DAMN° 85 - Summer 2023

The Seduction of Magic

To believe in magic leads designers to solutions no one else would notice and encourages artists to look at the world with a free gaze. And it’s the world of magic that both artists and designers unwittingly turn-to in their skillful manipulation of story, effect, and technique.

Magic is a momentous tool. Witchcraft and the supernatural very much influenced Shakespeare in plays from Macbeth to Hamlet. Even psychoanalysis, typically considered a strictly intellectual and therapeutic pursuit, purports that people are subject to forces hidden from the conscious mind, which edges suspiciously close to spiritualist ideas. If we, as rational beings, are not in control of our minds, who is?

And yet magic, religion, and science all have some thinking in common. Progress — rather than taking humanity on a journey from ignorant and naïve to rational — kept certain key elements firmly in place. All three systems assume the existence of invisible agencies that can be encouraged to act in a particular way, and all three take for granted a cause and effect scheme of things while elevating the power of the expert.

In DAMN’s new MAGIC issue, we look to those artists and designers who are exploring the complex connection between magic and technology; who are toying with belief, the impossible, altered minds, love, and the mystery of Nature, to allow us to query our own understanding of the world. Because, like Shakespeare and Freud, artists, intellectuals, and writers will never stop believing. Even if it’s difficult to explain why or how in clear and rational language, enchantment and wizardry are essential elements of life.