Left: Still from video (video available here and here) of panel discussion Cine de la liberación - dislocaciones binarias y diáspora negra in which Beshir participated
Right: Still from video (video available here and here) from Annie MacDonell's video OUTTHERE (for Lee Lozano)
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I wrote these past few weeks about two women who penetrated the occult while presenting their works in an artistic context: Jessica Beshir and Annie MacDonell. [Find more postings here on them through this site's "search box."]
It is intriguing to try to decipher why they chose this medium, this occult.
In the case of Beshir, her film Faya Dayi has multiple layers, autobiographical in an obtuse way, political, but also as a way to expose or bring out a particular form of worship, of incantations, through which her young Oromo male protagonists evoke pre-Muslim/Sufi-Muslim spirits.
The turmoil of Beshir's conclusion that these Oromo were stigmatized by Ethiopia, and in particular the civilizational leaders, the Amhara, that these Oromo were "oppressed," allowed space for spiritual forces to enter her psyche. I have refuted this racial oppression that Beshir presents in her interviews (and which you can access through the "search box" at the top of this site). So Beshir's anger, even rage, and indignation has to be placated by one of two forces: through God, the Christian God, or evocations of nefarious forces. I think she chose the latter. She chose the occult.
Annie MacDonell uses feminist ideology to soothe her rage, palpable in the kind of art she makes, where in one instance she uses a photograph of The Pieta by Michelangelo from St. Peter’s Basilica and "splits," dismantles, Jesus' head. No Christianity for her. And Christ is male, as is God. MacDonell thus evokes the (female) witch's presence to relieve this rage.
Beshir's and MacDonell's anger is incited by what they perceive to be wrongs, and wrong-doings, done to them as specific entities through femaleness (MacDonell), and through ethnicity/race (Beshir). Both women referenced their own personal identity - femaleness and ethnicity/race as a starting point to delve further into the occult.
Beshir chose her Oromo ethnic identity, latched onto the ideology of racism, transferred this to the racism she maintains these Oromo experience, and used the Oromo mythology in pre-Islam/Sufi mystics' Islam to evoke spirits.
MacDonell chose her feminine identity, latched onto the feminist ideology, and evoked witches, her culture's particular spirits.
Aggression and anger from a deep-seated sense of wrong doing they feel is directed at them (personally, and then at their larger group) propel these women into ideological animosity, which then evokes animus, an animating spirit, which then let these spirits enter their being, their work, and their life.