dreams-fictions

Tarot Reading

By Malgorzata Zurada

This Tarot reading was conducted in the early afternoon on December 6th, 2018 by Malgorzata Zurada, with the use of Hexen 2.0 deck by Suzanne Treister. It took place during the Alchorisma worksession, in the former beguinage that now comprises part of Z33 – House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt. The modified three-card spread was used to gain insight into the nature of Alchorisma, its past, present, and future.

All images & text under Free Art License (FAL)

Tarot Reading

6/12/2018, Hasselt

1. AN OVERALL SITUATION. PAST THAT INFORMS THE PRESENT

Q: What is our work about? Where does it originate from?

A: Six of Swords (air)

“Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the coming to presence of technology, that in our sheer aesthetic-mindedness we no longer guard and preserve the coming to presence of art. Yet the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes.”

― Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology

Recognizing problems and moving towards solutions. Transition. Being in transit, travelling, inner journey. Stars, transcendental realms, lofty ideals and the New World Order. Non-human personhood, universal Dasein. Intellectual discipline, gaining spiritual insight through the depth of one’s thought. The danger of technology lies not in what it can do, but in what it essentially is: its coming to presence conceals the truth. Technology is ambiguous and this ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing. The key to see technology for what it is, is art. Black forest, being in time. Illumination vs. enlightenment.

2. ADVICE FOR THE PRESENT MOMENT

Q: What specifically should we focus on during the worksession?

A: Knave of Pentacles (earth)

“Techno-gaianism: belief in the power of technology to restore Earth’s environment.”

The bearer of good news in earthly matters. Earthly matters need to finally be put in the context of Earth. Laying foundations for the future by education and re-education. Redefining techno-gaianism. Learning to recognize the consequences of one's actions. Juvenile faith in one’s omniscience being matured and transformed through the alchemical process. Alembic for the eternal light of life. Distilling, purifying, transmuting, splitting the atom, opening portals. Closed biosphere experiments on Earth & space colonies, creating reality bubbles. Terraforming other planets, manipulating the prima materia, genetic engineering, tinkering with the mystery of creation. Infinite, fractal matryoshka of interconnected living beings. Earth’s inner Sun & the galactic central Sun.

3. THE OUTCOME: PRESENT MOMENT INFORMING THE FUTURE

Q: What will be the outcome of our work?

A: Four of Pentacles (earth)

“The mission of the WWWF is to advance the Web to empower humanity. We aim to do this by launching transformative programs that build local capacity to leverage the Web as a medium for positive change.”

― World Wide Web Foundation

A web of relations. A network of interlinked people, machines, thoughts and agendas. We’re all going online. Hypermedia, metadata, DARPA, EU, CERN, Web 3.0, Humanity+, transnational bodies. Hidden agents, occult algorithms and distributed causes create and affect the network. Being held hostage in a holographic fiction. Control technologies, smart grid, the myth of net neutrality. Casting nets under the guise of free access to the network. Itemizing, monetizing, securitizing, systematizing, assimilating of the living beings. The web = spiderweb, created by/for AI spider. The internet of human-things. The dark side of the Aquarian Age is about collectivism and technology. The Borg. What appears to be decentralization is in fact the ultimate bonding and assimilation to the hive mind. The gaseous state of matter, bonding of atoms. The need to obstruct progress by infecting the existing algorithms. Holding on to the analog past to protect the self and others. Conservationism in the information age. Pouring sand in the gears of digital expansion. Subversive cog in the machine, the violet flame.