International conference “Approaching esotericism and mysticism: Cultural influences”

Turku (Åbo), Finland, 5–7 June 2019 

This multidisciplinary conference approaches the traditions of Western esotericism and mysticism from a cultural-historical perspective. The aim is to analyse the diverse influences of esoteric ideas and practices and the various forms of mysticism in their cultural-historical surroundings. We promote approaches that focus on individuals, groups and networks, and various archival source materials, but we also welcome papers dealing with esoteric or mystical textual traditions.

The conference will consist of keynote lectures and sessions that can be either traditional paper sessions or roundtable talks and panels.  The social program of the conference will consist of e.g. esoteric and occult walking tours in Turku and artistic performances (plans for an event together with Art Teatro Circus -group). An excursion to the exhibition on Finnish art and clairvoyance at the Gallen-Kallela Museum (11 May –8 September 2019) is also being planned. The exhibition is part of the research project Seekers of the New and is curated by Nina Kokkinen.

We invite people from different academic backgrounds to discuss western esotericism and mysticism included but not limited to the following topics:

• Esotericism and mysticism in art, literature and music
• Esotericism and mysticism in popular culture
• Esotericism and mysticism in Nordic countries, Eastern Europe, South Europe etc.
• Esotericism, mysticism and transnational networks
• What has been hidden, silenced or otherwise remained in the margins of esoteric and mystical traditions and in the research field (e.g. gender, class, ethnicity…).
• Ethics and positioning in the study of esotericism and mysticism
• Individuals and archival sources in the study of esotericism and mysticism

To apply, please send an abstract (or panel proposal with abstracts) of approximately 150 words to the Donner Institute, donner.institute@abo.fi, no later than 31 December 2018. Letters of acceptance will be posted no later than 31 January, 2019.

Selected papers from the conference will be published in volume 29 of the Donner Institute Series Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis as the co-publication of the Donner Institute and research project Seekers of the New.

The expert symposium is arranged jointly by the Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural history and the research project Seekers of the New: Esotericism and the transformation of religiosity in Finland during the era of modernisation, 1880-1940 at the University of Turku. The project is funded by the Kone Foundation.

Conference website: www.abo.fi/esomyst

Facebook event: Approaching esotericism and mysticism

Hashtag: #esomyst2019

The conference is organized by the ”Munch, Modernism, and Modernity” research group.

Olav Strømme, «Død blomst», 1935. Foto: Richard Jeffries ©Munchmuseet

Surrealism is without question one of the most influential and mutating intellectual and aesthetic practices emerging from the twentieth century. But “when” was Surrealism and “where” was Surrealism?

The movement was codified in Paris in the 1920s and ’30s with André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) as its foundational marker. For Breton, a revolutionary condition of Surrealism was its internationalism. Its participants held a wide range of nationalities; and throughout the 1930s, with Paris as a node, it appeared as an artistic and cultural movement on every continent due to the applicability of its revolutionary ideals and artistic practices to a variety of political and cultural circumstances. As a global movement it is often measured against, or understood within, the evolving thinking and artistic strategies of Parisian Surrealism. Recent studies have called attention to the culturally specific practices that constitute Surrealism as a global movement, drawing attention to more complex narratives within a multitude of manifestations and activities, challenging the canonical notion of Parisian Surrealism.

What were the specific entanglements of Surrealism and Scandinavia? For example, in a neglected passage of the First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), André Breton paid homage to Knut Hamsun. Quoting at length from his novel Hunger (1890), Breton attributed the notion of automatic delirium to the Norwegian author, thus championing his prose as a quintessential precursor to Surrealism. In 1894 August Strindberg, whom Breton in Arcane 17 (1944) proclaimed to belong to a lineage of prominent revolutionary thinkers, published an essay in the Parisian magazine La revue des revues, declaring the need for a new art through the application of chance in artistic creation. In 1934, Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen declared the need for a Surrealist revolution in Scandinavia, and a number of artists joined the movement, organizing talks and exhibitions, publishing books and periodicals as well as adapting Surrealist strategies into their own practices.

This conference seeks to invigorate these intersections, and to ponder how Scandinavia has been surrealist and vice versa. We wish to probe historical, aesthetic, formal and cultural discourses, – French and Scandinavian, or of other origin for that matter – which may shed light on the productive intersection of Surrealism and Scandinavia. We hope to complicate the traditional historical narrative of “Scandinavian Surrealism” and to re-open and expand the question of Surrealism’s broader relevance to art and culture in and of Scandinavia.