Tarot & Art: An Interview with Ginevra Petrozzi

Anmerkung: Die deutschsprachige Übersetzung findet sich auf tarot-guide.de. Dieser Artikel dient der Dokumentation des Original-Interviews.

In October, I saw an arte Twist episode on contemporary witches and their relationship to art and design. This inspired me to ask one of the portrayed artists, Ginevra Petrozzi, some questions on her tarot practices and the symbolic use of mysticism and witchcraft in her work.

On her website, Ginevra writes:

Digital esoterism explores how divination tools might be refashioned in order to reclaim a sense of agency against Big Data, which, in the era of Surveillance Capitalism, has become a quasi-magical entity predicting and programming the future. Reaching into the origin of magic as an anti-capitalist tool could change the way we perceive modern systems of control such as Big Data, and Surveillance Capitalism, which often, without our consent and knowledge, guide our choices and actions. […] Ginevra Petrozzi performs readings placing Tarots in a digital perspective and reading digital realities using the smartphone, like one would read a Tarot card. Ads based on your Google search history, suggested Instagram posts linked to online interests: what do these modern signs, this automated flow of content algorithms fill our phones with daily, say about us and our future?

There’s also a video on Youtube:

When and how do you use Tarot in your work as an artist?

I start my experience as a Tarot reader, and a passionate lover of divination techniques. I attempt to translate my knowledge of symbols and pattern recognition that I gathered from reading cards, to finally interpret algorithmic content. The conversation is always a negotiation of meaning between the querent and I. I bring my sensibility as a reader, they bring their own experience as the holders of the smartphone. Everything passing through there is something they have planted before in some way.

So one suggested content can indeed presage a positive or negative outcome, but not as a self-standing statement. It is always put in perspective, as much as in Tarots, where each card needs to be mediated in the type of question being asked, or the feeling of the reading throughout.

Why did you choose tarot as a tool? It seems to be more about the practice of cartomancy than the „structure“ of the 78 cards.

First came the cards. I have always been fascinated by the magic world, narrated by De Martino, Frazer, Federici. Studying the laws of magical thinking, and divination in particular, I realised how similar the ancient world was to our current situation. I took the role of the witch, or the Tarot reader specifically, to offer myself as a mediator between the process of receiving a future (suggested by automated tools) and interpreting it (changing its purpose).

How does reading smartphones like cards help a „digital sovereignty“ in our late modern times? Is it about making visible what the algorithm, designs, interfaces usually hide – like making visible symbols that are normally hidden in artwork?

In an undefined past, the future presented itself as fate, a pre-written path. Divination, as the art of foretelling the future through various techniques, was perfectly plausible. It allowed to peek behind a curtain of something already decided. This would grant a sense of agency and control to people, petrified by the inescapability of chaos and determined nature of their destiny. With modernism, and enlightenment, the future slowly became something to be built, action by action, reinforced by the promises of neoliberalism.

With my practice I challenge the open nature of the future. I argue that the future still feels like fate, only regulated by different “magical” agents. In the case of our current system, it is Big Tech corporations, algorithms and predictive networks that try to regulate our future and fixate it. Reading and interpreting these signs become a way to resist their sovereignty over our future.

What other projects about „digital esoterism“ are you working on right now?

I am working on a system of locked doors to enclose digital screens, and depicting apotropaic decorations usually found on architectural components.

What other artists you like have worked with tarot?

Adelita Husni Bei („The Reading“, ed.) and Valentina Desideri („Poethical Reading“, ed.) are my all time favorites, and an absolute source of inspiration since the start of my studies.

Ginevra Petrozzi (Website, Instagram) is an interdisciplinary designer and artist currently living and working in The Netherlands. She completed her MA in Social Design from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2021, for which she received a Cum Laude, Best Thesis Award, and won the Gijs Bakker Award 2021. Currently, she is exploring the possibilities of mysticism and the occult within the landscape of contemporary techno-politics. In this framework, she took the role of a “digital witch”, reclaiming the archetypal role of the sorceress as a healer, and as a political rebel.