Mina Cheon . art . text . teach . review . cv

MAGIC and MEDIA

Upcoming Panel

Sponsored by the New Media Caucus, College Art Association, Los Angeles, February 22-25, 2012

Co-Chairs: MINA CHEON & LISA PAUL STREITFELD

This panel proposes to investigate the relationship between magic and media in the age of new media culture. From freak (reality) shows, horror flicks, scholarship of vampiricism to new agey re-creations of religious cults, on-line spiritual healing, and pop star worship, we live in an age where the often separated ideas of magic and media intersect in phantasmagoric ways exposing fragments of our chaotic humanity, cultural diversity, and indefinable limbo existence. Caught in the cobweb of dreams, desires, and realities (and virtuality), artists and culturalists are asked to respond to the mass media culture that fuels the aesthetic of the unknown, expanding vocabularies on dark magic that resides in our everyday life, and to challenge the taboos that limit the spirit of our time. The panel welcomes performative texts and performance-based presentations as well as academic papers and artist research work.