"The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force" wrote the Swedish mystic and artist Hilma af Klint of her process. "I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke."

Mediumistic artists like af Klint tend to be regarded as surprising anomalies within the history of fine art, but "channeling" as a creative practice has deep roots in traditional societies all over the world. This lecture examines the work of outsider artists, spiritualists, and other visionaries united by their compulsion to render visually their interior worlds.

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Co-founder of the bands Hair and Space Museum and Midday Veil, Emily Pothast is a multimedia artist, writer, and curator whose research-based practice traces overlapping histories of media, politics, and belief. Her writing has appeared in The Wire, Art in America, Art Practical, and Hyperallergic. This fall, she is beginning work on a PhD in Art and Religion at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.