Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present

October 15-17, 2026   |   Madison, WI

https://www.artsofthepresent.org/conference/362/

- Call for Papers - 

Panel: “Electric Séance: Conjuring Between the Archive and the Machine”

What forms of divination emerge when algorithms become oracles and interfaces become ritual spaces? From nineteenth century spirit photography to AI-generated seances, occult practices have long been entangled with media technologies. Envisioned as channels for contacting unseen worlds, languages of the occult have often accompanied historic moments of socio-political instability and upheaval. Our moment is no exception, which was echoed in the recent Seoul Mediacity Biennale, where curators interpreted the renewed interest in spiritual practice as responding to a broader crisis in how we make sense of the world (Séance: Technology of the Spirit, 2025). Marked by escalating attacks on diversity and civil rights amidst the proliferation of surveillance technologies, the contemporary turn towards spirituality raises urgent questions. Does this turn signal a retreat from the social world? Or does it instead open up possibilities for political imagination, collective care, and alternative knowledge-making? 

This panel explores the intersections of spirituality and technology in contemporary art, considering them as both creative methodologies and critical frameworks for engaging with speculative archives and ancestral futures. It asks how artists mobilize occult languages – tarot, witchcraft, seances, rituals, conjuring, and prophecies – to interrogate epistemologies embedded in digital infrastructures of extraction and violence. Some potential artists of interest include Meriem Bennani, Maya Deren, Nam Jun Paik, Tabita Rezaire, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Together, the panel forwards a succinct examination of how spirituality and technology are entangled in politics and aesthetics of the present. 

We welcome papers from a range of interdisciplinary scholars working across fields like: art history, performance, film and video, new media, gender & sexuality, critical ethnic studies, science & technology studies, queer and feminist theory, and curation and museum studies. To submit, provide a 200-word abstract and contributor bio of no more than 200-words by Monday, April 13th through the conference portal: https://asap17.exordo.com/panels/53/contribute/867b93359f6938f2db9c91c92b1eddaf97314a8a 

Topics may include but are not limited to: 

·       Modes of non-linear and non-chronological historiographic research 

·       Engagement with archival fictions or speculative archives 

·       Creative practices tending to psychic, spiritual, and/or soul wounds 

·       Return to the occult in popular culture 

·       Mediated strategies of resistance, redress, and/or reclamation

·       Ancestral care work and ancestral futures