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Welcome to Your Art Is A Spell, the podcast that ignites inspiring and transformative conversations about art as a magical practice. I'm your host, Edgar Fabián Frías—a multi-passionate artist, witch, therapist, and proud mutant shape-shifter. My art spells have reached audiences through social media, billboards, and skyscrapers and have even been placed on the surface of the moon! Join us as we explore how reclaiming your unique artistic voice and embracing bold creativity can transform your life and the world around you. Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for our newsletter at www.yourartisaspell.com to stay connected!
Welcome or welcome back to Your Art Is A
Spell. I'm recording this in my art studio
here in Berlin. I'm so grateful to have the
next few months here in this city to do some
research in a space that we're going to be going
to today. I'm going to be doing research within
the Ethnological Museum or Ethnologische Museum
here in Berlin. I'm going to be connecting with
some sacred Wixárika artworks, some technologies,
some artifacts that are within their collection.
The Ethnology museum is housed within the
Humboldt Forum. But before I get into that,
I wanted just to share a little bit about the
theme of this season, which is tactical magic.
It is such a broad and expansive concept, but
I really want to focus today on the fact that
every culture that has ever existed on this earth
has made art. Not some cultures, all of them. And
almost without exception, every culture that
has ever made art has also practiced some form
of magic. These aren't two things. They have
never been. They were only separated by western
regimentation. They are one impulse. The human
insistence that the invisible is real. That life
is not just what you can touch and measure. that
there is a force underneath everything and that we
can make contact with it through image, through
object, through gesture, through intention. And
being able to have the great honor of taking time
to really focus on my own art practice has really
made me think about just how grand and magical,
wild and weird this is that every culture has made
art and magic, that they've been called to. They've
been moved to do this. And when we ask ourselves
the purpose of this practice, I think about how
art is not entertainment. Art is not even just
self-expression, at least not primarily. Art is
living emergence. It's the moment when a material,
paint, fiber, sound, light, the body itself
enters into relationship with human intention
and something comes through that that neither the
maker nor the material could have produced alone.
Something that vibrates, something that lives.
And as I shared before, today I'm about to take
you with me to the Humboldt Forum, one of the most
extraordinary and complicated buildings in Berlin,
because I think that being there together is
going to help us really feel into this more
clearly. The Humboldt Forum holds thousands
of objects from cultures across the globe.
ceremonial objects, sacred objects, objects that
in their original context were never just art.
They were portals. They were alive and had
a function with relationship, with spirit,
with their communities. And there they are in
Berlin inside a reconstructed Prussian palace.
I want us to walk through this space, not
to condemn it, not to perform any outrage,
but to really feel what happens to
living emergence when it gets archived,
when life force gets put behind a glass, when a
spell gets framed, because I honestly believe that
the life form doesn't fully leave. And that tells
us something essential about what art actually is.
Let's go. So, here we are at the Humboldt Forum.
And the first thing I really want you to notice
before we even get to the objects is the building
itself. This is a reconstructed Prussian palace.
The original was demolished and Germany decided to
rebuild it, to bring it back and to place inside
of it the ethnographic collections, artifacts and
objects gathered from cultures around the world,
many of them during the colonial period. So, the
container is already saying something. The palace
is the message. Now, let's look at what's
inside. There are objects from West Africa,
from the Pacific Islands, and from the Americas,
from across Asia. Things made with extraordinary
skill, with deep cultural knowledge, and with
spiritual intention. And I want to be honest
about what I feel when I walk through here
because I don't just feel critical. I feel
something from the objects themselves. There is
a residue, a vibration that containment has not
fully gotten rid of. What was really special
about this day was that I came on a day where
several choirs were taking up space throughout
the museum and they were sharing the vibrations
of their voices within the spaces. The first
choir I got to hear was the Joliba Friendship
Choir in the Foyer. I want to give you a moment
here so you can listen to their beautiful voices.
*Choir Song*
*Choir Song*.
The second choir I was able to see
was within the Americas section and
it was the Pet Shop Bears which is
a gay male choir here in Berlin.
And I'm going to also play you just
a snippet of their singing as well.
*Choir Singing*
*Choir Singing*
Now I want to just take you through
some of the incredible sculptures,
ceramics that are made traditionally here from
the Americas. There are works from Mexico, Peru,
Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador. There's
so many ancestral altars. As you could see,
some of these sacred pieces are behind glass
now. They're labeled. They have an accession
number. And you could still feel something from
these pieces. I can feel it. Can you? And that's
what I mean when I say that art is living
emergence. Even here, even when they've been
extracted and archived, the life force persists.
And I really want to say that archival practices
are so needed. They are so special. They are so
important in keeping things held and contained.
And the Humboldt Forum has actually been doing the
work of repatriating back objects that were taken
illegally or improperly. It is my hope that when
I go into the archives here at the ethnological
museum and offsite that I'll be able to connect
with some of the Wixárika yarn paintings, Nierikas
portals and maps and sacred shamanic technologies.
and that I'll feel that life force energy from
them. I don't see these as representations of the
divine. These are the divine made visible. The
artwork is the portal. The making is the ceremony.
And now I'm imagining one of these Wixárika objects
behind glass, labeled, climate controlled. What does
the archive do to a portal? It doesn't destroy it,
but it can interrupt the circuit. It removes
the relationships that made the object live,
the ceremony, the community, the continuity of
practice, the living hands that were supposed
to come after. The archive often says, "This
is finished. This is the past. This belongs
to history." and emergence says nothing that
carries life force is ever finished. There was
a room where the Humboldt Forum was really honest
and shared about its past, its colonial history,
the ways in which objects were obtained, sometimes
through illicit or illegal means. This tension is
right on the surface. It is being explicitly
named. You could feel it the moment you walk
in. The palace walls, the sacred objects, the
labels, the school groups, the gift shop. And
walking through it, I find myself more convinced
than ever of what I actually know and believe as
truth. That art made with intention cannot be
fully contained. That life form finds its way
through. That the spell even here held continues
to expand and vibrate. That essence cannot be
destroyed. Wow. After experiencing all that art
in person, seeing so much creative practice,
ritual, ceremony, magic, emergence happen, I'm
really sitting with the power of fields of energy
that we are surrounded by and how those fields
of energy impact us and ask us to do things.
And I really feel like that's one of the core
things I want us to connect with when I talk
about tactical magic is that if we feel into the
energy of the moment of the space of the place
and time that you're in, there's often information
there. information for us to tune into, feel into,
use our bodies as antenna, as crystals, resonate
and vibrate along with life on Earth, knowing
that there is wisdom that emerges from these
resonant fields. It is in that emergence that we
get so much of our collective, creative, cultural,
spiritual, existential, sacred practices that are
global and that we've been encouraged and vibrated
towards for a millennia. This is just something
that's really special about life in general
that we vibrate in a certain way and that we
sometimes get called to create. Many of us who are
artists, writers, creatives of any kind will know
that moment when inspiration hits us when we are
drawn to channel to let things move through us.
There's been times when I've been woken up in
the middle of the night knowing that I have to
write something down, that something will escape
me if I don't bring it into form. I know many of
us can relate to that feeling, to that moment, to
that direct communion that happens as creatives
when we receive entire packages of information
in what feels like a millisecond. There is a
knowing. There is an understanding. There is a
receiving that takes place. In that receiving,
we bring forth some of the most important,
meaningful, transformative projects of our
lifetime. So, when I say tactical magic, I of
course mean your art. Your art is a spell. Your
art is incredibly powerful. Your art is changing
your life every time that you connect with it.
Your art is also a part of this collective field
of energy. You are channeling. You are vibrating.
You are communing with the divine every time
you take a moment out of your life to create.
Never let them tell you otherwise. I think this is
one of the reasons I love tactical magic because
there's many times that some of us as witches
will feel like we don't have enough knowledge,
like we haven't been trained enough, like we're
not a part of the quote unquote right lineages.
And with tactical magic, what it really takes is
for us to tune into the everyday moment. There is
no right or wrong way of creating tactical magic.
There is only us responding to what is around
us. So tactical magic opens up space for our own
intuition, our own creativity, our own possibility
to enter into form, into magical tactical form.
know that it is not about saying the right spell,
drawing the right sigil, pulling the right tarot
card. It is about communion. Tactical magic is
needed so much at this moment because we are at a
crossroads. We are entering into the unknown. We
have no idea how this is all going to play out.
And of course when we are in those moments we
turn back to the origins which is our present
moment. Our presence our bodies they hold all
the knowledge and wisdom that we could ever need.
This is all we need for tactical magic. Vibrate,
resonate, channel. Let it move through you.
Let it move you. And never forget Your Art As A
Spell and it will change your life and the world
around us. Bye from Berlin. See you very soon.