Symposium: Tales of Superstition and Magic
Conferences, performances, workshop
The Tower, Level 8
From
to
LUMA Arles presents the second edition of Tales of Superstition and Magic, a symposium exploring how magic and superstition circulate, transform, and acquire new meanings today.
Over three days, artists, researchers, writers, and cartomancers will examine the performative force of magic—its ability to shape reality through gesture, language, and collective imagination.
Positioned at the crossroads of magic and performance, the symposium looks at ritual not only as an artistic medium but also as a series of situated practices that reshape experience. It traces how embodied forms of divination, esoteric traditions, and ceremonial actions echo through contemporary art, revealing how these practices can operate as tools of emancipation and world-making. Magic becomes a speculative arena in which alternative ways of inhabiting the world—individually and collectively—can be rehearsed and reimagined.
By reanimating dormant knowledge and occult lineages, the contributions to this edition open unconventional genealogies and new pathways of understanding. Anchored in a series of performances, they illuminate the enduring and renewed connections between magic and artistic practice today. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, participants will revisit the queer cultural histories of the American West Coast and Europe, explore African American cultural movements such as the Black Arts Movement, and examine how the Western perception of vodou has shaped the reception of Haitian artistic traditions.
Across these contexts, magic emerges as a distinct, fluid, and generative language capable of activating new modes of presence, relation, and transmission.
Dates: from Friday, December 12th to Sunday, December 14th 2025
Venue: LUMA Arles, The Tower
Price: Free, upon booking
Note: Some talks will be given in French and will be simultaneously translated.
Program
The detailed schedule will be available online soon.
Booking slots are organized by half-day.
Friday, December 12
6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.:
Conferences and performance
Book a seat
Saturday, December 13
9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.:
Introductory Workshop on Using the Rider–Waite Tarot
(in French only)
2:00 p.m. - 7:15 p.m.:
Conferences and conversations
Sunday, December 14
10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.:
Conference and conversation
3:00 p.m. - 4:15 p.m.:
Film screening (title currently being selected)
Participants
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Alexis Bard Johnson – PhD, Curator, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles
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Carlo A. Célius – Historian and Art Historian, Research Director at the CNRS, member of the Institut des Mondes Africains
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Gaëlle Choisne – Artist
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Inès Di Folco Jemni – Artist
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Johanna Hedva – Writer, Artist and Musician
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Daniela Jacob Pinto – PhD Student in Social Anthropology and Ethnology, EHESS
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Low Lov – Artist and Musician
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Daniele Morelli – Guitarist and Composer
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Kettly Noël – Dancer, Choreographer and Actress
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Judith Noble – Professor Emerita of Film and the Occult, Arts University Plymouth
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Romain Noël – Writer
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Hans Ulrich Obrist – Senior Advisor, LUMA Arles
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Julien Princesse Didier – Translator and Queer Environmentalist
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P. Staff – Artist
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Stephanie Seidel – Curator and Researcher
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Tai Shani – Artist
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Ariane Temkine – PhD Student in Cultural Studies, EHESS
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Suzanne Treister – Artist
Talks from the previous edition
Tales of Superstition and Magic
Friday, December 13 to Sunday, December 15, 2024
During the three-day symposium, artists, authors, and researchers gathered to discuss these ideas and explored the ways in which alternative forms of organizing perception were woven into the fabric of everyday life.
