Black Mirror 0 edited by Judith Noble, Dominic Shepherd and Robert Ansell

Abstract

The Black Mirror Network, operating out of Bournemouth, aims to address works from the modernist era to the present, dealing with ‘magic, enchantment, the occult and the esoteric’. In the wake of the industrial revolution, these interests have indeed been omni-present in the arts and visual culture, especially in the British archipelago, home of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the Pre-Raphaelites, Dracula, the Cottlesloe Fairies, Crowley, Dion Fortune, Tolkien, Sgt. Pepper, J.K Rowling and Alan Moore. And the idea that such concerns are central to modernist and contemporary art is not in itself novel. Esotericism was important in Dada and surrealism and has a strong legacy in current avant-garde and commercial art. Magic and the occult can be found at centre stage in the popular culture of pretty nearly any media or period. Black Mirror 0 is the first of a series, each volume organised by theme: embodiment, elsewhere, patterns, desire. This one is territory; meaning the range of (inter)disciplinary terrain(s) on which the authors mount their investigation. After the Introduction, there are seven pieces: three of art criticism/theory, one of art history, one of literary-cultural history, one by a magician, and an interview with artist Marie von Heyl. Justifying the remit for both series and volume, the Introduction overstates its case somewhat: esoteric content in modern art is not only marginalized but negated by critical culture – claims undermined by the editors’ own references and those in the following essays.