Conjuring Resonance: Scrying Feminist Pasts 

Art historian Vanessa Parent elaborates on the metaphor of the scryer in Aimée Zito Lema’s exhibition through the work of Italian performance artist and conjurer of feminist pasts, Chiara Fumai. In her performances and installations, Fumai has channeled the subversive spirits of figures such as Italian separatist feminist Carla Lonzi, German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, and socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg. Using the language of refusal and rage mobilized through occult aesthetics and practices such as channeling and conjuring, Fumai’s work has brought the spirit of feminist insurrection into the contemporary moment.

This participatory event is anchored by alternative forms of knowledge transmission and modes of annotation present in the work of Fumai and Zito Lema. Attending to the temporal collapse implied by practices such as scrying, channeling, and conjuring, this event explores the productive potential of finding resonance with overlooked histories to disrupt and expand our view of the present and imagine possible futures. Participants will activate the event through sounded reading, a channeling and annotation exercise, and a group discussion. Registrants to this in-person event are asked to bring a photograph or object that enlivens marginalized histories with which they experience a certain resonance.