Visualiser l’aura: apparitions techniques aux seuils de science, art, et occultisme

Lecture by Jeremy Stolow (Paris IAS, Concordia University) organised by the Laboratory of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds (LAMC) at the Université libre de Bruxelles.

Presentation 

Picturing Aura is a historical, anthropological and philosophical study of modern efforts to visualise that hidden, radiant force which envelops the living body and is known as the aura. This book traces the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques for visualising the aura, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how these images are utilised in fields as diverse as psychic and parapsychological research, esotericism and occultism, artistic photography, and popular culture, as well as the New Age market for alternative medicines and spiritualities. These histories—sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting—shaped by exchanges between professionals and amateurs, scientists and occultists, counter-cultural artists and entrepreneurs, metropolitan figures and peripheral actors, demonstrate how the aura functions as a border object: an ontologically plural entity that is nonetheless useful for varied tasks such as making art, healing bodies, or mapping a hidden cosmos. My presentation will introduce some of the book’s key figures, technologies and notable migrations of images, whilst reflecting on the very endeavour of making the aura visible and the challenges this poses to established assumptions regarding religion, science and art.

Jeremy Stolow is Full Professor of Communication at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, and (for the academic year 2025–26) research fellow at the Paris IAS. He works in the interdisciplinary field of ‘religions and media’, within which he conducts research on the religious, esoteric and occult dimensions of technology, as well as on the technological and material dimensions of religion. His publications include Orthodox by Design (University of California Press, 2010), a study of contemporary Orthodox Jewish print culture and its political implications; Deus in Machina (Fordham University Press, 2013), an edited volume exploring the relationship between religion and technology from a historical and transcultural perspective; and Picturing Aura (MIT Press, 2025), as well as several co-edited journal issues focusing on the genealogy of animation, religious visibility and invisibility, and ‘light’ as a medium of religious practice and imagination.

Practical details

Room Henri Janne - S15.331
Solbosch Campus
Université libre de Bruxelles