Magic Nihilism

Abstract

Magic Nihilism conceptually alludes to a present encounter with current geo-­political and environmental crisis, global hegemony and the material ruins and waste of late capitalism (and its political precedents) with ontological direction led by the emerging movement of New Materialism, theories on the Anthropocene and the ongoing post-­human dialectics in relation to contemporary art practice. In this paper I discuss how within this framework and in my art practice associations with "magic nihilism" are implied through the correlation and intersection with matter as both a physical and metaphysical referent. Central in this exploration, a Nietzschian concept of nihilism, to allow for more obscure and enigmatic outcomes, is key. In this paper I also reference current artists working today who, whilst relating to the discursive of post minimalism and conceptual practice, place an emphasis of on the performative, immersive, and a new envisioning of what I propose as "magic nihilism" which also posits collectivity, interchangeability and dynamism in the equation;; not residing in “bodies or things” but all encompassing and constantly in flux. I also use examples of this engagement in contemporary art practice which makes vivid this “effluvia”: climates, electric currents, mist, sound vibrations, gas, magnets, vapour, perfume, charges, telepathy, surges, conduits, odour, osmosis, atmosphere and (meta) physics which I also argue characteristically both reflects and defies the oxymoronic proposition of the thesis title.