What if art was never just art? In this episode of Your Art Is A Spell, I'm taking you with me to the Humboldt Forum in Berlin — one of the most beautiful and complicated buildings in the world — to explore a question that has been living in me since I arrived in this city: What is art, really, and what happens to it when it gets archived?

Every culture that has ever existed on this earth has made art. And almost without exception, every culture that has ever made art has also practiced magic. These were never two separate things. They are one impulse — the human insistence that the invisible is real, that life is more than what you can touch and measure.

Art is living emergence. It's what happens when human intention enters into relationship with material and something comes through that neither the maker nor the material could have produced alone.

The Humboldt Forum holds thousands of sacred objects from cultures across the globe — objects that in their original context were never just art. They were portals. They were alive. And there they are, inside a reconstructed Prussian palace. I walk through this space not to perform outrage, but to feel what happens to living emergence when it gets archived. And what I find surprises me.

Featuring the Joliba Friendship Choir and the Pet Shop Bears performing live inside the museum on the day I visited — because life force finds its way through.

This episode 2 of Season 2: Tactical Magic.

🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-art-is-a-spell/id1796481637

If this episode speaks to you, share it with a fellow magic-maker. Your art is a spell — and it is changing the world around us.

Time Stamps
00:00:00] Welcome to Your Art Is A Spell | Berlin Artist Residency Introduction
[00:00:24] Researching Wixárika Sacred Art at the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin
[00:00:50] Introducing Season 2: Tactical Magic
[00:01:03] Every Culture Has Made Art AND Magic — They Are One Impulse
[00:01:28] Art vs. Western Regimentation: How Magic & Art Were Separated
[00:02:18] Defining Art as Living Emergence
[00:02:57] Heading to the Humboldt Forum: Sacred Objects in a Prussian Palace
[00:03:37] Arriving at the Humboldt Forum | The Palace Is the Message
[00:04:49] Colonial Collections: Objects from West Africa, the Americas & Asia
[00:05:07] Can You Feel the Life Force? Vibration & Residue in Archived Objects
[00:05:22] Surprise: Live Choirs Performing Inside the Museum
[00:05:40] 🎶 Joliba Friendship Choir Live at the Humboldt Forum Foyer
[00:06:39] 🎶 Pet Shop Bears Gay Men's Choir Live in the Americas Section
[00:07:25] Sacred Ceramics & Ancestral Altars from Mexico, Peru, Guatemala & More
[00:08:02] Art Is Living Emergence — Even Behind Glass, the Life Force Persists
[00:08:11] On Archival Practices & Repatriation at the Humboldt Forum
[00:08:44] Wixárika Yarn Paintings, Niericas & Sacred Shamanic Technologies
[00:09:06] The Artwork Is the Portal. The Making Is the Ceremony.
[00:09:09] What Does the Archive Do to a Portal? Interrupting the Circuit
[00:09:50] The Humboldt Forum's Colonial History Room — Naming the Tension
[00:10:20] Art Made with Intention Cannot Be Fully Contained
[00:10:44] Sitting Outside the Museum: Energy Fields & Tactical Magic in Berlin
[00:11:06] Using Your Body as Antenna — Resonating with Life on Earth
[00:12:13] The Creative Calling: When Inspiration Moves Through You
[00:12:31] Woken Up in the Middle of the Night to Create — Do You Know This Feeling?
[00:13:15] Your Art Is a Spell: Channeling the Divine Every Time You Create
[00:13:46] Tactical Magic for Witches Who Feel Untrained or Outside the Lineage
[00:14:06] There Is No Right or Wrong Way to Practice Tactical Magic
[00:14:48] We Are at a Crossroads: Why Tactical Magic Is Needed Right Now
[00:15:07] Your Presence & Body Hold All the Wisdom You Need
[00:15:22] Vibrate. Resonate. Channel. | Closing Invocation from Berlin