MEDEA 010

ISSUE 010 OCTOBER 2024

Image: Jason and Medea by John William Waterhouse (1907).

AN ARCANE OCTOBER

Welcome to October! This is the first edition of The Medea for this academic year. This month we will engage with the divine, infernal, and arcane.

In honour of the sorceress that acts as our namesake, this October, The Medea spotlights the association between the occult, femininity and the relationship between their marginalisation.

Somewhat haunted by summer, autumn has finally crept into London. The chills down your spine may be the product of the cold air but who’s to say? It’s time to dim the lights, and sip a warm brew, and allow this newsletter to usher you into the particularly cold mornings of a new academic year.

The uncanny, spooky and unearthly are often inherently transgressive, blurring the boundaries between earthly and spiritual realms and our own internal classifications. We invite you on this Autumn day to sit and witness the mysterious with us.

Explore the rest of the newsletter and have a blessed day!

Wed, Oct 23

Peace at the Expense of Freedom: Western Anti-Imperialism on Ukraine.

Challenging the lack of solidarity between Ukraine and Palestine activists in the UK, this article demonstrates how Western anti-imperialism has become simplistic. This piece challenges those who prioritise condemnation of the West over solidarity.

EXHIBITS WELL WORTH A LOOK

The Divine Theatre of Seyni Awa Camara

@ the gallery of everything

6 october to 17 november

This exhibition is a curation of work by Seyni Awa Camara, an octogenarian Senagelese artist engaging with mysticism, magic and forest spirits who inform her daily practice. This is a small selection of her work and her first solo exhibition in the UK.

It’s free for all and worth visiting to watch the documentary Giving Birth (2015) directed by Fatou Kandr Senghor located in the deep heart of the exhibition.

EXHIBIT LINK

Dante’s Inferno

@ 3 hanover square

28 september to 3 november

A multidisciplinary group exhibition inspired by Dante Alighieri’s poem Inferno, part 1 of The Divine Comedy. The artists are unnamed, evoking the idea of the nameless masses screaming in the abyss, only to go unheard.

Allow us to be your Virgil, guiding you through this exhibition that serves to equally horrify and bemuse, featuring figures that seem to look directly through you to sculptures at the entrance demarcating your entry into perdition. As you descend the stairs to enter this exhibition, we assure you that this departs from the typical imagery of fire and brimstone to something more unsettling. We wait in anticipation for this to haunt you.

EXHIBIT LINK

Tibet Film Festival

22 november to 24 novermber

Look out for this film festival and check for upcoming information!

With silver daggers and bloodied lambs, the film Jinpa directed by Pema Tseden, perfectly encapsulates the ominous ambience of the season.

FESTIVAL LINK

OUR OCTOBER PLAYLIST

These tracks centre the community and kinship often associated with embracing the preternatural. This can be the soundtrack to the practices that sustain you, whether that be your little glamour ritual of blasting music as you do your skincare routine or gathering your coven and getting out your tarot cards, use these songs to soothe the soul!

TRACKLIST

Mystic Dream — Loreena McKennitt
I’d Rather Be Burned As A Witch — Eartha Kitt
Millie, Warm the Kettle - Dorm Demo — Rabbitology
Bruja — La Perla
Majaak — Fatima Al Qadiri
Gjuha — The Last Dinner Party

LISTEN ALONG

make your own magic this reading week

embrace the divine alchemy of your own becoming

you have our blessing

The Medea