Hypnosis is a naturally occurring state that we access multiple times a day. Our minds are altered and influenced all the time by our intake of social media, music, advertising, and films. The Divine Feminine School of Hypnosis suggests that we can use the very tool that can work against us to work for us, utilizing hypnosis as the medicine of the imagination, a tool to decondition the effects that media and technology have on our psyche by reclaiming our subconscious as a sovereign territory. Discussing contemporary and historical practices in hypnosis and technology, participants will be lead gently through a guided mass hypnosis.
About the Disassembler Roundtable Series Facilitated by Melanie Hoff and in tandem with Maria Antelman Disassembler, this three-part series of participatory roundtables will draw on themes of hypnosis as a tool for control and liberation, techno-animism, and the spiritual intimacy of interface. Together we will ask, what are the physical and psychological impacts of automation processes on the individual and society?
Melanie Hoff is an artist and educator examining the role technology plays in social organization and reinforcing hegemonic structures. Hoff studies how platforms and processes — including algorithms, data collection, social media, networks, simulation, and ritual — yield distinct modes of seeing, thinking, and feeling, structure social organization, and reinforce existing systems of power. They write software, lead experimental workshops, teach Critical Interaction Design at Rutgers University, are an organizer and teacher at the School for Poetic Computation, is a founding member of the Cybernetics Library, and Summer 2019 Tech Resident at Pioneer Works.
Shauna Cummins is a Clinical Hypnosis Practitioner, board certificated through the National Guild of Hypnotists in 2012. As a hypnotist she uses an integrative approach, utilizing creative visualization, neuro linguistic programming, meditation and energy psychology, which works to help her clients transform old limiting patterns into new positive ones, allowing for a more expansive relationship with their self.She holds a private practice in NYC and is a resident healer at Maha Rose, Brooklyn. She regularly teaches classes in NYC and Europe. Her work as a hypnotist and performance artist has been showcased at the Center for Contemporary Art in Glasgow, Scotland, The Ace Hotel, Mediums Residency NYC, Apexart and the Queens Museum of NYC, Borealis Music Festival, Norway, Obonjan Island, Croatia, James Hotel Fourbodies Wellness, NYC. In Winter 2019, she will perform a live hypno-narrative at The National Gallery of Denmark in collaboration with Joachim Koester's exhibition "Patterns, Shimmers, Scenes."
Lily Benson is a filmmaker, visual artist, and hypnotist. Her work examines feminist history and reconstructs it into new narrative forms. She currently works as a creative adviser at The New York Times and is the co-founder of Cinema COBRA, a curatorial platform for expanded cinema. Her work has appeared at places like CPH:DOX, Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, The Hand Gallery, The Brooklyn Museum, Freight and Volume, and Nicolai Wallner Gallery. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York City and an MFA from Malmö Art Academy in Sweden. Lily is on a mission to make our world a more experimental place.
The Divine Feminine School of Hypnosis is a hypnosis training program with a feminist-driven curriculum, founded by Cummins and Benson in 2018.