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Annika Lundgren: Strategies of Magic
Strategies of Magic
(p. 142 – 152)

Annika Lundgren

Strategies of Magic

PDF, 11 pages

  • occultism
  • spiritism
  • ritual
  • contemporary art

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English

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English

Annika Lundgren

lives and works in Göteborg, Sweden, where she is an artistic director at the artist-run platform Skogen. In her performances, interventions and texts she has variously dealt with the performative aspect of magical phenomena and the interplay of magic, suggestion and power. Strategies of Magic (since 2011), a series of lecture-performances based on music, text and magic tricks, addresses the relationship between politics and transformation. In other works the artist is concerned with the essence of the presumably irrational, for instance in The Stock is Rising (2010), at which she staged the levitation of the Frankfurt Stock Market. In a recent work, Winter is Coming – on Spirits and Populists, she compares manifestations of the occult practice of spiritualism with strategies, signs and imagery found in right-wing extremist demonstrations. Lundgren studied at then Valand School of Fine Arts in Göteborg and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark. Her work has been seen in international group and solo exhibitions and has been awarded numerous prizes, including a residency at the Center for Danish Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2001).
Other texts by Annika Lundgren for DIAPHANES
Susanne Witzgall (ed.): Real Magic

In Western societies a newly discovered and very lively interest in magical practices and occult knowledge can be witnessed. The magical seems to be evolving into a popular phenomenon that affects society as a whole and is also becoming the subject of intense debate in artistic and academic-scientific contexts. The book Real Magic investigates the current realities of the magical in the contemporary arts, sciences and everyday culture. It explores the present Western residues and forms of magical practices, the current potentials of magical perception and thinking in a world largely determined by financialised instrumental reason, and also the drawbacks of occultism. The publication is the result of the fourth annual programme of the cx centre of interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

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