciousness of an airplane? Imagine if you could charge your battery with just the power of your mind. This workshop session of Spellbound will explore questions of the relationships between new media and spirit mediums, between technology and the supernatural.
Since places are limited, please send an email to mail@diffrakt.space to register and receive the reading material.


Spellbound: Mass Hysteria, Collective Symptoms, Contagious States

Series organised by
Nadine Hartmann | Clio Nicastro | Hannah Proctor

This event series explores experiences of collective mental contagion. Probing the boundaries between the psychic and the physiological, the natural and the supernatural, the social and the spiritual, the events will focus on often mysterious mass psychic phenomena such as hypnosis, fainting fits, possession, the ‘mimetic’ dimension of hysteria and eating disorders, the regimentation of gesture and trances. How do certain kinds of collective behaviours or experiences take hold and spread among groups? Do conditions with no clear biological origin have their roots in society? What do mass symptoms express?

Spellbound usually takes the form of events in thematic pairs: a screening night followed by a reading and discussion night. Although the two nights in each pair will be conceptually linked they also function as stand alone events.