Author and practitioner Jemma Foster is the founder of experimental botanical studio Mama Xanadu and multi-sensory publishing house Wild Alchemy Lab. Antenna talks to Jemma about the next issue of 


Jemma Foster: We are a global collective of artists, academic researchers and occult practitioners. Our multidisciplinary practice explores nature, science and esoterica at the intersection of plants, planets and people.

Alchemy is the arcane art of transformation, the physical and psycho-spiritual practice of turning the basic elements of our existence into a unified field that is aligned with nature and the cosmos. It is an incremental process of recalibration that supports and informs how we are able to digest our experiences and consciously navigate the future.

Why is the cross-section of nature/science/esoterica important to you?

The relationship between nature, science and esoterica can be complex, fractured and polarising. Science and esoterica are often viewed as mutually exclusive. Occult practices are, by definition, concealed and shrouded in obscurity, which can exclude and isolate. Wild Alchemy Lab seeks to unify and demystify the mystery.

Your next publication is on the theme of water. Can you talk about the magic of water?

The classical elements of earth, fire, water, air and aether provide a lens through which to investigate how both we place ourselves, and are placed, within our environment. Each edition of the journal navigates an element. The last two were Earth and then Fire.

World cosmologies often describe our origins as watery, a place where gods dive into the deep for our creation, and its sweet taste becomes an elixir that sustains life. These cosmogonic waters are almost always dark and still, a reflection of our own beginnings – a cosmic void of amniotic fluid that gives birth to form.

Water is the communicator between the cosmos and Earth, integrating air and fire into the material realm. Elemental water is the tides within, the ebb and flow of our internal fluids and our emotional body. In Jungian psychology, it guides our feeling selves, our sensitivity to our environment and experience, our memories and psychic self.

What is one of your favourite articles in the upcoming journal?

Witnessing the AR content unfold, particularly when it involves new collaborations between artists that were previously unknown to each other, is where the real alchemy happens. Immersive pieces are an invitation to the reader to move beyond passive receptivity and to actively engage in the journal as a shared, embodied experience.

article that features a conversation between artist Eileen Hall and psychologist Dr David Luke on his current research into acts of weather control by the Wixárika, an indigenous group in Mexico.

Eileen is a visual artist and she painted a rain sigil for the piece. Composer and sound artist Jamie Perera has created a sonification of precipitation data in Bernalejos, a town in the state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, an area sacred to the Wixárika. Listening activates the sigil as an act of collective dreaming, a communal prayer to manifest rain.

We just collaborated with you to create the AR piece the

 by Madame Blavatsky in the next of issue of WA water Journal.  Can you speak to why you have chosen to include the 

Playing on Neptunian concepts of illusion and fantasy, we explored the realms of dream vs reality with the mysteries of lost civilisations submerged by deluge, ideas first offered by Plato in his works 

.  In the 1880s, controversial mystic and occultist Madame Blavastsky transcribed the 

 which she claimed to be a secret ancient Tibetan text written in an ethereal language predating Sanskrit she called Senzar.  It details the pre-Atlantean civilisation of Lemuria which was said to have a liquid atmosphere and was inhabited by prehuman beings that were tall hermaphrodites with fluid form, 360 vision and reproduced by laying eggs.  

Do you have any upcoming artworks or productions you would like to mention?

Together with Camilla French, I am working on a series of short films and immersive installations exploring interspecies communication and person-plant linguistics. This involves documenting plant, mineral and fungal frequency recordings, along with world cosmologies narrated in threatened indigenous languages, and looking at sonification patterns that represent a shared tongue that transcends species boundaries.


The Journal will be released on the 12th of April and will be available to purchase at Apiary Studios and other outlets. 

Wild Alchemy – An Astro-botanical Guide to the Magic and Medicine of Plants 

Wild Alchemy – A Herbal Remedy Oracle Deck

 is due to be published by Laurence King next spring.

Follow Wild Alchemy @wildalchemylab and @mamaxanadu

Where the wild things grow

, creates elaborate, wearable sculptures that enchant the viewer as well as the wearer. Magnhild has made a career producing strange and almost supernatural characters which have been worn by Daphne Guinness, Björk and Erykah Badu, and celebrated in galleries such as

Norway's National Museum of Decorative Arts. There is something spectral and intangible, yet strangely familiar in the forms she creates. It’s like they come from a fairytale that we knew well as children but somehow forgot as we grew older. Jonah Emerson-Bell looks to gain a deeper understanding of the secret life of these creatures and the creative process behind them.

There is something spectral and intangible, yet strangely familiar in the forms she creates. It’s like they come from a fairytale that we knew well as children but somehow forgot as we grew older until one day, scrolling through Instagram, the Damselfrau account appears and suddenly that archetypal image comes rushing back to mind and something comes alive.

Magnhild has made her career producing strange and almost supernatural characters that she wears and photographs. Her artwork is made from a vast array of materials like fabrics and “shiny bits”, tassels, hair and pompoms (which are a favourite of hers) or whatever she finds that will do the job. Each mask is unique and feels like it has its own personality and biography. Intrigued by these unusual and beautiful beings, I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the secret life of these creatures. What I got instead was an exploration into the creative process which is both otherworldly and profound.

JEB: How did you arrive at making masks as your form of artistic expression?

Looking back, masks had always been there, but they never appeared that clearly to me. Number one I didn't know it could be a job, honestly. But when I moved to London from Norway in my late 20s, there was this really huge, beautiful, fashion and clubbing environment. You’d make an outfit for the night out of tape and egg cartons and whatever and get photographed at the party, and look at the other people.

This was all a new universe to me and it was really, really inspiring. And it sort of informed me from zero to 100, very fast, of what you can do with a little. So I made outfits for these parties. One night I made a mask for an evening and this format pretty much just stuck with me from that one experience. And at the time, I was working in a vintage designer shop, and it was very small. My boss was very nice to me, and he let me sit and just fiddle behind the till. There wasn't a lot of space behind the till so it was kind of limited to what you could make. But you can do a lot with a little on a face. And I remember very well this piece I made where I was just like, “oh, I've landed somewhere completely different.”

This was in 2012, I think. And I made a green mask called Stikker, and I felt like I had arrived in a country or like I'd landed somewhere where the work could live properly. Then I kind of understood that this is the thing now and I don't have a choice really, I just do this stuff and make it work.

JEB: I love that idea of arriving in a country or at a place because, looking at your work, It seems really otherworldly, like these characters are coming from another land, or maybe that's just my projection.

Oh, that's great. I don't know what the intention is; other people tend to see what I do better than I can. But for me, I don't come from a place with a long line of mask culture. Well, not since Christianity took over anyway. So there was nowhere in me and how I grew up that I could go and look for reasons why this appeared here, and why it became natural for me. But when I was a kid my favourite thing to do was to make paper dolls. And those are flat things that you fold onto things. And my mask format is a flat thing that you form and just put onto your face. So I kind of feel like it might be like an arm that comes from the past, from this childhood experience of making a two-dimensional thing into a three-dimensional thing or trying to give a two-dimensional thing more body. But I didn't feel like there was much of an environment available to me with the masks because of my culture.

I come from such a fashion kind of culture where masks are very 

, I mean at the time they were anyway. Now they're everywhere, which is great. But at the time, it was kind of limited to what idea you had about a mask in contemporary Western society. So I felt kind of blind there for a while. In my head, I couldn't find anywhere to actually take the work and it was quite frustrating.

I'm also sort of a magpie-ish type, I collect a lot of stuff and so I always have a lot of like bits that I don't really have plans for. I think that also coincided with this idea that there's actually this place, where I could put all these bits. So I think I had kind of collected materials for a very long time for this project, I just needed somewhere to put it. All of this came together with this one piece that told me exactly who I was in the work and things became very clear. Now, I see that I can move a lot within that environment, but the DNA is still right there. So I can do stuff that looks quite different but I recognise myself, thank God, and other people also recognise me in the work. And I love that.

JEB: You say that you don’t come from a culture of masking. However, I think personally, I think that club culture, rave culture, and festival culture have a tradition of masking and costuming. And that makes me think about things like Mardi Gras and Carnival, and the energy of those events where people express their alter egos or desires through their costumes. And I wonder if you connect with that or think about that in your process? Or if you do think about that at all?

No, I think very little. When I make stuff, it’s 100% play, I mean, it's brainless. It's just a play scenario for me. I try to keep it super light, and very crisp because I get bored super fast. If something's too hard. If something demands too much thinking of me, if there's too much problem solving, if I have to consider too much then I will put that thing aside and start two new ones. Because it's not, that's not the space where I feel delighted making and it's it for me, it's a place of sanity and health than where I kind of feel like I have sort of therapy within myself now.

JEB: I'm curious about how you think of this work? I think it's really easy to be like, “that's something that somebody is wearing on their face, so that must be a mask.” But do you feel like that limits the work or your idea of what the work can be?

I think the idea of a mask is accurate, I don't know, I'm still figuring out this stuff, and I probably won't figure it out before I die. Part of keeping it light and keeping it playful is not to demand too much from the work and not telling the work where it has to go. I always kind of wait for stuff to come to me. I don't hunt for things. I try to put myself in the way of things. So they might happen to me. As in, like, where does the work go? Is there a gallery? Is there a magazine? Is there an artist? Because then the language of the work is clear. It's doing its own talking, and I'm not murking it up. Because if I demand certain things from it, I will limit it from other things. So I've never tried to tell it what it needs to be. Is it a mask? Sure. But it could also be a picture. I mean, the object itself could be a picture. It could be many things. I honestly have no strong opinions about that. I kind of have to trust the work to do its own job, or it kind of doesn't deserve living. So the easier and more open for everyone is better for me.

JEB: When you're working do you start out with a set idea for what you are going to make? Or are you working more with the material like: “I’ll put this shiny thing with that shiny thing,” until the character emerges?

It starts with the shiny thing. When I make my own stuff, It always comes from the material. I’ve always collected a lot, it doesn't matter what it is. There's no hierarchy in materials for me, like gold and plastic will do the same job, or they will do the right job for the right thing. So yeah, it always starts with that. It's never really been hard to get the juices going. But if I'm a little bit uninspired, I'll just put my hands in boxes and just taste, just hand tasting, for like, what's the flavour? Like, what's the right flavour for today? There's always places to go in me to find the right connection with the material like, maybe you're wooly, you know, or maybe you need some clarity, and then from there, it's just organising materials. It becomes, pretty much, just putting stuff and sometimes they put themselves easily.

Sometimes you have to wait a while to find the last object that finishes it off. But that's for me when I work for myself. If I work for a client, they often come to it with pictures of something that inspires them, or a colour palette they like, and then I start from there. That's not a very hard place to start either, it’s just not how I work for myself. I’m not a mood wall type of person.

When I start making, I tend to find the right movie. I watch a lot of television and movies when I'm working because I found that music demands too much for me. So when I put on a movie it always has to do with the speed, I like fast, I like moving fast. I watch a lot of action movies and sci-fi and things that have a lot of pulse in them. And I will watch that movie kind of back to back to sort of keep the right pulse in the work. And one way is to sort of get myself pushed forward by that general pulse. But the other thing is, often these films have a lot of information in them. So they keep my eye awake, so I don't kind of fall asleep into the piece because that can happen. So it's nice to sort of keep the eye going, going, going, going. And that's the best space when you get good speedup and you have a lot of action going. And you feel the action in your work. It's the best thing.

JEB: What are you watching? Or what are you really excited to watch when you get in the studio?

All kinds of stuff. I watch a lot of action movies, but I’ll get into long periods of reality TV because the editing is fast. So you get a lot of energy and you can get into like 10 seasons of something and obviously, it demands nothing of you. So you're just watching a lot of that fast editing. But I keep coming back to this movie, 

. I love that movie so, so much because It's literally just a road movie that goes super fast with a lot of colour in it and a lot of humour. It is one of those films that I can handle watching over and over again. But of course any 

any or Villeneuve movie will do, he's not so speedy, but he's very cinematic. He has a huge scope and that's also very helpful, a lot of information and the music is always great in his films too. So that's kind of the environment that I work in. I like a lot of action.

I think that could also be why London has worked so well for me. In this place you grow older fast, because time is going faster here than I've experienced anywhere else. Because there's so much energy going. Also, I live at a very busy crossroads. And the building is not very soundproof. So I hear the police cars all the time. There's a lot of that kind of sound and I feel like that's feeding a lot as well, as far as the energy. And when COVID hit the energy changed a lot outside. And I felt that in the work that things got slower.

JEB: I'm curious about that slowdown when COVID hit and the world took a pause. How did that affect your practice?

The first lockdown was bewitching like it was amazing. I know it's a bad thing to say, but the change of energy was good in every sense in my body. The thing is, I haven't changed so much how I worked because I work from home anyway. I'm kind of a hermit and my husband is the kind of person that goes out and checks the world and it comes back and tells me about it. So at that time, he would go out with a mask and gloves and do the shopping and things and I would just be here and I would walk 10,000 steps inside the house just to get my gymnastics in and then I would get to work.

I still had a lot of clients because most of my work with clients is remote anyway, so it didn’t affect my work as far as demand. So I was lucky there. Looking back it seems like I’ve made a lot of masks but the time felt slower. And I think the look of the masks are slightly slower as well. There's more sort of bigger grips or like bigger clearer thoughts in them. But once it started picking up again, I definitely felt better. Once the sirens started going more, I felt better.

JEB: I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about the fact that we are now in a world where most people are wearing face coverings and masks?

No, this is life. My friend was like, “you should print your work on some masks.” And I'm like, “Nah,” because that's not what I'm doing. I know that I make masks, but I don't really necessarily feel that I make masks. I've kind of come at it from a sculpture place. I was never particularly interested in masks as a form or as a topic. It just kind of happened naturally.

I've been saying this now for 10 years and it's not getting any clearer to me. So maybe there's something that I'm not noticing. I think also, like we talked about earlier, it’s important to keep it really light and easy and not demanding certain things from the work so the work can make its own demands. That takes a lot off my shoulders because it means that I don't necessarily have to be responsible for what happens on the other side of it.

I mean, obviously, I made it so I'm responsible, but how a piece is perceived is going to vary from each and every person. So I can never really take on the experience of other people because they have their own life of information to put into that. And I love it when 10 different people see 10 different things in the same piece. But yeah, it's still kind of baffling to me. I still don't know how I ended up here. This is just sort of what it is now. And I mean, I'm grown up now. So this is probably what it is. I'm gonna have to live with this until I die.

Magnhild Kennedy is an artist based in Hackney, London. You can buy her art prints and silk scarves on her website at 

Jonah Emerson-Bell is an artist, tarologist and astrologer. He lives and works in Santa Fe, NM. You can find Jonah's work at 

The Mask is the Place

Leslie Deere is a multi-media artist working with sound, image and performance and virtual reality. Born in Tennessee, Leslie moved to London to study music, and is currently based in Glasgow where she is working on her new project ARRAY INFINITIVE, which merges meditative practice with experimental VR participation.  

She will hold a workshop with us at Antenna Gallery on Saturday the 26th of February.  See sign up info at the bottom of the article.  

Antenna: How would you describe your artistic practice today?

LD: My practice is very multi-media. A couple of years ago I created a book of photography and I’m about to do a series of screen prints, but the main focus of my larger scale projects the past several years has been on gestural audio-visuals.

Where did you first start experimenting with sonic art and visual interaction?

My BA was in Sonic Art. From that point I was interested in sculptural objects and sound, or physical form and sound. The sound and image making more gestural, performative work has been happening since 2016, through a Sound and Music residency at Music Hackspace in London.

You are currently working on a project Array Infinitive. Can you describe the research intention behind the project?

This is a follow-on from the Hackspace residency work, which used a Kinect camera to play sounds live. There was also a silhouette projection behind me that echoed my movements in real-time. At that time I was looking at turn of the twentieth century technologies and that crossover happening between technology and spiritualism, as well as the idea of working with that which is invisible or immaterial. Clara Rockmore ( a Lithuanian violin prodigy and theremin performer ) was an important reference. The theremin was seen as a weird and futuristic instrument at the time, because it is played without actually touching anything.

My current piece is now taking that idea into VR. I am researching this encounter in VR as a means to reach an altered state experience. I’ve been working with Dr David Luke of Greenwich University and Breaking Convention to measure participant ASC response. I’m also trying to find out if a shared group experience can be achieved through this technology, on a local network in a shared physical space, and whether or not people can tell a human is conducting the experience.

What experience do your participants have? Are they the composers or are they guided?

Participants go on a journey through sound and colour. The group is stationary and remain seated. The idea is to sink into a comfortable position, to look and listen - to sit in the colour red for instance, or be enveloped by Indigo. There isn’t anywhere to go or navigate towards in VR, the worlds are abstract and graphic, stripped back to geometric form where the colour impact is important.

How does the colour spectrum function in the project?

There are seven VR scenes that travel up the colour spectrum or chakra system. I’ve tried to keep the elementals intact, for instance an earthy base sound for the colour red. I recorded a cellist in Glasgow and for blue a three part harmony vocal.

Who are the artists or creators that have inspired along the way?

I’ve been looking a lot at artists that make work which is activated by the experience of being with it, such as Ann Veronica Janssens installations or James Turrell, or even Bridget Riley and Op Art. So there is a temporal or experiential quality that becomes durational and also symbiotic. Exploding Eye films, psychedelic mandalas and multi-media work of the 60’s. Pieces that illicit a response, such as Catherine Yass’ films or the Rothko Effect. I’ve been thinking about the sensorial onslaught of the Ballet Russes - short performances that combine music, movement and art — the joining of different disciplines simultaneously as a tidal motion to the senses.

You have mentioned artists such as Hilda Af Klimt as an influence on the project.

I really love her work aesthetically, her use of colour, the minimal nature of it. Hilda af Klint, Annie Besant and Agnes Pelton — again back to that turn of the twentieth century time period, it was ripe. I’m not a painter but the layering that Pelton did takes a very long time, and those paintings are hypnotic without having motion. The abstract nature of these women’s work and the ways in which they were communicating something intangible through painting. Images and form coming through them as channels onto canvas. Honouring the messages or downloads they received at that point in time — that took courage.

How do you intend the abstract visuals to function for the user or participant.

The visual palette in this VR work is abstract, fairly minimal and graphic. There are no figurative shapes. I did this intentionally hoping it would be easier to become immersed in it. In VR or CGI, working with objects that resemble humans is iffy, in that it can be cartoony really easily unless they are triple A game graphics, which this piece isn’t about.

How does the practice of meditation inform or guide the Affinity?

In group meditation people sit quietly and still in a room together. They just sit quietly and breathe together. That’s it. It is so simple but really powerful. That notion is what I’m inspired by here and trying to replicate for in this work. It has also been nice though when participants swivel their head, to look around the VR world, or reach out to grab an object floating by. But generally that act of ‘sinking into’ a position and being in a liminal space is something I’m trying to explore.


How is the project different from gaming?


Gamers, from my research thus far, tend to want to walk around or shoot something or teleport off somewhere. This experience is not active in the same way.  Its kind of like being in a mixed-media installation, in multiple realities at the same time. Meaning, the sound is immersive and loud and amplified into the space — but visually you are seeing bold colours and ribbons of light through a headset attached to your face. 

And then there is also a performance going on right in front of you, but you don’t see that in physical form, yet you can feel when air brush past or hear the floor creaking below. A few I have done this work for audience both in and out of VR, something really interesting opens up in this scenario.  This reconfiguring of perfromance, or what performance is/ can be whereby audience are having different experiences visually and in terms of presence and immersion, whilst also having a larger collective experience together.  I like the idea of different realities happening at the same time in a shared space.  The sound really become the cohesive element and anchors the experience.  

How do you see VR as affecting our lives and mental spaces? What do you hope for the future of VR integration in our lives creatively or psychologically?


During lockdown I discovered a VR group that held group meditations and group discussions. I would log on at a certain time and move my avatar to an outdoor space and onto a yoga mat-like object and take part in a mediation. All the teachers were Buddhist practitioners and had different formats, but at the end the teacher would have a few words with anyone who was up for sharing. It was fascinating being in the same virtual space together while being physically distanced and meeting people from all over the world.

I also just did my first freelance job in VR. I helped at an event for the UN Climate Summit, which was supposed to happen in Dubai but instead happened on VR a couple of weeks ago. It was really weird and interesting going to an induction session in VR with strangers. So with these sorts of things — gathering at a distance, teaching / learning, there is great potential. At the same time, I don’t like that Facebook has co-opted the term metaverse and their assertion into VR is not without its concerns, given how they’ve handled themselves up until now. I started this project before Meta existed and I’ve never had a Facebook account. Big tech is problematic. Can we use it for our own purposes? Creative people finding ways to use technologies for creative purposes and with good intentions — sometimes to make a political statement and sometimes to give you a certain experience.

You are running a workshop pilot at Apiary Studios this month. How do we sign up?

The sessions are running at Antenna Gallery on 26th of February at 12pm, 3pm, and 7pm. 

Array Infinitive

Stephen Romano is a collector, curator and private art dealer in Brooklyn, New York. Collecting since the mid-90’s he has championed esoteric and outsider artists through his Stephen Romano Gallery, and through curatorial collaborations such as The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland. Faye Dowling talks to Stephen about his current William Mortensen project, and his life spent working with esoteric and outsider art.

Antenna: Where did your interest in esoteric art begin?

Stephen Romano: It began when I was very young. I could see things, spirits in the shadows. I would make drawings of them and carry them in my pockets. My aunt, who was a fairly well known abstract artist in Montreal where we lived, saw these drawings one day and flipped out and proclaimed I was a prodigy. She began bringing me art supplies and also expensive art books on Dali, Rembrandt, Durer, and a big heavy book on Hieronymus Bosch, which miraculously I still have today.

Later in my 20's I went to community college in Sarnia. and University in Windsor, Ontario. In the 90’s I moved from Canada to New York City and became manager of 

. The gallery was renowned in the field of “Outsider Art”, celebrating artists who are outside of mainstream society — perhaps through a psychological or physical impairment, and have channelled their ordeal into making art. The famous artist 

But whilst I had access to these great masterpieces, I didn’t have the means to acquire any of it. A Henry Darger worth $25,000 then, and would be worth in excess of $400,000 today. So instead I focused on collecting vernacular and vintage photographs that had a paranormal feel to them.

I think my vintage photography collection is now in the thousands, and any serious collector will tell you how quickly we get to that number when we follow our obsession with passion. Over the years I’ve bought, sold, traded. The collection ebbs and flows to this day with enthusiasm or complete disregard, sometimes I forget about it for months on end, other times I’m immersed in it for weeks at a time.

I first came across your collection at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in 2014, with a show presenting both historical and contemporary artists. How did you develop your collection develop?

I’ve always found the affinities between the historical and contemporary art interesting, to amplify the relevance of both, at either end of the spectrum. The Morbid Anatomy “

” show was one of my pinnacle curatorial accomplishments, and I have yet to eclipse it. The artists I champion have been exhibited in some prestigious places including the The Met in New York and Gagosian Gallery. Some of my artists are currently touring in “Supernatural America”, curated by Robert Cozzolino, and the new Taschen “

”book from the Library of Esoterica. I am perpetually grateful that I have the opportunity to share these magnificent things, and hopefully enhance the quality of life for others.

You had physical space with the Stephen Romano Gallery in Brooklyn from 2014-16. You also work closely with galleries and collectors, as well as participate in events such as the Outsider Art Fair. Could you give us some insight your artistic community in New York?

I have done the Outsider Art Fair in New York with Ricco/Maresca, with private art dealers, and a couple on my own as Romano Art. Since I closed the gallery in 2016, I’ve been inspired to find other venues and avenues. I am working presently with the 

Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland

, where we have presented exhibitions including William Mortensen, occult artist 

. We also continued to collaborate here in Brooklyn with Morbid Anatomy curators 

 at the Fort Hamilton Gatehouse at the Greenwood Cemetery until 2019.

Your 2022 show schedule celebrates the 125th anniversary of William Mortensen, including a show at Gallery of Everything, London. When did you discover Mortensen’s work?

I first saw William Mortensen’s art in an exhibition while I was manager at Ricco/Maresca in 2000.

 I was rapt in awe by it every day. I could not believe how someone could be so innovative technically and so visionary in his subject matter at such an early time in the history of photography, and yet how the works still held up so vividly in a contemporary context, it just seemed bewilderingly timeless.

Several years later, I came upon an opportunity to acquire some works by Mortensen, it wasn’t as easy as not a lot of his work survived his feral methods. He didn’t edition prints, and often made only a handful of prints of each piece. But I was persistent and uncovered a whole collection of more than 40 works that were part of his personal collection, really sublime works. The big break came when we were able to acquire the bulk of the collection of Courtney Crawford, Mortensen’s first wife and muse. At that point the collection grew to well over 400 original works.

This past summer, I realised he would have been turning 125, a noteworthy anniversary, and I began to contact allies who also believe William Mortensen’s legacy needs to be preserved, including The Gallery of Everything, London which is currently exhibiting a collection of Mortensen's most exquisite pieces. 

James Brett, [the founder of Gallery of Everything] has been a great advocate for creative masters as Henry Darger, Martin Ramirez, William Edmondson, among other national treasures, and we are fortunate to have his support for Mortensen.

Can you tell us a little his place as a pioneer in manipulated photography? 


William Mortensen came to photography as self taught. He studied at the Art Student’s League in New York for a couple of years after being discharged from the army in 1919. In 1921 moved to Los Angeles with his fiancé’s sister, the well known actress Fay Wray, to whom he became a chaperone and guardian. Both their career’s skyrocketed, and Mortensen was soon to become one of the most highly sought after photographers in Los Angeles, working with some of the great silent film directors of the era, including Tod Browning, Ferdinand P. Earle, John Griffith Wray, Vincente Minelli, and of course Cecil B DeMille.

Mortensen had at his disposal an entire floor at the renowned Western Costume Company, where he was allowed to use the abundant resources of costumes, models, props, whatever he wanted for his own personal art.

Mortensen later moved to Laguna Beach in 1931, and opened a school and studio. There, far from the distractions and hedonism of Hollywood, was where he really immersed himself in perfecting his image making, and from 1932 through 1945-ish, also writing article for popular photography magazines and publishing books. 

Mortensen was never accepted amongst the “high art” society, and in fact was persecuted relentlessly by Ansel Adams who dubbed him, “The Anti-Christ”. He was relegated to a footnote in the cannon of American photographic history until a curator Deborah Irmas revived enthusiasm in his art by curating “The Photographic Magic of William Mortensen”, which toured from 1971 through 1980.

Slowly but surely, Mortensen’s star began to rise again, and with the advent of digital manipulation in photography and the ever increasing proliferation of goth culture, Mortensen’s occult images began to see new appreciation and reverence. And in 2014, Feral House published an in-depth monograph “American Grotesque - The Life and Art of William Mortensen”, which brought Mortensen to the attention of the mainstream and was given widespread distribution, attention and praise. 

You have also exhibited Mortensen at Dark Mofo Festival in Tasmania. How did the show come about and unfold?

 was organised and curated by Brendan Wallis, and it was magnificent. It comprised four solo exhibitions including Brendan’s immersive sound and light installation, and work by Barry William Hale, whom I have exhibited with and collaborated curatorial with over the past several years. It was a remarkable event which saw over 6000 visitor over ten days.

Can you give us some insight to the work of Barry William Hale?

Barry William Hale is an esoteric, often referred to as “occult artist”, living in Australia and is highly regarded in the occult circles through his involvement with the OTO— Ordo Templi Orientis - whose best known member was Aleister Crowley, and whose influence in his lifetime spread as far as Los Angeles among such luminaries as Marjorie Cameron and Kenneth Anger.

Barry is ever seeking the means to expand his reach as an artist, working in performance, sound, traditional painting, sigils, weaving a cosmology that draws the viewers to be receptive to a sacred realm of conjuring and affirmations of a higher order.

Why do you feel these esoteric or pagan themes continues to captivate us?

As we move through these bewildering times, and as the idealogical and philosophical frameworks we thought had permanence seem to be questioned and unravelling — it is in these times of upheaval that the esoteric and the occult gain greater momentum.

The art itself acts as a healing device. The viewer, as seeker, crosses the threshold into the gallery space and becomes receptive to an enriching experience. There, they find an experience that expands, heals and enriches their psyche through the generosity of spirit the artist provides in their art.

This is the artist as shamanic presence in our culture, being a conduit of what binds us together, as opposed to what tears us apart. 

As a collector and curator to me there is no more noble pursuit than putting the art out there and sharing with the world. In building an exhibition, once things converge harmonically, we hopefully get to open eyes to a greater truth, a universal sense of compassion and love.

The exhibition DARK MATTERS // THE ART OF WILLIAM MORTENSEN runs at 

, in Marylebone, London until 29th February. 

 is a curator and editor based in London.

Dark Arts

A group show for the Winter Solstice 8-22 December 2021

8-22 December 2021, Antenna Gallery, 460 Hackney road E2 9EG

Earth Magic charges the midwinter air with distilled fantasy.  The volcano dreams of naked trees. The steamy last breath of the year, lava meets the ocean. Cool inspiration sealed with a volcanic kiss.  

Spell Zone

We talk to Adina Popescu about her project ÆRTH, which envisages a digital twin of Earth based on real-tim

e data, intended to change the way we share information about our precious planet.

 Interview by Apiary founder Leslie Claire and digital research fellow Carl Hayden-Smith. 

Antenna: Can you tell us about the ideas and intentions behind ÆRTH?

Adina Popescu: The ÆRTH project presents a new platform, combining Big Data, Blockchain, Remote Sensing, and cutting edge Environmental Science in order to produce an authoritative and detailed model of the state of our world. Interactive mapping and data visualisations will cultivate emotional connections with large audiences, and blockchain will be utilised to enable collective ownership of the platform and incentivise participation. This platform aims to help us collectively address the environmental crisis.

AN: Why do you think NFTs are interesting?

First of all I think it is very confusing how many artists are rejecting NFTs, when they are actually very empowering for them. I think this stems from a defensiveness of not fully understanding the complex tech behind it, so they jump to the hype narrative which then they reject. If they really understood what an NFT was, I think they would embrace it, because it is their freedom to own and live off their own artistic creations.

AN: You’re so passionate about decentralisation and blockchain technology. Could talk about how and why you want to engage with this technology for those that aren’t so acquainted with DeFI?

First of all I believe the economic models that are currently being developed inside DeFI are the economic models of the future. I don’t think there has ever been such a strong generational divide in terms of grasping the paradigm shift that is currently happening, and the magnitude of it. I believe that these new economic models have the potential to generate business that is sustainable, much more egalitarian, and infinitely more scalable in their innovation.

For example, what we are doing here at ÆRTH is data sharing about environmental health. In the old economy, companies and institutions are siloing their environmental data. For example, the solution we are working on at ÆRTH uses DeFi and decentralised protocols to generate an incentive and a market place for an infinite amount of stake holders 

 value to their data. Raw data is often useless if it is not being contextualised and enriched by other data sets that an organisation may not have and would have to buy. By establishing a shared data lake we are 

 opportunity for an infinite number of data providers, scientists and innovators to scale innovation by being able to enrich their data and build better algorithms; which will in turn allow them to scale innovation and measure their impact for the planet. Within classical business models and company structures, to operate on such a scale is simply not possible. DeFi is providing new 

 frameworks to allow something like this to come into existence.

, especially digital and VR artists, ask me how they could actually build a real time model of the planet. Turns out they cannot because there is no available data on our most precious environments. For example, you can easily build a digital twin of San Francisco because of the ubiquitous sensor and GPS signals in urban areas; but you cannot build a digital twin of the Amazon. It turns out that where we would need the most visibility to see 

 on is absolutely in the dark. So artists, like 

, that are building immersive data based experiences of a tree, for example in their project ‘Tree Hugger’ would gain access to real time data sets in the Amazon rainforest via our data lake. This would create visibility and engage audiences into what is really going on in the Amazon.

AN: Could you speak more about ÆRTH token economy?

Our token economy allows to pay every data provider and scientist involved in this process with an infinite number of participants. Centralised companies would structurally not be able to do that.

AN: You keep using this hashtag #showmeyourdata. What does this mean?

All these impact investors and companies are telling us about their “impact”, but besides their press release there is no chartable evidence for their impact. We lack a data model that can transparently and reliably prove these companies and KPIs true impact in a way that is legible to everybody. This is what we are building. Data transparency leads to trust and collaboration on mass scale to unforeseen innovations and solutions for the planet.

AN: Can you speak further about the ÆRTH dataverse?

Raw data only has value if it is being enriched and contextualised, which is the basis to create a good algorithm. An algorithm can only be impactful if it is being visualised in real time so that people can interact with it. This then leads to knowledge and awareness. So the dataverse is using this growing interconnected web of algorithms, and giving them a visual language and a body. This is what we call dynamic data NFTs, but I do not want to go into this before we launch. Such a geo and time hashed data verse would give the basis for a VR experience or a game to actually run on real world data instead of just depicting an imaginary world.

AN: As an organisation of artists, Apiary is really interested in what NFTs are. I think we are still at a stage where most people don’t get it, and a lot of it just looks like crappy street art right now. Carl, can you comment on why you think NFTs are promising?

Carl H Smith: I hosted a panel on NFTs at the British computer society over the summer and I am particularly fascinated by this technology, because recently we have gone through quite a period of artists being devalued, especially musicians, (through platforms such as Spotify).

As soon as something becomes data it can become easily copied and therefore has the potential to lose its original value. NFTs can enable to logging of  intellectual property and could eventually act as an alternative form of trademarking or patenting. This is because NFTs are logged on the blockchain as, 'this original creation has been created by X'. NFTs for IP is one of the things I’m interested in and is the reason why I am working with groups like UNCOPIED. UNCOPIED look at how we can certify that a piece of work is indeed by the original artists. In terms of collecting NFTs, I think it’s quite problematic.

I’ve just invested in Damien Hirst’s project, 'The Currency' project, which is starting to get really interesting. Damien Hirst created 10,000 original artworks, which have initially launched as 10,000 NFTs. If you were lucky enough to get one, you have to now decide between burning the actual original artwork and keeping the NFT, or not keeping the NFT and taking your original artwork. When the project first started the buyers imagined, 'Oh well, clearly, I’m going to take the original Damien Hirst artwork for two grand' (which was the initial price of the lottery).

AP: Okay I know where this is going. He is so smart! 

CHT: So it’s called a Tender, and there are 10,000 Tenders, so he’s effectively created his own bitcoin. The reason why Tender has gone mental is because what was two grand, is now 30-40 grand, per Tender. 

Each Tender has its own individual name. Hirst used AI to create the names, and employed assistants to create the original artworks, they’re spot paintings, they’re about 8 x 4” in size. But everyone now is questioning, ‘Why would I keep the original artwork that’s never going to be worth 50 grand?’ It can only be worth 50 grand if everyone keeps their NFTs. So initially they all predicted most buyers would not keep the NFT – so maybe 90% would keep the original artwork, 10% would keep the NFT. Now it’s gone the other way. Fortunately the collectors don’t have to decide for a year, but effectively all that artwork could be burnt in favour of the virtual. Obviously people hate Damien Hirst for it – and it’s not even a new idea because Duchamp did it in the 30s; but I think it is super interesting from the NFT perspective.

AP: Well, first of all I think it’s genius what he’s doing, because ultimately he’s already pointing the finger on how the art market works. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if you hold the art piece, because what you hold is a signature that it’s an authentic Damien Hirst. And every artist can get to a point where he’s just making a spotted painting or whatever he wants, you know just a doodle, but because his name is underneath it, it can be sold on the art market for a very high price. So in that moment he basically says: If art is reduced to just the market value, then you can just make a license, digitalise the license, and keep the artwork. So ultimately he’s just exposing what is already inherent in the art market.

CHS: Exactly. But also I think art should be here to save the world, not to destroy it. At the moment, NFTs are very dirty for the planet. What I’m pushing for is a green revolution caused by the demands of electricity going through the roof because of artists and because of NFT hype.

AN: I'd like to talk more about the MLF project. Did you ever try 'Tree Hugger'?

CHS: It was amazing, right? So that was a lidar scanner which created a real 3D digital twin of a Redwood tree, captured I believe in Yosemite Park, California. I’ve been there; it’s astonishing. They got a lot of criticism for the project such as ‘Oh, you know it’s digital disconnect, you’re not in nature'. But you kind of are in a new form of nature; but it is not a CGI; is an actual digital twin of the tree and, for me my reaction was that we need to protect this.

The mycelium have survived five mass extinctions and humans are causing the sixth. What is it about mycellium intelligence that is opposed to the cult of the individual. We’re talking about something far, far more potent, which is parallel processing. So if we could create a digital twin of those mycelium networks, a digital twin of the Amazon, then what’s the next step? What I’d love us to get together with Marshmallow Laser Feast, with an expert in NFT, and also with Rain reforesting idea, because I would love to get my head around how we could all work together to create something profound that would protect the Amazon. The reason why the Amazon is being destroyed is because people on the ground who live in the Amazon think that it’s their responsibility to work the land, right? So unless they’re actually incentivised not to destroy the Amazon, then they’re going to destroy the Amazon.

CHS: So when will we be able to see the first sight of ÆRTH?

AP: We are hoping to present in May 2022. Watch this space. 

is a Digital Creator and founder of ÆRTH. Follow the project  at 

 is the Director of the Learning Technology Research Centre (LTRC) and Principal Research Fellow at Ravensbourne University London. You can find out more about Carl's work in his recent 

New ÆRTH rising

The dawn of the internet age came with giddy predictions of a new

Mattha Busby asks if NFTs might help do just to this.

In 1973 the The New York Times posed the question, ‘

Writers, Composers and Actors Collect Royalties: Why Not Artists?’

 in response to a famous incident when artist Robert Rauschenberg  

 collector Robert Scull, who had resold his abstract oil piece for almost 100 times what he had paid the painter. There were few potential solutions for the much demanded provision of artist royalties; and whilst  subsequent proposals for a US resale law did not pick up traction, the protestations of Rauschenberg can be seen as the first brick in the wall of a movement to ensure the better treatment of artists.

But since the creation of blockchain –- perhaps most widely recognised as the host of  Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies— a new system of artwork ownership has been established, replacing a storage facility with a digital data log. Digital and physical pieces' rights are stored within Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on public, decentralised ledgers hosted on the blockchain; and include a significant embedded resale royalty stipulation that flows back to the original creator each time it is resold.  So would Rauschenberg and others put their faith in NFTs and online marketplaces over traditional collectors and dealers?

“When ownership rights are digital you can code them in a way to easily enforce their rules,” says Kayvon Tehranian, the founding CEO of NFT marketplace Foundation which has seen $100m in sales this year. “We honour an automated 10% royalty to the original creator whenever a piece is sold in the secondary market. It gets sent to the creator automatically. You don't need to file any paperwork with us.”


NFTs hit headlines last year amidst an avalanche of new artworks, as their sales raked in tens of millions, including at legacy institutions such as Christie's auction house.  While some dismiss it all as a fad, many view the swift rise of art hosted by NFTs as potentially utopian and extremely disruptive: imagine a world without parasitic intermediaries and prude, corrupt tastemakers, they say.

NFTs were reportedly invented in 2012 by  two creative technologists, John Watkinson and Matt Hall, seeking to issue real-world assets on the open ledger where cryptocurrency transactions are recorded, whilst the NFT widely-recognised as 

 (pictured above) was created in May 2014.  Prior to their invention, digital creations could not be automatically afforded property rights. Through this nascent technology, Tehranian says it is simple to place some control on downstream sales. “The mainstream systems currently in place are legally-oriented, very expensive, and biased towards the privileged few that can even understand them,” he contends. But code just runs and runs, and the digits seemingly have no feelings about the matters at hand (or do they?).

The dawning of the internet age (and previously, capitalism) provoked giddy predictions that a new era of greater equality beckoned. Information would be shared more freely than ever before, knowledge would be democratised as everyone had an encyclopaedia at their fingertips, and the truth would be difficult to suppress, or so they said.

Now, however, large parts of the web are subject to oligarchic control by decree and it is facing ever-increasing state censorship, too. People are also tracked incessantly and manipulated into buying products, some of which are potentially destructive. The internet nonetheless retains unprecedented power for people to disseminate valuable information, but early apparent democratic victories have receded.

“We're in that moment where we can't yet see how the world changes from this technology,” Tehranian says, also alluding to potentially earth-shattering disruptions presented by cryptocurrencies (his platform runs solely on ethereum). “There will be new businesses that put more money in the pockets of people creating the content and the value of these networks,” he prophesises.

The royalty-disbursing technology could also be seriously troublesome to, among others, the streaming industry gravy train – with songwriters earning about 50% of radio revenues but exponentially less from plays on multibillion platforms like Spotify. Some music labels have also previously faced criticism for not passing on royalties to artists, most notably US singer-songwriter Rodriguez, whose remarkable story of being unaware 500,000 of his records had been sold in South Africa won an Oscar for the Searching for Sugarman documentary maker.

Krista Kim, a visual artist who famously sold her “Mars House”, the first NFT digital house, for $500,000 in 2013, also sketches a revolutionary vision of a better future world without intermediaries such as bankers, auctioneers, and agents. “I believe NFTs are not only about art,” she says, “they are the backbone and foundation for our decentralised future in economy and governance. You have this trustless-based smart contract system between two parties that doesn’t need to be verified or mediated by a third party.”

Everything is on the blockchain and transparent, Kim adds, as opposed to the sometimes crusty and opaque world of art ownership. “It’s the intermediation that causes corruption through the centralisation of power and influence. We don't have to spend time, energy and human capital in finding ways to screw one another, because there’s no longer loopholes: we can just focus on co-creating and making life better. In an NFT system, you can’t screw me.

But such systems will continue to operate in wider, often flawed, ecosystems. In September 2021, street artist Banksy’s website 

 by a scammer who added a new page announcing the sale of an NFT artwork criticising the pollution caused by Bitcoin mining on NFT marketplace OpenSea. It sold for $340,000. But then the prankster, in a further bizarre twist, refunded the money. However, it was obviously Banksy’s website security failing which was to blame (though the purchaser also didn’t twig on the marketplace that the artwork was not genuine).

“Very, very, very few of these NFTs will hold their value,” predicts art critic Ben Davis, author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class. “I can name multiple movements in the traditional art world where pieces were selling for millions of dollars and then the markets collapsed.” He also remains mindful that galleries, museums, curators and critics like himself may also perform valuable roles. “One of the things about gatekeepers is that they also invite people through the gate. Going to a gallery saves you 1,000 studio visits. Someone has done a bit of work to nominate something as important and worthy of your attention.” Eliminating gatekeepers does, however, create room for new voices to enter the scene, Davis adds, but new third parties–such as NFT marketplaces, trendsetters and brands cashing in on the boom–soon emerge. “I think those structures are a little more inaccessible to people over time,” he claims.

This crypto and NFT marketplace boom–a period not dissimilar from the dot-com bubble in which excessive stock market speculation over internet companies went up in smoke, ruining families–could lead to a similar black hole of debt for many. “The symbol of the internet bubble was a sock-puppet,” Davis says of the Pets.com spokespuppet. “Then it all crashed and people lost a tonne of money.” He also points to the 90s comic book boom, and draws parallels between boomers flash with disposable cash and smug crypto early-adopters today. “In the end, it was a big bubble, Marvel Comics went bankrupt and lots of teenagers lost their allowance. Others were tricked into investing.” However, despite his general scepticism amid wild market speculation for many unimpressive pieces (mostly animals doing cute human things, he scorns), Davis does believe that automated royalties is an “exciting” innovation.

“But it has never been the case that the problems faced by a majority of artists is getting a cut of the resales,” he asserts. “The problem for the majority of the artists is to even get any sales at all; because most art is valueless and can’t find a market.” A relatively small number of artists whose artworks grow in value over time may benefit, but a new royalty scheme does not solve fundamental inequalities of many artists neither having audiences nor being socioeconomically connected, Davis argues.

Damien Hirst’s recent NFT collection, “The Currency”, highlights this, while “almost making a joke” out of the market, according to the critic. It involved 10,000 near-identical polka-dotted $2,000 A4 paintings each corresponding to an NFT which was signed and numbered by the shark-in-formaldehyde artist. Purchasers could decide whether to take the physical version or the digital imprint, with the paper copy burned if the latter was chosen. One of the physically-kept works, titled “Yes”, has since been resold for $120,000 – making a 6,000% return for the original buyer and potentially substantial royalties for Hirst.

Exhibition

A group show for the Winter Solstice 8-22 December 2021

Interview

Adina Popescu envisages a new world order in her visionary ÆRTH project

Interview

We talk to Zam Zam Records about their eclectic and colourful catalogue.

ARCHIVE

Interview

Antenna talks to Jemma Foster about her experimental multi-sensory publishing house Wild Alchemy Lab.

Interview

A conversation with Magnhild Kennedy.

Leslie Deere introduces her new project ARRAY INFINITIVE, which merges meditative practice with experimental VR participation. Workshop on 26 February.

Interview

Stephen Romano talks about his life as a collector and dealer working with esoteric and outsider arts.

Feature

The dawn of the internet age came with giddy predictions of a new more open and egalitarian era. Mattha Busby asks if NFTs might help do just to this.

ARCHIVE

Feature

New work by artist in residence Diz_qo in collaboration with the Mediaeval Babes

ARCHIVE

ARCHIVE

Exhibition

It's been four long years since Simon & Garfunkel's final tour but this disturbing robotic simulacrum should give comfort for those hankering for the octogenarian folk-rock duo's soothing melodies