Arts Catalyst and Strange Attractor present:
The Living World: Animism in the 21st Century
9 July 2013, 7pm onwards
The Arts Catalyst
50-54 Clerkenwell Road
London EC1M 5PS
£4 plus booking fee [book tickets here]
How does our relationship to the world change if everything is alive?
Author Erik Davis and historian of shamanism Robert Wallis discuss traditional and contemporary approaches to animism and consider what it means to be an animist in an age when our technologies increasingly take on the semblance of life.
In the second part of the evening, Erik Davis will read with a live modular synthesiser accompaniment from The Asterism and MISTY. With live and found sounds sculpted by the application of multiple random voltages, MISTY will be free to express its soul.
Erik Davis is an American cultural critic, scholar and journalist, in his recent catalogue essay Mark Leckey’s exhibition The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things he describes a world exploding with technologies, products, and material processes that challenge our conceptual categories with their apparent intelligence and animation. Also author of Nomad Codes, Techgnosis, The Visionary State and Led Zeppelin, Erik Davis’ work has appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines.
Robert Wallis is an author, art historian and academic specialising in contemporary and historical shamanic practices. He is the author of Shamans / neo-Shamans:Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans and has contributed to and edited numerous books and journals on the subject.
The Asterism is the solo musical project of author and Strange Attractor Press founder Mark Pilkington.