School of Thought
Purification by Courtney Brooke from Wild Alchemy Journal, Fire Edition
Myth and Magic Making: Art as a Sacred Act
explores how myth, ritual, and alchemical thinking continue to shape contemporary artistic practice. Artist Jemma Foster reframes magic not as belief or spectacle, but as a critical, relational methodology for sensing uncertainty, material intelligence, and ecological entanglement.
Wild Alchemy Lab is a creative consultancy and mixed-media publishing studio, founded by Jemma, exploring human and more-than-human imagination at the intersection of art and technology. The talk will be accompanied by a screening of short films and immersive soundscapes from the WAL collective – including Bones Tan Jones, Kyriaki Goni and Miriam Simun – that blend documentary, speculative fiction, and ritual performance, posing poetic inquiries into the role of technology and magic in re-enchanting ecological consciousness and ancestral intelligence.
Still from Firebird, featuring Bones Tan Jones
Jemma Foster
is an inter-disciplinary artist, writer and creative director. Her work researches human and more-than-human consciousness and imagination at the intersection of art and technology. Rooted in a background in plant and vibrational medicine, her practice draws from alchemy, geomancy and social dreaming to create biotherapeutic soundscapes, immersive installations and guided rituals for interspecies communication. Her work has been exhibited and performed at galleries and institutions worldwide including Somerset House, The Barbican, ICA London, Ars Electronica, and the UN Conference of Parties.
Jemma is the founder and director of creative consultancy and mixed-media publishing studio Wild Alchemy Lab, and half of the artist duo Semantica, which was awarded the Golden Nica for Digital Music and Sound Art at Ars Electronica 2023. She is the author of Sacred Geometry (Octopus, 2020), Wild Alchemy Lab: An Astro-botanical Remedy Deck (Laurence King, 2023), Wild Alchemy: An Astro-Botanical Guide to the Magic, Myth and Medicine of Plants (Laurence King, 2024).
Myth and Magic Making: Art as a Sacred Act
Talk + Film Screening
21st of April 2026
14:30
ESAD | 1.5 hrs (Opening ritual, talk, film screening, Q&A, closing ritual)
Location: ESAD Caldas da Rainha
Still from Firebird, featuring Bones Tan Jones