COSMIC COUNTERREADINGS Sunday

COSMIC COUNTERREADINGS accompany the exhibition through critically and collectively rereading COSMIC GIRLBOSS. Artistic and scholarly impulses alternate on exploring magic, gender, and spiritual entrepreneurship. Around Walpurgis Night, researchers talk and artists perform to challenge old narratives — re-reading, refuting, and counter-narrating. For three days, interactive performances and talks take place at Galerie im Turm.

SUNDAY SCHEDULE

3pm Exhibition Tour with Frances Breden and Celica Fitz (EN)

4:30 Lecture: Witchy Tarot and Monk Mode: Post-Digital Spirituality between Economization and Self-Empowerment with Marita Günther & Henriette Hanky (DE)

6 Performance: Technofeudalisms Card Reading by Wassim Z. Alsindi (EN)

7 Conclusion: drinks and discussion

ACCESSIBILITY

The first and third presentations will be in spoken English. The second will be in spoken German. A simultaneous written transcription will be provided so that attendees can follow along, making the entire day accessible in both languages. More accessibility information is on our About Us page.

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTIONS

Exhibition Tour with Frances Breden and Celica Fitz

A tour of the current group exhibition COSMIC GIRLBOSS in the Galerie im Turm with inputs from the curator and artists.

Witchy Tarot and Monk Mode: Post-Digital Spirituality between Economization and Self-Empowerment with Marita Günther & Henriette Hanky

What concepts of gender are conveyed by witches, goddesses, Tarot, and astrology on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok? And how do these phenomena relate to digital content centered on masculinity and self-discipline—on “sigma men” and going “monk mode”? The digitalization of all areas of society also reshapes practices of individualized meaning-making. On social media, influencers promote spiritual concepts, services, and products while cultivating their own “communities.” On the one hand, this raises the question of how established spiritual practices and bodily experiences are conveyed digitally, and on the other hand, how the media logics of digital,­ algorithm-driven platforms shape cultural trends and gender norms. Digital offerings in the fields of spirituality, wellness, and coaching operate within a tension between increasing commodification, alignment with self-tracking practices and self-optimization imperatives, and their potential for emancipation. In this panel, Marita Günther and Henriette Hanky, researchers in the study of religions, explore cultural, economic, and technological dimensions of post-digital spirituality. The discussion invites participants to consider digitally mediated spirituality not merely as a lifestyle phenomenon, but also as a cultural arena for negotiating gender, body, and economy.

Technofeudalisms Card Reading by Wassim Z. Alsindi

Wassim Z. Alsindi will give a card reading with his oracle and role-playing card deck, FAU0X SALON. The deck was developed together with the 0xSalon in Berlin, a collective which critically interrogates digital culture through discourse events and residencies. Bringing together the visual languages of Medieval esotericism and AI-generated surrealism, Alsindi’s readings help us interrogate our own “prophet motives”. The cards are chaotic stochastic moderators of conversation, shifting agency away from humans and placing faith in chance and dissonance.

BIOGRAPHIES

Wassim Z. Alsindi operates at the intersection of intersections, chronicling visions, designs, and externalities of contemporary technologies across context and episteme. Wassim holds a Ph.D. in ultrafast physics, co-founded MIT’s Cryptoeconomic Systems journal, and has performed, lectured, and exhibited in over 30 countries.

Frances Breden is a curator and artist dedicated to community-based and collective art-making in digital and IRL spaces. Since 2014 she has been part of the queer feminist art collective COVEN BERLIN and is a founding member of Sickness Affinity Group. From 2024-2026 Frances is carrying out a curatorial fellowship with the Galerie im Turm.

Celica Fitz is an art historian and scholar of the study of religions, researching aesthetics and history of knowledges intersecting with contemporary art. As a curator she develops tools for research based curating. She is conducting an interdisciplinary dissertation in museology and art history (University of Neuchâtel) and the study of religion (University of Marburg) and works for the Museum of Applied Arts Frankfurt/Main and in Berlin. She is a member of the ENCHANTED EPISTEMES.

Marita Günther is a lecturer in the study of religions and cultural studies at the Universities of Marburg, Merseburg and Villingen-Schwenningen. She teaches and conducts research on contemporary spirituality with a focus on gender, the body, and digitality. In her dissertation at Marburg, she researched feminist spiritualities and knowledge systems. She develops academic and artistic teaching formats, for example at the Museum of Religions and Marburg Art Museum, or Bärenzwinger Berlin with Celica Fitz. She is a member of the ENCHANTED EPISTEMES.

Henriette Hanky, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Study of Religions at the University of Stavanger and the University of Bergen, Norway. She received her PhD from the University of Bergen in 2024 with an ethnographic dissertation on contemporary forms of the Osho/Sannyas movement in Scandinavia, Germany, and India. Her research and teaching interests include historical and contemporary guru and meditation movements; contemporary forms of religion and spirituality in Europe and India; popular religion and therapeutic culture; mediatization and embodied religion. She is a member of the ENCHANTED EPISTEMES.

The COSMIC COUNTERREADINGS are co-organised by the ENCHANTED EPISTEMES, represented by Celica Fitz.

Spirituality, esotericism and magic are popular terms often used to subsume non-hegemonic epistemologies. The research collective ENCHANTED EPISTEMES develops the concept of “enchanted epistemes” as a tool for researching such current ways of knowing and worldmaking in group rituals, healing, in digital spaces and material culture, contemporary art, and their intersections with academia.

Examining such contemporary forms and processes of performative (re-)enchantment, the research collective seeks to connect theoretical and methodological approaches from the aesthetics of religion and material religion, sociology of religion and knowledge, history of religions, and gender studies. The research group’s goal is to collectively develop the term ENCHANTED EPISTEMES as a tool for researching contemporary spiritual practices and aesthetics of knowledge.

Walpurgisnacht Program (30 April)

Saturday Program (2 May)

This project is supported by the Berlin Senate Fund for Presenting Contemporary Art in Berlin.