WITCHING HOUR
2026 SPE Annual Conference panel with Stephanie Dowda DeMer, Zen Cohen, Sammie Correa, and Elizabeth McGrady
@spenational
The photographic lens allows humans to peer into the unseen with urgency and exactness. Imaging technologies like x-rays, astro photography, microscopic, infrared, film alchemy, and magic lanterns have allowed us to make the metaphysical physical for nearly two hundred years. As cameraless practice takes on new meaning with virtual and generative AI, images are morphed and echoed by new unseeable impulses. With particular focus on speculative, experimental, and mysterious studio practices that propel artists’ research, this session intends to embody a nontraditional conference format so participants can enact visual ephemeral happenings.
The panel will be led by artists Zen Cohen and Stephanie Dowda DeMer, whose research practices delve into questions about sentience, consciousness, materiality, and transcendence through lens-based and time-based mediums. They will be joined by Sammie Correa, photography and multimedia artist and Elizabeth McGrady, an artist whose work focuses on the intersection of the scientific and spiritual.
Thursday, March 19 - 12:00PM to 2:00PM
Room: Atlanta 5
Image credits:
Sammie Correa - Restoration
Stephanie Dowda DeMer - water oak, fluorescence, 2026.
Elizabeth McGrady - The Maiden
Zen Cohen - Southern Oracle installation, 2025. Photo by Michael Webster