In 1909, two years before her conversion to Catholicism, artist Pamela Coleman Smith painted each of the evocative images that now make up the entire renowned Rider-Waite tarot deck. Through a process of collectively looking at, and discussing some of Coleman Smith’s 78 paintings, we will draw out the collective intuitions and understandings of the symbolism, scenes and figures they contain. Books, leaflets and other sources of definitions will be present but only in order to support the intuitive readings generated by the group. Throughout our conversation, we’ll create sculptural, drawn, painted and/or collaged reproductions (faithful or not) of the cards, or elements therein. We’ll thus develop a methodology of tarot interpretation that displaces memorisation of individual card meanings in favour of experimental and changing interpretations through non-hierarchical knowledge-making and collective analysis.
