Public Programming: Alchemy Lectures
Throughout the year, Eliza Swann lectures on subjects relating to alchemy, art making, and esoteric practice.
Eliza Swann and Syd Buffman, The Stars Give and the Flowers Receive, lecture at the Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles, CA, 2022.
Eliza Swann lectures throughout the year on alchemy and creative practice at venues ranging from community gardens to museums and galleries. She was Lecturer-in-Residence at the Philosophical Research Society in 2022 and Alchemist-in-Residence at Honey’s in Brooklyn in 2023, and has lectured at Pratt Institute, the Omega Institute, Cirrus Gallery, Le Petit Versailles garden, and many other spaces.
Rooted in the belief that matter and spirit are inseparable, her lectures present alchemy as a living, evolving practice—one that resists fixed categories and invites imaginative, holistic ways of thinking. Drawing on ancient technologies of knowing such as alchemy, mysticism, divination, and herbalism, she brings these traditions into conversation with urgent contemporary realities, including climate change and queer survival and joy, as essential modes of understanding and inhabiting the world. Framed through a queer eco-feminist lens that refuses dualistic thinking and embraces complexity, her talks approach alchemy as the practice of transformation itself: honoring nature’s continual change, dissolving disciplinary boundaries, and opening space for new, interconnected forms of knowledge.
