Human and Non-Human Telepathic Collaborations from Fluxus to Now

This paper explores telepathy as a tool and method of collaboration within international visual art practice since the 1960s. The words telepathy and telethesia were coined simultaneously when Frederic Myers founded the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882. However, telepathy names an experience of distant (tele) feeling (pathos) or ideas (thesia) found in all cultures. Telepathy and collaboration are tools that a number of artists reach for simultaneously when attempting to share and/or transform subjectivity. This raises questions of the overlapping similarity between telepathy and collaboration, and of what it means to collaborate using telepathy. What is shared between telepathy and collaboration, and what is different?