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The New Mystics: High-Tech Magic for the Present BY Alice Bucknell (Opposite) Haroon Mirza, stone circle (detail), 2018. Courtesy: Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas. Photo: Emma Rogers Mousse Magazine 69 232 Mousse Magazine 69 (Above) Haroon Mirza, stone circle, 2018. Courtesy: Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas. Photo: Rowdy Dugan 233 Pagan worship sites, ancient tongues, quasi-religious deities, and forgotten origin stories are resurrected in the kaleidoscopic works of a crop of contemporary artists fusing mysticism with advanced technology. Combining video installation, costumed performance, interactive sculpture, and virtual reality (VR) soft- ware, they conjure ambient, high-tech atmospheres wherein mul- tisensory experience enables temporary cohabitation of spec- ulative worlds. Saya Woolfalk, Ian Cheng, Tabita Rezaire, Zadie Xa, and Haroon Mirza are at the forefront of this emergent prac- tice, which I’m calling the New Mystics. Their works bring ancient belief systems into the context of the present in order to imag- ine alternative futures soaked in magic. (Opposte) Zadie Xa, Grandmother Mago, 2019. Masks by Benito Mayor Vallejo. Performance part of Meetings on Art, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019. Courtesy: Delfina Foundation, London and Arts Council England. Photo: Riccardo Banfi Mousse Magazine 69 The New Mystics: High-Tech Magic for the Present 234 Mousse Magazine 69 235 A gust of hot wind rolls over the Texas high desert, where a we could all live forever. Meanwhile, sonically attuned New genetic spore that penetrates their bodies and transforms the oppressive colonial narratives it’s physically built upon ring of black marble megaliths poke out from the soil like Yorkers tripping around Church Street could drop into the them into Empathetics, a new hybrid species with a keen (suboceanic fiber-optic cables, the guts of your 4G connec- the maw of some ancient creature. Suddenly, a full moon Mela Foundation’s Dream House, designed by compos- understanding of the financial viability of empathy. Their tivity, follow trade routes established in the colonial era). slips out from the clouds, and the eight jagged stones, each er-artist duo La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, which “chimerism” allows them to cross species, gender, and race, The infrastructure of the internet is built on black suf- emitting a fluorescent blue glow, begin to buzz with a low offered a sparse, quasi-spiritual chamber of light, sound, as they move effortlessly between human cultures—a skill fering, Rezaire argues, a cruel irony considering that the hum. An adjacent “mother stone”—identifiable by a hefty and space to get lost in. that is sewn into their exoskeleton-like garments, which in- origin of computing science has roots in African mytholo- solar panel strapped to her back—translates absorbed so- While these twentieth-century movements overlap clude lacy beaded headwear, African textiles, aboriginal-like gy and divination systems. In her quest for a new “cosmos lar energy into electricity, communing with the concentric aesthetically with the work of the New Mystics, there are dotted celestial bodies, and cosmic symbols. database,” Rezaire conjures a world of glitching gifs, bunk marble far belowground. As more solar power is shot into some key differences. The New Mystics put greater stock in Within her installations, Woolfalk allows view- science, bad Photoshop, and SMS hot takes. In a balanc- the ring, the sounds begin to stretch apart, transitioning integrating mysticism with contemporary issues; their work ers to experience the powerful, psychedelic world of the ing act between kitsch emulsion and sharp-toothed polit- into a lo-fi techno beat. Simultaneously recalling the mystic is best understood as a parafictional strategy, not escapism. Empathetics, known as ChimaCloud, through an iPhone app. ical critique, Rezaire’s practice reconciles the internet as a aura of Stonehenge and a semi-religious experience found Second, the mystical has transitioned—or transcended—its Using interactive VR software that responds to Woolfalk’s propagator of power structures, but also a digital womb to mid-high deep in the bowels of Berghain. Haroon Mirza’s abuse as an appropriated symbolic affectation by western garments, viewers can witness the Empathetics swap identi- hatch a new internet. stone circle (2018) is perhaps the most site-specific work of art circles in the twentieth century to a intersectional so- ties against a convalescing backdrop. Describing ChimaTEK As invested as the New Mystics are in digital tech- the New Mystics, a practice utilizing advanced technology cial process in the present. (Instead of a white male artist as the result of her interest in “what happens when utopian nologies, they do not hesitate to draw on hard ruins as fodder to invoke mystical ideas and magical thinking. hanging out in a Manhattan gallery with a coyote under the dreams get commodified,”1 the Empathetics project visualizes for constructing alternative futures. Cheng’s nascent land- From Zadie Xa’s sonic subaquatic environments name of shamanistic experience, artists of color can reclaim near-future dystopian extensions of the wellness economy scapes are built upon the miscellaneous detritus of an old that trace the migration patterns of orcas to Ian Cheng’s and explore their diasporic heritage.) Finally, the technolo- and ideas of transhumanism, cast in a digital playground world, while Mirza, Rezaire, and Woolfalk latch onto icon- sentient Shiba Inu simulations, the New Mystics share a gy used by the New Mystics has the radical ability to create with broad aesthetic appeal despite its heady subject mat- ic structures that are molded into our collective memory, psychedelic aesthetic characterized by dimly lit digital land- new worlds that are largely unbound to place or time, and ter. Favored for their hyper-chromatic, metamorphic land- from Stonehenge and ancient pyramids to radial city plans. scapes, ambient soundtracks, technicolor palettes, and cos- therefore capable—like the mythologies inspiring them— scapes, ChimaCloud projections have previously been in- Together, these failed monuments, when shot through with mic symbolism. Embedded within these worlds are com- of being resurrected in infinitely many environments. stalled across the buzzing digital billboards of Times Square. a parafictional or sci-fi narrative, seem to suggest a second plex narratives spun from science fiction or infused with Hanging on the fringes of lost Korean folklore and Given the nature of the technology they work with, life for utopian ideals of shared ownership and collective parafictional elements that merge personal experience with marine biology, Zadie Xa’s Child of Magohalmi and the Echoes and their de facto entrance into a post-digital cultural land- living. Selected for their mystery, symbolic potency, and speculative gestures of communality. Here, the boundaries of Creation (2019) uses the matrilineal family structure of or- scape, the New Mystics are predisposed to worldmaking. promise, the structures, perhaps precisely because of their between memory and the unconscious become supple and cas as fodder for a multimedia origin story. Spoken-word Ian Cheng and Tabita Rezaire work almost exclusively with state of ruination, gesture toward an infinite possibility of porous; fantasy folds into the real as systems dissolve and poetry and sonic interludes mimicking the underwater digital media, creating immersive alter-realities that are au- resurrection into something else, somewhere other. egos dislocate. Sensory properties of light, shape, smell, clicks and screeches of orcas revisit the creation myth of tonomous, simultaneously critical and effervescent. These Mining the past for quasi-fictional futures shouldn’t taste, and sound become a temporary bridge between artist Grandmother Mago, who conjured both human and natural works/worlds seem to operate within a warped chronology automatically signal a doomsday alarm for the present. and viewer, offering an elevated space for affective under- forms out of her excrement and mud. I witness the piece at that only makes sense in the era of the infinite scroll. Cheng’s Metaphysical encounter and mystical experience are about standing. The New Mystics favor multisensory experience the Walthamstow Library, London, in June 2019: blue spot- elaborately coded simulation trilogy Emissaries (2015-2017), achieving a higher level of collective consciousness; once over explicit knowledge production. But it would be a mis- lights illuminate the cavernous Victorian building, where- for instance, situates its viewers in a dreamlike primordial you’re there, the catalytic object or scenario that propelled take to consider these works a nostalgic look back to sim- in a sea of bodies spreads out beneath a video projection of scene built through the popular game development plat- you into that space hardly matters. Of course, in the art pler times. crashing waves. Fiberglass dorsal fins rise from the blue car- form Unity. While the work was exhibited in a white-cube world, it’s going to look a little more luscious, more cov- Instead, these artists are using the atmospheric po- pet floor. An ambient soundtrack elevates the space into a space, it swelled to life-scale, the cosmic, haptic events un- etable—but ultimately, the work of the New Mystics is best tential of new technology to resurrect ancient belief systems dreamlike scene, which melts into the beat of an approach- furling on gargantuan ten foot-tall projections. At this scale, understood as an act of teleportation. Perfectly engineered bleached out of history, repositioning them as a powerful ing drum. A procession of performers wearing whale masks Cheng’s characters—hooded ambling proto-humans and from contemporary aesthetics, it lifts us into a space where communal cipher into the present. Inside their ambient with flowing neon hair and elaborate costumes made by Xa three-headed shiba inu gods huddled among drunkenly it’s easy to imagine a future that’s more communal, more installations, race and identity politics are explored, for- suddenly enter. They writhe around on the floor, slinking swaying postapocalyptic landscapes—were arguably more generous, and, of course, more mystical. gotten folklore is resurrected, and the violent superstruc- between viewers, moving together in some arcane rhythm entrancing. But those who caught the work at home (it was tures of colonialism and capitalism are critiqued. While (perhaps akin to sonar) while CGI blue flames lap at GIFs of hosted on Twitch for the duration of the inaugural Emissaries the world and its contemporary art microcosm convalesce diving orcas on the screen behind. Through her psychedelic exhibition at MoMA PS1, New York, in 2017) might have 1 “In the Studio with Saya Woolfalk’s Empathics”, Internation Sculpture under an increasingly stark narrative that hypes disorder, performances, Xa wants to open back up the myths and experienced Emissaries in its native time frame: the dilated, Center, April 5, 2017. See: https://blog.sculpture.org/2017/04/05/saya- woolfalk/ the New Mystics look inward and upward to create a gen- cultural histories of minority and female groups erased by ambient, multi-tab hydra of the internet. 2 Jace Clayton, “One Take: Ian Cheng’s Emissaries”, Frieze, April 22, 2017. erous, generative space infued with magic. male scholars. As the piece has been performed in more Describing Emissaries as a “video game that plays it- See: https://frieze.com/article/one-take-ian-chengs-emissaries While the technology they employ is rather novel, the locations, from public Carnegie libraries to the 58th Venice self,”2 Cheng has architectured a matrix in which his char- artists’ desire for an alternative reality is not. In collective Biennale, its ambition grows like a living creature. And yet acters can act on their own terms, but within a set of coded hangover of World War II, a similar strain of avant-gardism it’s entirely possible to fall into the hypnotic rhythm of Xa’s parameters. Contemporary cultural detritus, from iPhones emerged from art and its surrounding disciplines. The 1940s work, as many at Walthamstow did that night, and let its to deck chairs, can be seen scattered among primitive camp- birthed Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes: a column-less meaning pass through you like an orca cutting through the sites and druid symbols engraved into the spectral landscape. futuristic architecture to anchor the technological utopia sea, driven by some unknowable force. The scene is aggressively, almost ironically anachronistic, of “Spaceship Earth.” In 1950s Japan, members of the radi- Like Xa, Saya Woolfalk dives into mythology with and feels no obligation to offer a linear or even legible nar- cal Gutai performance artist collective shrouded their bod- blinged-out costumes that take on a life of their own. Since rative. The characters are equally opaque. Their movements ies in buzzing technicolor lightbulbs and threw themselves 2009 the Japan-born, New York–based artist has worked on are so inscrutable, their gurgling speech so infantile, that through canvases, literally breaking through tradition and a series called The Empathetics. A fantastical tribe of wom- the work is, in a sense, excruciatingly boring. Yet something into a nascent art form. In the 1970s New York experienced en-plant hybrids devoid of race and possessing a hyper-at- hypnotic about its lo-fi lethargy commands our full atten- an equally radical tear in the art world, from performance to tuned sense of interpersonal understanding, the Empathetics tion. Perhaps it is the nebulous cosmic order of Emissaries expanded cinema, as the boundaries of the white cube dis- (and their corporate arm, ChimaTEK) appear as elaborate and its staggered pace that makes it such a powerful seda- solved. In the 1980s and 1990s, the focus shifted away from textiles, videos, and sculptural installations, as well as AR tive. Exiting the gallery (but not when closing the brows- ALICE BUCKNELL is an artist and writer smashing boundaries and toward a new collective living. and VR works, collectively characterized by celestial, futur- er, for its pace perfectly complements digital expeditions), based in London. Trained in visual anthro- Poet, painter, architect, and artist duo Madeline Gins and istic forms and a psychedelic color palette. Woolfalk, who the choreography of street life feels sickeningly, almost vi- pology, her work concerns itself with the Arakawa aimed to out-design death with their Reversible comes from a family of textile makers, infuses her knowl- olently hyperactive. intersection of art, architecture, and tech- Destiny Foundation in New York. Teetering, psychedelic edge of costume making with sci-fi narratives. In the woods Tabita Rezaire’s Premium Connect (2017) adopts the nology and their socio-cultural productions. She writes for publications including Ele- color chambers and undulating landscape projects aimed to of upstate New York, the story goes, a group of women schizophrenic speed, garbled language, and non-sequitur phant, Flash Art, frieze, Mousse, Harvard Design stun the visitor into a new plane of consciousness wherein discover a supersaturated skeleton whose bones contain a logic of the internet as a subject and symbol to deconstruct Magazine, Metropolis, and the Architectural Review. She has participated in international exhibitions, symposiums, and residencies, most recently including the CCA in Mon- treal, the Design Museum in London, MAAT in Lisbon, and L’Atelier KSR in Berlin. Her video essay High from Miami Beach will be exhibited in The Wrong Biennale in November 2019. Mousse Magazine 69 The New Mystics: High-Tech Magic for the Present 236 Mousse Magazine 69 A. Bucknell 237 Zadie Xa, Child of Magohalmi and the Echoes of Creation, Walthamstow Library, London, 2019. Commissioned by Art Night 2019. Photo: Matt Rowe Zadie Xa, Child of Magohalmi and the Echos of Creation installation view at Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2019. Courtesy: the artist and Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan. Photo: Pat Verbruggen Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Site of Reversible Destiny—Yoro Park. Showing Reversible Destiny Office—Yoro, 1993-1995. Yoro, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. © 1997 Estate of Madeline Gins. Reproduced with permission of the Estate of Madeline Gins Mousse Magazine 69 The New Mystics: High-Tech Magic for the Present 238 Mousse Magazine 69 A. Bucknell 239 (Top) Saya Woolfalk, Chimera, 2013, Migrating Identities installation view at Yerba Buena Saya Woolfalk, The Storage System (detail), 2019, Expedition to the Chimacloud installation view at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 2019. Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2013. © Saya Woolfalk. Courtesy: Leslie Tonkonow © Saya Woolfalk. Courtesy: Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York Artworks + Projects, New York (Bottom) Saya Woolfalk, ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space, 2015, Disguise: Masks and Global African Art installation view at Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2015. © Saya Woolfalk. Saya Woolfalk, ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space (detail), 2015, Disguise: Courtesy: Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York Masks and Global African Art installation view at Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2015. © Saya Woolfalk. Courtesy: Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York Mousse Magazine 69 The New Mystics: High-Tech Magic for the Present 240 Mousse Magazine 69 A. Bucknell 241 Ian Cheng, Emissary in the Squat of Gods (still), 2015. Courtesy: the artist; Standard (OSLO), Oslo; Pilar Corrias, London; Gladstone Gallery, New York Ian Cheng, Emissary Sunsets The Self, 2017, installation view at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2017-2018. Courtesy: the artist and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Photo: Bryan Conley Tabita Rezaire, Premium Connect (stills), 2017. Courtesy: The artist and Goodman Gallery, London / Johannesburg / Cape Town Mousse Magazine 69 The New Mystics: High-Tech Magic for the Present 242 Mousse Magazine 69 A. Bucknell 243