Anthology of the Occult // Artists for the Future

this fall i have been very taken by the occult and different spiritual practices (especially of the late 19th and early 20th centuries), and cultural theories that surround this esoteric field of study. i think the humanist mindsets of the victorian era would work in a very interesting juxtaposition with the post-human and postmodernist ideas that technology can offer, especially in a context where i can create abstraction through reproduction and distortion. i want to make an anthology of different artists whose work spoke to an audience of a different era, whether that be by choice or coincidence.

creators i would showcase through this anthology:
• sylvia plath– there are a lot of recordings available of plath reading her poetry, that I think would be intersting to use as sound for the website. she was known to be a medium, and read out loud her work can often feel very hypnotizing and spell-like. for plath, i would love to create a digital seance that might also inform an audience of the main themes of her poetry.
• w. b. yeats– like plath, yeats did a lot of seances, and practiced automatic writing and drawing, specifically geometrical shapes (his book a vision deals with these pseudoscientific sketches in particular, see visual moodboard). i would love to try and create an automatic writing experience that also alludes to the second coming, his most famous poem, which also exhibits some modernist sentiments.
• hilma af klint – af klint's work was exhibited in the guggenheim last fall, and i think that's how most people became acquainted with it. her work really resonates with yeats's, as it is very focused on geometrical shapes and their relations to theosophy and the universe. for an insight into af klint, i would love to do something that interacts with visuals, likely an interactive summoning circle that follows the user's clicking activity, summoning differnet bits of information about the beyond along with af klint's work.
• karl jung– though i am generally not a follower of jungian ideas (proto fascism isn't really my thing, yikes), i believe that the red book, as a book that has only been published in 2009 (jung died in 1961) is a very interesting example of writing for the future.in it he illustrates and analyzes a lot of the dreams he had between 1915 and 1930. he used art and drawing mandalas for his patients, and i would love to emulate that through some divination systems, perhaps having the audience describe their mood, and having it psychoanalyzed. i would love to incorporate a possibility to submit a visual response, but i am not sure how and if that would be possible.