Artwork Details

Joey Cannizzaro - Tarantella isterica, Malmignatta, and Giver of Years (Death Date) (only in catalogue)

Tarantella Isterica is a take on an Italian folk dance that was used historically as a treatment for spider bites, employing frenetic, spastic movements to accelerate the course of the poison. Beyond its use as an antivenom, there are layers of superstition in the history of the dance: it was originally a Dionysian mystery cult ritual that was suppressed by the Roman senate and resurfaced in this more acceptable form. Later on, it was used as a treatment for hysteria. Musicians would be brought into play the tarantella for people having episodes and they would respond to the 6/8 rhythm and transition from panicked movement to frantic dance. Making the piece with my mother was a really personal and sincere way of engaging this history and touching on some of the arcane power that’s secretly embedded in a sanitized popular tradition.

Superstition is so powerful because it shows us, in a way we can actually feel, that we aren’t fully constrained by scientific materialism or its monopoly on truth, legitimate experience, and reality. It’s interesting to track how each time a phenomenon is renamed under a new regime (possession becomes hysteria becomes a psychiatric disorder etc.). It’s important to deride the old terminology as superstition in order to consolidate the power of the new dominant worldview. There’s this fear or feeling of fatedness that arises when we find ourselves believing a superstition and those emotions shake something loose in our conditioning. It feels really freeing and subversive to embrace a practice that has been labeled superstitious; those with power wouldn’t work so hard to delegitimize it if it wasn’t dangerous to their rule.

The second piece Giver of Years (Death Date) focuses more on that element of fear and the power it has to expand our limited beliefs about reality. I used an ancient astrological technique for calculating the life expectancy of a person based on their natal chart to ascribe a birth and death date to each of the artists in the show who volunteered to participate. I notice that even people who don’t “believe” in astrology get really nervous when you offer to tell them this information, so it’s a good example of how fear can break through the rational boundaries that society has set up for us. It’s funny with this particular technique though because it really isn’t one of the more accurate astrological tools at all. I mean, we can be so specific and precise with predicting and timing events using astrology that it really does give you shivers sometimes when you’re practicing it, but this is not one of those really consistent techniques and it’s widely considered unethical to tell clients their real time of death if you do discover it. Every time astrology shows me the awesome and mysterious underlying pattern at work, I know there is a reality beyond our usual comprehension, but Giver of Years is really more of an example of how each of us intuitively believes in magic and supernatural power, and how fear is often the gateway to that awareness.

Mariah Csepanyi Cool - comu zucchero

I used to have dreams about this haunted liquor store and I’ve always wanted to bring some of that world to life. The liquor store as a site for great luck or great disappointment seemed like the perfect starting point for this show. My Nonno played the lotto every day and so did his father. As I started thinking about my family history I considered family recipes and the intentions behind recipes and ingredients. When we think of ingredients, there’s somewhat of a sacred taxonomy at play. There are intentions and outcomes behind the magic curtain. Nothing is quite as simple as it seems. As a new mom, my entire world this past year has been wrapped up in breastfeeding. My self-worth, my value, has been how much milk can I provide to my twins. Subconsciously, I suppose, I’ve chosen to offer sweet drinks from a double spouted machine. I present to you two flavors of my family’s Sicilian granita, Between Heaven and Earth, and Strawberry Forgiveness.

Matthew Hotaling - for courage

When it comes to the idea of superstition, I feel that my work relates to belief in its implied story that assumes a past and amounts to a direction. A way of illustrating this is through our use of "the." When we place "the" in front of anything, the cup, the doorknob, the witch, we, the reader, give a cup, a doorknob, and a witch authority through narration. They assume the role of a character that implies a story with a past, present, and future. Sometimes these are stories we never actually encounter, but can relate to because of how uncanny or common they feel to us.

A superstition, to me, is something that can be born out of anything and lives in our belief that carries it through time, making it bigger, more important and ultimately supernatural. As if these occurrences just are much like our day to day. I'm constantly thinking about how humans are the only species that believe in the unreal, the unphysical world. A world tethered to our emotions, mind space, fears and imagination. So much of human evolution is derived from gossip and storytelling; think how many years it took people to understand what plants we could actually eat. But a superstition implies disbelief. Otherwise, it would be a fact and the notion of a superstition would not exist. If we tie in this gossip idea, then each culture carries its own superstition. Hence, the disputing component and that makes it almost more daring too, but more mystical and could be higher than, say, a fact. It's a fact that when our body shuts down, we, the person or identity of that person, are in fact gone. Yet it's commonly held that our identities are made alive, sometimes even animated through the living to imply that the deceased is still here with us and guiding us. It's metaphysical, powerful, and often living on the line of absurdity.

In my own work I articulate common things such as items or symbols like trophies. Then I combine them with a task or special power, i.e. the trophies. When cooked down, it will magically create this bag with the text "This Way" on it for someone to wear. Now, the reality is that "cooking down” trophies has nothing to do with constructing a paper bag nor its text. But so long as it's held in this narrative belief, it's possible that it will lead to something... and this something is more. The more can be a dragon or a gesture, like wearing the paper bag over your head that leads the story further. Superstitions are constructions of lessons/things for the next participant. They can be never-ending and always changing, but are constant in human nature.

Martabel Wasserman - Spineflower Dance, Spineflower Dance, and Fluming Down the River

This work is part of an on-going critical, creative, and activist exploration of the relationship between extractive practices and disenchantment. These particular images are inspired by the coastal redwoods of Santa Cruz and San Lorenzo river but incorporate references to related sites. Each image is based on one (interconnected) aspect of the forest- the trees, the wildflowers, and the river. Redwood Circle looks at the history of photography in shaping how we perceive California’s natural resources. It includes abstractions of iconic images such as those by Carelton Watkins as well as archival and personal photographs. Rather than concentric circles, which mirror the pattern of tree growth, the circles are discombobulated and reflect the disruption of natural processes and the temporality of the forest caused by the unregulated logging that coincided with the Gold Rush era. The repetition of circles also suggests a magic circle or coven and the conjuring of otherworldly spirits. Spineflower Dance is a reflection on endangered Ben Lomand Spineflower. When I had an initial chase encounter with the flower, the tiny pink blossoms looked like fairy dust. When I identified the flower and realized its habitat was threatened by “golf course development, agricultural land conversion, sand mining and military activity,” it crystalized how extraction creates disenchantment. The image incorporates an image of a sand trap, which not only references the very specific threat posed by golf course construction but also the unique forest environment in which it grows known as a sandhill. Sandhills are outcrops of zayanite soils which are derived from deep-sea sediment remnants from when the region was seabed 15 million years ago. They contain sea fossils as well as mixed evergreen forest. The crab dancing with limbs of a 19th-century paper doll links the on-going threat to these ecosystems with simultaneous constructions of whiteness and respectability and large-scale deforestation. Fluming Down the River combines personal photography with images of destruction along the San Lorenzo River. In particular, it aims to connect the relationship between logging and fluming with the on-going threats posed to the San Lorenzo River. Santa Cruz is both a tourist town and a suburb of Silicon Valley. The connection between logging and tourism is embodied through the boardwalk amusement park which features a ride based on fluming known as the Logger’s Revenge. Not only does this ride glamorize a history of colonial displacement and extraction, it also continues its legacy by choking the river estuary on which it resides, harming threatened keystone species such as coho salmon. As a suburb of Silicon Valley, it is the site of tremendous wealth inequality. The levees which restrict the flow of the river also protect property value. The connection between this type of environmental degradation which creates houslessness and in turn its criminalization, is an example of abolition ecology. As a member of the Santa Cruz DSA Ecosocialist Working Group, I co-lead a walking tour along the San Lorenzo exploring these entanglements. The three collages are invested in ecosocialist politics. But they are also about magic, and the suspicion, or superstition, that when we destroy ecosystems, we also short circuit possibilities for enchantment and close portholes to other dimensions of experience. These images are about the materiality of earth based spirituality.