MAGIC AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Magic is a delightfully tricky topic. In 1953, the co-founder of the Surrealist movement André Breton was invited by a publisher to write a volume exploring the question ‘what is “magic art”’? Quickly recognising the difficulties involved in this undertaking because of the lack of definition of the term “magic”, Breton refrained from trying to answer the question himself and instead wrote a questionnaire that he sent to several hundred prominent artists and intellectuals of his time (including Georges Bataille, Leonora Carrington, Martin Heidegger, and many more). It seems that no individual voice is meant to provide answers about magic: magic needs a multitude – or, many ‘“commuters” of perspective’, as Eduardo Viveiro de Castro writes of the Amerindian shamans.

Why magic in the first place? According to anthropologist Ernesto de Martino, writing in the 1940s, magic is connected both ‘to the risk of losing one’s soul’ and of ‘losing the world’. De Martino wanted magic to ‘put a stop to the emerging chaos, and to resolve it into order’. A more relevant response to magic might be to propose it as a way of coming to terms with the continual transitioning of reality that we are living, by giving shapes and words and images to the hope that lies in becoming. What if magic can work as a refusal of intolerant ideologies, exploitative systems and the fiction of pure states of being?

The purpose of the course is to work our way towards definitions of magic that are relevant to ourselves and to our time.

The course language is English, and reading of theory can be expected for each lesson. The examination will be in the form of a written paper (in English or German). A minimum of 80% participation in the course is mandatory.

Seminars will take place online and on site.