I consider that resistance and revolution may be seeded in artwork. Permitting our brains to experiment with completely different futures can assist these futures really feel potential. Though the world of Cube [in this deck] is a Capitalist one, I additionally wished to make specific that there’s the chance for this establishment to be disrupted.
Felix Kawitzky
Felix Kawitzky is the artist and author behind the Tarot of Many Doors, a fantastical, monochrome tarot set in area and that includes otherworlds of cube and potions, flightless birds and etheric, amorphous beings. It’s witty, considerate, transferring, playful and splendidly queer.
Felix lives in London, the place they’re additionally at work on their first novel – sci-fi, after all 🙂 I caught up with them final month to speak in regards to the emergence of their tarot deck, its themes of anticapitalism and queerness, and the significance of imaginative worldbuilding as a method we are able to imaginative and prescient and play with different futures.
Beth: Hey Felix! How’s the vibe down in London? It’s a cool, overcast day as we speak…although I’m feeling sleepy and emotional and having plenty of *emotions* this week, which I’m making an attempt to not over-think (ha). Additionally, it’s bin day so there may be plenty of noise outdoors my window. Additionally, there was a photo voltaic eclipse this morning! I need to confess, I didn’t discover a factor. How about you?
Felix: Beth! It’s sizzling and atmospherically stormy in London and I’ve simply completed up a spooky roleplaying recreation with some associates, which feels applicable. Pleasant that there was a photo voltaic eclipse if you wrote me, although a while has handed since then! Now the moon is wobbling, apparently, which is worrying. Area!
B: I pulled a card to kick off this interview and bought the Reverie of Potions. They give the impression of being how I really feel! I’m taking it as a reminder that it’s completely superb to be a spongy mess of feelings and never really feel like I’ve my shit collectively in any respect (lol). I’m simply going to give attention to having enjoyable along with your great deck 🙂
And yeah – for me it’s a enjoyable deck to make use of. There’s plenty of humour and wit – I simply love seeing these acquainted Pamela Colman Smith scenes reimagined with space-folks and non-human otherworld. Is it a enjoyable deck, in your opinion/expertise?
F: I’ve such a smooth spot for that little determine within the Reverie of Potions! They usually appeared in an appropriately fluid method, as most of the characters within the Potions go well with did – experimental, liquid traces ultimately uniting to type an individual.
My hope is that there’s a mixture of one thing playful, bizarre, and acquainted when studying with the Many Doorways Tarot. Translating the symbols and imagery from the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith illustrations into one thing nebulous however accessible was actually vital to me. The acquainted traits of the RWS turned an anchor, in order that I might steep the playing cards in strangeness, with out them turning into utterly obscure to the reader.
When studying for myself or others, I typically use my crotchety outdated RWS deck. I truly discover it troublesome to make use of my very own deck! Simply because I really feel like I do know it so intimately. I like working with a deck that retains secrets and techniques from me. Although, perhaps I ought to attempt use it just a little extra and see what mysteries and surprises it’d nonetheless maintain!
What I do play with and return to is how the playing cards present perception into completely different worlds – little snapshots and hints at what would possibly exist past the borders of the scene. So, I find yourself utilizing it primarily as a world-building and storytelling assist. I look by means of the playing cards for characters, conditions, plot factors, environments, generally bringing them whole-cloth into different tales, or simply utilizing them as a springboard for one thing new.
Yeah, there’s an actual sense of every world having it’s personal narrative, formed by these characters and their environments. What was your inventive course of like, and was it completely different or much like the novel-writing you’re doing now?
Making the deck was extra like designing a roleplaying recreation, I believe, than writing a novel (although in each circumstances world-building is at all times my favorite half!) Some decks, just like the RWS, do have a form of smooth narrative inbuilt (just like the “Idiot’s Journey”), however Many Doorways is basically non-linear. I spent fairly a little bit of time defining the temper, social constructions, and lifeforms for the fits/worlds, so I knew what sorts of scenes and characters would possibly present up in every. How environments and figures would change in addition to how they specific the emotion and that means of the cardboard.
After I had the world-building down, the deck slowly started to assemble itself piecemeal. Like a tabletop roleplaying recreation, I wished it to facilitate the reader’s journey – for the playing cards to operate as prompts, backdrops, characters, instruments, and so forth, that enable for that story to emerge within the methods they discover and interpret their spreads.
Fascinated by the fits as worlds, and the playing cards as moments inside tales, was most useful for me. There are quite a lot of playing cards whose tales I wish to spend extra time exploring!
So, you’re clearly an enormous sci-fi nerd! What attracts you to the style, and do you will have any fave writers, any who had a specific affect in your deck?
For positive! I believe quite a bit in regards to the wealthy array of dystopias/utopias/heterotopias and different social constructions that function in science fiction, and the chances that the style opens as much as think about alternative ways of serious about relationships, our bodies, communities, and so forth.
There’s that well-known Ursula Ok Le Guin quote, “We stay in capitalism, its energy appears inescapable — however then, so did the divine proper of kings” (2014), that has caught with me as a form of tenet. She goes on to say that these shifts in considering can start in artwork – how creatively exploring different worlds, futures, and presents, can itself be a type of resistance. So, science fiction can operate as pathway not simply in direction of escapism, however to politicised escapism, inviting a questioning of the established order as a lot as hypothesis into the longer term.
Then, there’s the hyperlink between SF and the unusual, alien, or non-human – its capacity to problem anthropocentricism and normative conceptions of our bodies and gender, that resonates with me as a trans individual. There are virtually no people within the Tarot of Many Doorways (I believe solely two?), which was a deliberate and liberating alternative.
This isn’t to say that being trans or gender non-conforming equates to being non-human, however quite that freely exploring different our bodies and lifeforms was and is a joyful and affirming expertise for me, each throughout the creation of the deck, and in my different engagements with SFF content material. Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy, which incorporates an alien race with distinctive conceptions of gender and intercourse, whose bodily type modifications drastically from technology to technology, is a significant reference level right here. Her “Oankali” visually and thematically impressed the entire go well with of Potions, in addition to the Lovers card.
After all, whereas science fiction as a style holds this potential, like fantasy, additionally it is usually utilized by creators in ways in which re-affirm dominant Western energy constructions, sexism, homophobia, white supremacy, imperialism, transphobia, ableism, Capitalism, and so forth. Reproducing the identical oppressions, simply in area.
Temporary rant apart, another vital SF touchstones for the deck are writers like Samuel Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin, Rivers Solomon, N. Ok Jemisin, and Ann Leckie.
Rant heard! Let’s speak queer artwork. I believe quite a bit about what makes a deck ‘queer’ (if such a factor may be specified, I’m unsure – it’s slippery by nature proper?)… it has to do with mess, I believe – decks usually really feel queer to me when they’re disruptive, anti-normative, chaotic and brashly imperfect… how about you?
I like that – the hyperlink between mess, disruption, and queerness. The queerness of the deck is certainly linked to that chaotic power – an assertion of its personal inside logic, in addition to its slipperiness and resistance to being precisely outlined. As a result of the imagery options largely non-human characters in otherworldly environments, its queerness isn’t expressed through literal representations of LGBTQIA+ experiences on Earth. I did fear initially about how readable it will be as queer. Fortunately, although, I’ve seen that you just and lots of different customers of the deck have been in a position to choose up on that power!
I’ve additionally renamed among the Main Arcana and Court docket Playing cards to push again on the gender stereotypes that they usually reproduce in traditional decks just like the RWS – restricted and essentialised concepts of “female” and “masculine” traits. Hopefully that gives extra space and alternatives for identification and resonance throughout a proliferation of genders.
It actually does. And I like that the 4 fits are distinct ‘worlds’ on this deck. It’s such a neat use of sci-fi to think about the wands, potions, wires and cube as separate entities in area, with their very own atmospheres, life varieties, energies. It’s very cool the way you’ve illustrated these within the zine too, with the traits of every world woven into the panorama.
So….I really feel like I’m on the planet of Potions as we speak – kinda not 100% right here, there’s plenty of feeling-force, however not quite a bit taking place on the skin. Perhaps I’ve coalesced with this cup of steaming tea I’m ingesting… or with my squishy couch, that feels extra correct! Which world of the Tarot of Many Doorways are you inhabiting as we speak?
In the present day, and doubtless for a short while, I’d say The Go well with of Cube (Pentacles). It’s a world that prizes productiveness and usefulness, progress and accumulation, and people unable to maintain in step are sometimes depicted in states of hysteria, confusion, and precarity. All of which is to say, I’ve been feeling stressed about my capacity to work, write, and create on the degree and effectivity I want I might! I hope to hitch you within the extra meandering Go well with of Potions quickly, although.
There’s a lot right here that makes me smile, however then there’s additionally this unhappiness. Like, the big flightless birds of the go well with of cube – they’re so comedic, however it additionally feels tragic, how they’re grounded. You write in regards to the world of Cube: “This planet is essentially the most much like our personal. It’s largely Capitalist, although anarchist sentiments are slowly rising.” I relate to the grounded birds and it’s irritating, dystopian…so I’m relieved to listen to in regards to the rising swell of anarchism on the planet of Cube 🙂 Do you propose that the deck conjures up anarchy, anticapitalism, queerness…? Is there a future imaginative and prescient baked in?
Undoubtedly! Reminiscent of that Le Guin quote, I additionally consider that resistance and revolution may be seeded in artwork. Permitting our brains to experiment with completely different futures can assist these futures really feel potential. Though the world of Cube is a Capitalist one, I additionally wished to make specific that there’s the chance for this establishment to be disrupted (as you level out!) The deck’s anti-capitalist, anti-hierarchical sentiments are additionally current within the removing of the Royalist roles within the court docket playing cards, and the re-naming of Main Arcana playing cards just like the Emperor and Empress.
Do you will have any favorite playing cards?
I’m actually keen on The Mage, which is that this twinned chimera alien with all the go well with components floating round it – alchemical in an identical method to the Magician within the RWS, who additionally unites all 4 fits of their card. As an alternative of being supplies to control, although, I think about that The Mage is suspended between these 4 worlds, perhaps in a position to peer into or journey between them? And that each one of those lifeforms can exist in parallel.
The Changeling is one other card I really feel actually linked to – it doesn’t have a counterpart within the RWS, and likewise faucets into this sense of present in a number of areas, in a number of varieties, without delay, which is an expertise I affiliate with my very own queerness in numerous methods.
And at last, Warp Drive because the deck’s interpretation of The Chariot, simply because I get pleasure from its 90s Star Trek silliness.
Lastly however under no circumstances leastly – you’re writing a novel! It sounds bloody sensible. Are you able to inform us a bit about that?
I’m! It’s a couple of group of bored upkeep staff on a derelict deep-space analysis station on the fringe of Earth’s nearest black gap, who start conducting a collection of off-the-record experiments (together with genetically engineered, dimension-hopping slugs) which by chance open home windows to different realities.
It’s supposed as a delicate, queer exploration of cosmic euphoria, disorientation, and neighborhood, set in an surroundings equal elements Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. This can be my first try at novel-length fiction, which I’m each nervous and enthusiastic about!
This sounds totally improbable – I hope you’ll allow us to all know whe it comes out! To that finish – the place can of us discover, comply with and help you?
I just launched a Patreon that works a bit like a roleplaying game – Patrons can get personalised and illustrated characters, planets, and quests as tier rewards!
In any other case, I’m on Instagram as @manydoorstarot, and twitter as @criticalmx
Additionally I’d similar to to thanks, and say how beautiful it’s been to mirror in your considerate questions and insights!
Love, Felix
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