black and white psychedelia

7/27/2019 Black and White Psychedelia

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Dexter Bag Siister: BLACK & WHITE PSYCHEDELIA

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This bulleti aotates a projected wall text (show o the cover) thatitroduced the Research Progra Dexter Bang Sinister at KusthalCharlotteborg, Copehage, 21 Jauary – 28 October, 2012. Devisedby Stuart Bailey, Lars Bag Larse, Agie Keefer, ad David Reifurt,the progra, like this bulleti, was based o Larse’s just-copletedPhD dissertatio at the Uiversity of Copehage, A History of Irritated Material: Psychedelic Concepts in Neo-Avantgarde Art . The ideawas to cotrive a popular versio of his acadeic thesis by editig it*psychedelically.*

This ight soud siple, or at least siple-ided, as a textual exer-cise i psychedelia’s failiar iperatives: Jii Hedrix’s “Are youexperieced?,” Ke Kesey’s “Did you pass the Acid Test?,” or TiothyLeary’s “Tur o, tue i, drop out.” But the iroy of psychedelicesseces ad ijuctios should be lost o o oe. It’s the self-cotradic-tory voice of the psychedelic police, and on this beat you’ll always find

a policemAn who eforces a ulti-colored patriarchal law: “LSD ID,please—we eed to check how free you REALLY are ...” This is hardlya ew or a very profoud observatio, just trasgressio’s age-oldcotradictio: the ecessity of ivokig the law i order to si agaist it.

The real iroy, though, is how the law returs to psychedelia i thefor of categorical iperatives, platitudes, ad pigeoholes. If we stripaway the usual cliches of psychedelic represetatio—excess, overload,raibows, tie-dye—what’s left? What’s worth keepig? What doesa hollowed-out, desaturated, low-grade, root-level, ephatically*black & white* psychedelia look ad feel like? The closer we looked,

the ore it becae apparet that such austere gears had bee thepsychedelic oveet’s eas all alog—ad so b/w seeed a eveore pertiet poit of retur fro which to usefully depart oce ore.

Fro this vatage, how ight that look ad feel be put to proper use—that’s to say, *trasfored*—artistically ad socially today?This brigs us back to the iediate questio: what could it ea to edita thesis o psychedelia *psychedelically,* without recourse to drugs?How does the TRIP traslate to mETHOD?

At soe poit (we forget whe) durig our four-way correspodece

soeoe (we forget who) suggested that “ideally we’ll arrive at a forthat sees etirely its ow thig, yet oe of us will be able to recall howwe got there.” Which is ot a bad place to be, because ot-reeberig-how-you-got-there is always goig to be a ew poit of defailiarizatio,a oet i which you’re ready to get carried away agai—ad soprecisely a eas of apprehedig whatever the psychedelic itself ightsee to tur out to ea i the eatie.

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The particular proble is that ... this will already have bee, will alreadyhave begu. “The future is but the obsolete i reverse.”

But what if there’s no linear narrative in the first place, preventing the

possibility of such a neat mirroring? The infinite regress of psychedeliadoes’t follow i its wake like the tail of the coet. It builds up BEFORE it,freely disseiatig its corrupt proises. Psychedelia’s power iheres iits false starts, i the restlessess with which it excitedly aticipatesits utopia epiphaies. Approachig the history of psychedelia, you’ll haveto coted with a log overture of preature foototes ad proliferatigsubtexts that arrive too early, explodig ad dissolvig the ai trackof its arratio i advace of its eve beig realized: “Adios , ai track,

go away! go away!”

This dissipated becoig is i ay respects just plai tired, like yester-day’s proises of love ad revolutio. Liste to Sauel Delaey i 1974:“Left over flower-power, in all this pollution, was never my thing either.”Psychedelia is always ALmOST a woderful thig, but oh, it will let youdow, fro yesterday’s Suer of Love to today’s Witer of Capital.It appears i a polluted culture like the iridescet gloaig over a decayigad sophisticated civilizatio—ad so i order to *truly* uderstadpsychedelia, we must turn to the pale fires of pollution and corruption,of restlessess ad disechatet.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slainBy the false azure in the windowpane

These are the opeig lies of Vladiir nabokov’s 1962 ovel Pale Fire ,which takes its ae fro the epoyous 999-lie poe peed by oe of its two cetral characters, the uassuig acadeic Joh Shade. Faous-ly, however, the bulk of the ovel cosists of aotatios to the poe—a glut of ruig coetary ad literary criticis writte by Shade’scolleague ad ext door eighbor Charles Kibote. Flippig back ad forthbetween poem and notes, the reader finds herself lingering in Kinbote’sfine print. His notes become progressively longer and increasingly perso-

al, util they evetually parasitize ad usurp the poe they are supposedto be elucidatig. Accordig to Kibote, the poe “Pale Fire” is actuallyabout Kibote hiself! Fro the deraged critic’s warped perspective,

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Shade has disseiated poited refereces throughout the poe’s fourlog catos to Kibote, his isightful, prial reader. I this way, Kibotewrites, Shade ackowledges “all the ay subliial debts to e ...”

This tedecy is ative to psychedelia, a kid of o-substace that feedsoff the supplementary and the seemingly gratuitous. Fueled and acceler-ated by waderig aecdotes ad free associatios, the psychedelic *callsup* ad *akes preset.* If you begi your psychedelic discourse o theregular hippie tourist trail in Northern California, you’ll soon find yourself re-coected with old frieds: the Frech sybolists, edieval tripperslike Hieroyus Bosch, ad aciet shaaic cultures ... to space travel,the appig of DnA, ad ether theories ... ad back ad forth across

history agai, joiig all the dots betwee the coplacet (Ady Warhol),the alieated (Su Ra), ad the geuiely isae (Helea Blavatsky).

The body of psychedelia is costituted by ay sall histories ad charac-terized by this idiscriiate assebly of disparate atter. Ad yet thepsychedelic teds to coe full-circle ad grow to a superfor, brigigit all back home, domesticating and repossessing difference under its owni-proper ae, the Oe, the Total, the Absolute, the True Substace:the Psychedelic, the Psychedelic, the Psychedelic. It wats to akeyou believe that it is “the Diaod suspeded fro the Christas Tree of the Cosos”—nabokov agai, this tie fro Bend Sinister .

I this way, psychedelia irrors Charles Kibote’s literary arcissis,oly o a uch larger scale. “World history,” psychedelia would say, “asit is, as it has bee, ad as it will be, as it were, i fact cosists i so ay

subliial debts to e.” There’s a iertia at work here that fouls the playad lets iagiatio go to the dogs. Just as the geealogist of sexuality,michel Foucault, threw his hads i the air ad declared that “sex isboring,” psychedelia affirms Belgian trippiste Heri michaux’s equivaletclai that les drogues nous ennuient —“drugs are borig.” Cosic hoey,stickyig up everythig.

Psychiatrist Huphry Osod coied the ter psychedelic i his

correspodece with Aldous Huxley i 1956. The eologis derives frothe Greek words psyche (soul, id) ad deloun (to aifest, to ope),ad replaced ters such as schizogens , psychotica , ad phantastica

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for drugs such as psilocybi, escalie, caabis, ad LSD. I a paperpublished a year later, Osod coteded that there are few substaceswhich, i large eough doses, will ot produce chages i body ad idreseblig soe kid of etal illess. To avoid beig overwheled, the,

“psychedelic agents” were classified specifically as those substances

that produce changes in thought, perception, mood and, sometimes, inposture, occurring alone or in concert, without causing either majordisturbances of the autonomic nervous system or addictive craving, andalthough, with overdosage, disorientation, memory disturbance, stupor,and even narcosis may occur, these reactions are not characteristic ...

For Osod, the ost iportat quality of those drugs lay ot i theirpotetial to iic psychoses, but rather the “perhaps oly sleder”chace that psychedelics represet for truly becoig homo sapiens :“the wise, the uderstadig, the copassioate beig, i whose four-foldvisio art, politics, sciece, ad religio are oe.” He cocludes: “Surelywe ust seize that chace.”

. . .

Psychedelic culture is iseparable fro the 1960s. Fro a psychedelicperspective, the 1960s counterculture became identifiable as a movementsoetie aroud the iddle of the decade, whe psychologists RichardAlpert ad Tiothy Leary were disissed fro Harvard for coductigexperiets with psilocybi, ad Ke Kesey got his merry Praksterstogether. Augured by The First Human Be-In i Sa Fracisco’s Golde

Gate Park o Jauary 14, 1967, the psychedelic revolutio took placedurig the sae year’s ifaous Suer of Love, ad eded i the Fallwith a ock fueral perfored i the Haight-Ashbury district by activistsThe Sa Fracisco Diggers—a street parade that soleized Death of Hippie, Son of Mass Media i view of hippie culture’s spectacularcommodification. At least, this is the potted, canonized account. But likeother evets of the era, psychedelia ushroos across decades.

It is possible, if ot ievitable, to coceive ultiple psychedelic sequeces.For coteporary Frech philosopher Alai Badiou, the Sixties (actuallyshorthad for 1966–76) was the “red decade,” arked by the atioal

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liberatio struggles i Vieta ad Palestie, the worldwide studet adyouth oveet, factory revolts i Frace ad Italy, ad the CulturalRevolutio i Chia. Oe tielie exteds the 1960s ito the rave cultureof the 1980s, ad possibly o to the artistic rediscovery of psychedelic

culture i the 1990s. I aother, psychiatric ad ati-psychiatricexperietatio with LSD i the 1950s ad 1960s rus parallel with thosecoutercultural drug practices that, although recreatioal, were alsodistictly purposeful. There was a USE for pleasure—the drug was takefor where it took you ad what it did to you, ad this lie of ati-psychiatryad self-edicatio ca be followed through to today’s widespreadpharacological culture, i which lifestyle drugs ad atidepressats helppeople work ad copete. (It is equally possible to trace a shaaistic

taget i psychedelic discourse, oe that refers to ecstatic traditios, olythis is a tielie that is’t oe, sice it is typically fouded o sybolicallycircular ad cosological tie ...V)

This historiography is as ubiquitous as it is ultifarious. A hip iteratioalstyle whether i Sa Fracisco or Lodo, psychedelic culture is all overthe place, ad all over tie, too—ot oly here ad there, but also theand now. One effect of this is flower power’s cyclical reappearance infashio; aother is how the youth revolt i geeral reais a seeiglyuniversal and transhistorical parameter for the efficacy of protest. InFebruary 2011, for exaple, protests i Bahrai were dubbed “daysof rage” i referece to the origial Days of Rage i October 1969 iChicago, i which ilitats ad studets “brought the Vieta war hoe”through a series of direct actios. This is how psychedelic culture bleedsito the preset.

To the iocet bystader, the look of 1960s psychedelia was (ad is)a kid of arketig that decated fro the Arts ad Crafts oveet.It coprised visual over-exciteet, trivial athropoorphic styles,ad athropocetric *vitalis.* Aesthetic coplexity was reduced to farcead ligo: “psyched,” “far out,” “itese.” This is psychedelia as realizedi rock posters ad o record covers, o the hippie va ad i thecoual ural. See fro this perspective, psychedelia ca be copared

to Kant’s description of “affect”—as a brief and radiant appearancefollowed by exhaustio, a flash i the pa. Ad yet psychedelic cultureade its proises i ways that ake us wat to, if ot coprehed it ad

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take it seriously, exactly, the at least play alog with its oveetsad seek out a laguage through which it ca be aalyzed ad arrated.The psychedelic revolutio ade it possible or coo to take drugs adgo to cocerts (to ae oe of its cultural successes). no doubt such

behavior has sice bee sold ad exploited, but it also reais subversive;i either case, we have psychedelic culture to thak for it.

There are other pervasive echoes, too; ot least the fact that drug culturei the 1960s cae with a look, a soud, a aesthetic. I ters of the forswith which we iagie radicality ad freedo, the, psychedelia seesto have a log afterlife, ad it is hard to let go of the ituitio that soe-thig reais uaccouted for, that psychedelia’s fudaetal strageess

ca be redered productive oce ore. Psychedelic art was ade byad for those who do’t level, who do’t stad still: the high, the trippig,or, i Daish slag, de skæve —the awry, the ueve; basically, thosewho abadoed what we take to be oral visio.

. . .

The residue of psychedelic works teds to aifest whatever ayoefeels like projectig oto it, ad the obvious risk here is isipid ostalgicivestet. Whe we perceive psychedelic iages ow as erely groovyor stylish, we ted to overlook their origial provocatio ad sheeritesity, ot oly i ters of their icoographic scadals (udity, drugs,decadece geerally) but also i aterial ters, such as those saturatedcolors that exceeded the predoiatly black ad white iagery of pritedad electroic edia at the tie. These practices eed to be cosidered

for the origial *irritability* they have lost, the ways i which they were*obscee* i the origial sese of that word—lackig a fraework ableto cotai the ad give the a stable cultural locatio.

To talk about irritatio ad obsceity is ot just a reversal of the tersthrough which psychedelic culture is usually uderstood, such as healigad itegratio, or life ad love, it is also a outlie of a vitalis essetiallycoected to ew techologies. now largely discredited, vitalis is a philo-

sophical cocept that iflueced both popular ad political culture sigi-ficantly. It is most commonly associated with the naming of “life forces”such as Heri Bergso’s elan vital , Has Driesch’s etelechy, or Wilhel

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Reich’s Orgoe. These are the *prie overs* of all fors of life—the “treedous iteral push of life” superadded to otherwise passiveatter. Vitalis is the spark that akes your heart beat, that which existsover and beyond your finite body. It has also taken vulgar and violent

fors, ost otoriously the fascist clai that life forces are particularlystrog i certai races or peoples ad itolerably weak i others.

Soe recet thikers have tried to re-coect with a traditio of criticalvitalis. I her 2010 book Vibrant Matter , political theorist Jae Beett,for exaple, talks about a “vital aterialis” coceived as a “liveliess”itrisic ot oly to huas, but also to aterials ad objects. Sucha aterialistic take o vitality proposes a kid of agecy that ot oly

describes how people act i the world, but also how thigs ad systesperfor their ow iheret itelligece—their potetial for creatig,for coectig, for appearig i cofederacies with other thigs. Frothis perspective, oe ca coceptualize a “thig-power”—that is, the wayi which objects exceed their iert, secodary status ad aifest tracesof life ad idepedece. As every bricklayer or carpeter will tell you,aterials have lives of their ow, pulsatig accordig to the itesitiesthat surroud the. This liveliess of atter relates to the psychedelicvisio that *sees beyod the object* ad is capable of pickig up otherwiseiperceptible, o- or sub-hua pheoea—the dacig of atos,streas of air olecules, driftig of cotiets, ad so o.

LSD, accidetally iveted by a Swiss cheist i 1943, was itself a ewtechology i the 1960s, ad hece oe that could be cosidered i parallelwith the developet of satellite couicatio, coputer techology,

space travel, ad quotidia self-techologies—ost proietly thelegalizatio of the pill. This distiguished arco-techologies i the post-war era fro, say, sokig opiu or hashish i the 19th cetury, orshaaistic cultures’ use of hallucioges. Thus psychedelic culture did’toly sprig fro the brais of lovers or ade, but was theorized byscietists ad techicias, ad produced by artists; drugs ad achies ivarious collectives ad asseblages.

To norbert Wieer, the father of cyberetics, irritability is a fudaetallife pheoeo—a lower liit of stiulatio, frictio ad exciteet, orother ways i which tolerace is pushed ad geeral equilibriu disturbed.

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Crucially, Wieer’s coceptio of irritability does ot deote a hoeostaticor haroic vitalis, but a vexed ad dyaic oe; or does it privilege ahua subject, because irritatio ay equally occur i the aial ervoussyste or i the electroic circuit. Irritability deotes a uresolved, or

cotiually egotiated, coexistece with a Other that is a costituet partof our beig.

. . .

If oe associates the psychedelic with a exuberat iagiatio i whichevery oet is icoesurable with the preset oe, why is it thatpsychedelic culture is subject to copulsive repetitios? Why is it so

difficult to leave Abbey Road and Fillmore West and meet acid rockerslike The Psychedelic Alies i Accra or Flower Travelli’ Bad i Tokyo?Why do accouts of psychedelic art always begi ad ed with Leary,Gisberg, ad Huxley? Why are Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ad Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal seeigly idispesable to thishistory, istead of, say, the physicist Abu Ali Hasa Ib al-Haitha,who discovered the laws of refractio ad iveted the caera obscuracirca 1000 AD, thus pre-eptig the psychedelic light show? Why thisootoous isistece o ORIGIn ad the SAmE, whe the psychedelicis ... ca be addressed as ... has the speculative potetial to becoe... an aesthetic of radical openness and events-effects, of unexpectedrecostructio ad ultra-rapid lies of flight?

Equally irritable is psychedelia’s chaotic coceptuality—for at preciselythe same time as it is ridden by this totalizing, indefinite equivalence, it is

also split and differentiated. Like the theorem of quantum physics, in whichlight is both particles AnD waves, psychedelia siultaeously coprisestwo or ore states that are at oce cotiuous ad discotiuous: loops orschizzes betwee the SAmE ad its OTHER, betwee cotrol ad lettiggo, atavis ad futuris, ythos ad logos, fulless ad othigess,exposure ad disguise, haroy ad dissoace, dialectic ad holistic,autheticity ad falsity, oder-utopia ad postoder-iroic; alteratigbetwee day ad life ad death ad ight. Psychedelia is ati-psychiatric,

divided agaist itself, ceaselessly forkig out ito suppleets i a aerthat resists easy diagosis.

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It’s oly whe you appreciate that psychedelia circuscribes ot oly thefrivolity of the freak-out, the far-out, ad lettig-it-all-hag-out, but equally(say) Kat, Lei, ad Heiseberg (with all the rigid iteriority of theirrespective philosophical, political, and scientific stipulations) that we can

truly begi to cosider ad coceptualize this strage creature. If we stripaway the usual cliches of psychedelic represetatio—excess, overload,raibows, tie-dye—what’s left? What’s worth keepig o keepig o?What does a hollowed-out, desaturated, low-grade, root-level, ephati-cally *black & white* psychedelia look like ad feel like?

The way it sounded (MONO or STEREO)1

What generated its effects (OIL and WATER)2

How it extended into digital (ZEROES and ONES)3

The way it was documented (LO-FI)4

The way it travelled (UNDERGROUND)5

The ficker and the strobe (YES. YES. YES)6

were all single-channel. Binary. Off. On.

*

1. The way it souded (mOnO or STEREO)

The phrase “good vibes” is, of course, aother edurig cliche of thecouterculture. But where does *the vibe* coe fro ad what doesit sigify?

It describes a social atosphere lade with positive eergies—oe thatcoects soud, life, couity ad subjectivity through iperceptiblediagras. Addressig the vibe is a way to articulate psyche beyod itsusual applicatio of “id,” ad istead recoect its other etyologicalroot, “soul,” as a vital priciple: “the breath that aiates the body.”I psychedelic culture of the 1960s, there is uch to suggest that thispriciple is soic, or that atter coes to life i soud. To psychedelicthiker Ala Watts, this is what coects seses to the etire chaiof beig:

“The physical world is vibratio, quata, but vibratios of what? To theeye, form and color; to the ear, sound; to the nose, scent; to the fingers,touch. But these are all different languages for the same thing, differentqualities of sensitivity, different dimensions of consciousness. The ques-

tion, “Of what are they (sic) differing forms?” seems to have no meaning.What is light to the eye is soud to the ear. I have the iage of the sesesbeig ters, fors, or diesios ot of oe thig coo to all, but of each other, locked i a circle of utuality.”

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The psychedelic has aily bee costituted i visual ters of style adcolor. Yet eve if a vibratio ca also be see or sesed, the vibe wasost successfully represeted through ad as soud—ost obviouslyi The Beach Boys’ tiely “Good Vibratios,” a 1966 uber-oe hitwhose chorus was uderpied by the eerie glissadi of the therei.Origially kow as the “etherphoe,” the therei was a kid of keyless

keyboard that played by moving the electrified air around the apparatus,and was typically used in horror or sci-fi movies. As “Good Vibrations”deostrated, usic quite literally mOVED the couterculture: itslifestyles were disseiated iteratioally through the usic idustry,ad people were obilized i asses to travel to gigs ad rock festivals.Yet the vibe caot erely be explaied away by pop sogs ad theorgaizatio of soud ito elody; or ca it siply be coprehededthrough the stable perceptual register of hua hearig.

I psychedelic culture, the vibe does ot cut across the historical stratuwith the optiis ad etrepreeurship of idustry, but vibrates withoutdirectio i jitters, ad i the teporality of hippie wasters that describesa dowwards spiral ito prehistory, a horizotal ushrooig of literallyspaced-out tie, or a vertical rise ito cosos. A psychedelic critique of civilizatio teded to upset liear history with breaks ad duratios thatflipped normative time, whether at the level of the linear history thatdominates Western thought, or the mundane nine-to-five of the averageoffice job. In representations of hallucinogenic temporality, the warpingad loopig of tie is otherwise redered i a categorical istabilitybetwee tie ad space, as space spills ito duratio, or tie is frozei a cotiuu. Accordig to Watts, agai: “To begi with, this world hasa different kind of time. It is the time of biological rhythm, not of the clockad all that goes with the clock.” I other words, “biological rhyth” isaturally icoesurable with oder tie, but there is still a liearityin Watts’ notion that “the seed is as much the goal as the flower,” evenif it is a linearity that backtracks. The freaks were, after all, flowerchildre—livig ebles of futurity, or eat to stay child ad evergrow up. Such utieliess is ot oly a ix of oder ad pre-odertie, but also a kid of FERmEnTInG tie that pushes at what isot-yet-realized as it loops ad souds.

The otio that soud is the privileged sesorial register of the trip is

corroborated by that of *tuig i.* Writig i 1975 for the folks othe cosciousess circuit, historia Theodore Roszak borrows a techo-logical iage for the “process of ever-expadig receptivity” o thearrowbad of hua audio perceptio:

“It is as if the id were a radio-receivig apparatus beig assebledin an environment already filled with broadcast signals. Millions of messages fill the air available for tuning in. But, to begin with, the primi-tive apparatus ca receive oly a few, crudely epirical sigals—sigalsbased o shape or odor, cheical copatibility, light ad dark sesitivity.Gradually, as the receiver becoes ore coplex ad powerful, it draws

in more refined broadcast bands and elusive wavelengths, until at lastit has draw i a vast, subtle real of liguistic ad uerical sybols:‘pure ideas’ fetched like agic out of the thi air of the id’s ow cogi-tatio. At each stage alog the way, the receiver, pressig forward ito

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the perceptual margins of its powers, finds its way to meanings,whether crude or refined, that were ‘there’ in a dimension of existencethat could ot coe through util the id was ready to tue the i.”

Tuig i, the, describes a peculiar process of becoig ready toreceive through a loss of self. The vibe is *potetial*—the aticipatio

of soethig that will arrive through atter i eergetic states.“ I got a vibe” ... ad hece I ca ake probable that what I caotsee, do, or kow yet, or what I a ot yet. “We liste,” says Roszak,“ad all at oce the world becoes ore tha it is withi our ordiaryexperiece.” The vibe is ot ecstatic illuiatio itself, or is it desire(ideed, Leary wars agaist followig sexual ipulses durig thetrip), but soethig ore abstract ad frail. It is a ifrastructure thatallows access to the world through sesorial experiece.

The Belgia poet, writer, ad paiter Heri michaux is widely cosidereda “psychedelic pioeer,” yet his aesthetic project reais recalcitratto that of the couterculture, particularly i his approach to drugs. Imichaux’s work, the vibe is a *spas*—a overwhelig iervatio,a shaking of the soul that is in no sense an affirmation. “Mescalineprovokes a vibratory state,” he wrote, “ultiple vibratios, alost over-whelming at first, of abnormal amplitude and with a great many points.”Just as the vibratory state i michaux o loger clais for sypathyad idetity, it is detached fro represetatio. Beig othig, it resistsbecoig a object of kowledge.

michaux’s take o the vibratio was closer to a oder loss of self,like the trauatizig shell shock of the First World War. His tripwas ephatically ot the good, epiphaic oe, but a erve fever,“a iferal rodeo” i which he joureyed ito the “tawdry” spectacleof the escalie high. michaux’s escalie-takig, perfored fro the1950s i “the laboratory of his hoe,” was both ethod ad subjectatter. Durig ad after sessios with the drug, he would write triplogs ad reder seisographic drawigs ad pulsatig, brut ladscapesof his trips.

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nor are his poes, graphics ad watercolors widows oto a hallucia-tory world i ay ietically eaigful way. Prodded ad oved bythe “robotic” escalie, michaux istead becoes a sei-autoatio,a plotter recording events-effects in his nervous system.

I the text “La escalie et la usique,” michaux describes listeig to

Trois petites liturgies de la presence divine by Olivier messiae:

“Desolidified, having become flow, the world in front of me had beensubtracted. The usic was aulled, but its echatet had’t beereoved. The usic—as I presetly uderstood—is a operatio tosubtract oeself fro the laws of the world, fro its hardess, froits inflexibility, from its asperities, from its solid inhuman materiality.The operatio was a success! Ah! Yes, beyod everythig successful,beyod the success of ay coposer. There o loger was a world,there was oly a liquid, the liquid of echatet. This was a aswerthat tured the world itself ito the usicia, I uderstood othigmore than this answer, answered by the fluid, the aerial, the sensitive.I was iside it, egulfed.”

I referece to the Pythagorea traditio of cosic usic, michauxcoteds that the particularity of soud heard i the trip ca lead oeto uderstad la musique des spheres ; but what results is soethigquite different to interplanetary harmony.

The vibe represets a wish to coplete estrageet, but a estrage-ment understood as infinite *othering*—as a productive force throughwhich oe ca becoe soe-thig or soe-body else. The ost radicalsese of Leary’s sloga “Tur o, tue i, drop out” is ot the baaltakig of a drug to tur o, or the dialectical secessio of droppigout, but rather the way i which the subject who tues i is utetheredfro her prior cotext ad her prior beig, as she disappears ito*usoud* ad *utie.* Leary, the, had the right idea but the wrogorder. His iperative ought to have bee:

Tur o, drop out, tue i.

2. What generated its effects (OIL and WATER)Perhaps ievitably, such psychedelic ituitios of life were ost faithfullyrealized i tie-based edia. new odes of seeig, such as light showsad experietal ciea, ivolved a reorgaizatio of respose: othe oe had, a ew arseal of perceptual ad coceptual tools; o theother, vast possibilities for attetio aageet i which the subjectis dispossessed of her ow thought. Willia Burroughs’s otios of reorgaizig physically-ebedded patters of social ad liguistic cotrolcoe to id—techo-eurological couter-easures ad edia-assages that produce *ati-discipliary* subjectivity.

Psychedelic light was literally OB-scene, deliberately overflowing the boun-daries of its regular represetatioal fraeworks: there was o sceeto stage it, o scree to hold it. It was projected oto large cavases o

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a architectural scale, aroud etire roos, or o bad ebers whobecae livig screes by dressig i white ad playig white istruets.Instead of controlling and fixing the audience’s gaze, psychedelic lightecouraged a dispersal of attetio. Projectios blurred the distictiosbetween floor and stage, band and audience, people and architecture,light and music—deterritorializing effects that induced the audience

to reliquish bodily disciplie ad lie dow, reoucig their visual claion the space in appropriately flaccid response to the images. In this way,the psychedelic light show redered bodies etaphysical by projectigthe, deaterializig the i light. This was quite literally the case withThe Boyle Faily’s 1967 Son et Lumiere for Bodily Fluids and Functions ,i which sot, saliva, earwax, tears, urie, sweat, blood, gastric juices,voit, ad sper were projected, while a couple had sex after beigwired up to oscilloscopes, their heartbeats ad brai-waves easured,visualized, ad projected oto a large scree behid the.

Photos of light groups i actio docuet i a disarig way theirudoig of the fuctioal itegrity of idustrial apparatuses of cieaad televisio. I 1969, a distictly ipressed Aalie R. Rothschild titledoe particular photograph The Joshua Light Show with their Tons of Equipment at Fillmore East . It shows six ebers of the group poisedamid dangling cables and a chaotic array of spots, reflectors, fanlessprojectors for maximum heat effect, and light wheels propped up onakeshift platfors ad school tables. A large stock of toilet paper isat had. Their arseal looks precarious, as if at ay oet a fusewill blow or soebody will bur their hair.

Despite their tos of equipet, it’s ot obvious how the Joshua LightShow could make anybody flip, though it’s easy enough to imagine thesouds of whirrig Super 8 beaers ad the clickig of slides fallig itothe projectio chaber—process souds that soeties ade both

audieces ad usicias coplai about the oise durig quiet oetsi the cocert. Rothschild’s picture eloquetly lays bare the discrepacybetween the spectacular effect and its cause, portraying the psychedeliclight show as a aateur sciece lab. The ateriality of psychedelic

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light was aythig but sealess, rather oisy, essy ad hoespu,difficult to document and mediate. Even if it produced immersive environ-ets, it was a cottage idustry whose productio shared the tie adspace of its audiece.

The light shows relied o the live iprovisatio of the projectioists,

ad o the autoatic, cotiget creativity of cheical ad therodyaicprocesses, all structured by a collective itelligece. The iages arefailiar eough: icroscopic vistas of the sub-hua real of proteisad cells were give a evolutioary kick with halluciogeic drugs ...or perhaps they depict telescopic views of iterstellar dust, ebulae, halos,luious rays ad dark atter that would appeal to the tured-o asa subject of the space age.

*Plasatic iages* were created live by operatig liquids ad “wet-slides” o overhead ad slide projectors. As Daish light show stalwartsHelge Krarup ad Carl nørrested recout, these were ade “bypourig ik, spirit or other types of color as well as activatig or ihibitigsubstaces such as dishwashig liquid ad glue betwee the glass paesof a slide—or by overhead projectio: betwee watch glasses.” Theycotiue: “The cheistry of the added substaces i coectio with theheat of the projector ade the liquids ove ad ix. Speed ad forcould ot be cotrolled. This produced a iage of aorphous fors thatchaged ad developed—i itself a for of livig iages.”

Aother recurrig otif was the obscee vitality of the ope, pulsatigwoud, as a arker of the violece ivolved i breakig ope thesurface ad coherece of the body to access its deep, uorgaized states.This is the couterpoit to the aoebic cocretis of the scree saveror the lava lap. Freed fro the obligatio to represet, the plasaticiage becoes a *pure evet* teeterig betwee, o oe had, a self-referetial techique that produces a highly suggestive realtie“paitig”(what-you-see-is-what-you-get: color + oil + heat + light), ad o theother, a approxiatio of that which caot be appreheded by huaperceptio (what-you-see-is-what-you-FEEL: total abstractio). I otherwords, you ca’t tell whether the plasatic iage geerates a vista itothe starry doe of the ight sky, or ito your ow spirallig DnA.

The largest psychedelic light group i Copehage, coutig soe17 ebers durig its brief existece fro 1969–72, was Kig Kog.They intended their shows as “the production of a totally artificialeviroet ivolvig all seses ad fuctioig as a expasio of consciousness, effectively an artificial consciousness.” This artificialitelligece was distributed i the dialogic abitio of akig what theythought of as “a ‘phone call’ to the audience, effectively establishinga two-way couicatio ... ade possible through cybereticpriciples.” Copehage light artists did’t geerally locate their activitiesi aesthetic discourse, or i art istitutios. The ebers of Kig Kog,though, were different; they took a distinctly analytical approach to

the light show, ore aki to what we’d thik of today as a “ixed ediaperformance.” Paul Klee was a formative influence on a number of kinetic artists whose work had influenced the group, like Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s light sculptures, or Gyorgy Kepes’ abstract scientific images.

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Other poits of referece icluded Op Art, Brio Gysi’s Dreamachine ,ad marshall mcLuha’s edia theory.

Kig Kog was resposible for soe of the era’s ost advaced lightshows, assisted by a arseal of up to 50 apparatuses. Their lightigsequeces, prograed i scores they called Trips, were frequetly

prepared i collaboratio with the perforig bad. The group developed50 such trips, composed from hundreds of Super 8 films, film loops,slides, light effects, stage lights and wetslides, with titles like Myth ,Pseudo-Strobe , Psychedelic Countryside , Raining Bubbles , Acid ,Cartoon , TV , Neon , Confrontation , ad Violence . Such perforaceswere systeatized through Stee Krarup’s 1969 cocept of The Mixedmedia-Multiprojection Idea Defined . This paraeter theory wasa “editatioal structure” i which factors of hardware, softwaread variables were ordered hierarchically i sets, subsets, subsets of subsets etc., like the eu i a coputer (“2.1.1.2.01.3.3 Cardboarddiscs which block the projectio of light”). Accordig to Krarup, theKig Kog operators would be free to depart fro the rigidity of thescore “like a ballet dacer phrases the choreography.”

Withi this atrix, oe of Kig Kog’s sigature techiques was themetaorf, a siple wetslide iveted by Krarup with two distiguishigfeatures: first, contrary to psychedelic orthodoxy, it was black and white;secod, as the slide got warer i the heat of the projector, the liquidsoved faster, creatig depth ad space. The metaorf could be projectedas a sigle idepedet iage, or as a “tapestry” that fored thebackdrop for additive or subtractive color projectios. By the ed of the1960s, there were reportedly 140 separate light groups i Copehage,as well as a labor union, and so fierce competition among them to producenew images and effects. Even today the Metamorf recipe remains aclosely guarded secret.

3. How it exteded ito digital (ZEROES ad OnES)

A couple of decades before King Kong were operating in full effect,Norbert Wiener defined feedback as “the ability to adjust futurecoduct by past perforace.” may of the exaples i his 1947 book

Cybernetics are draw fro the ilitary idustry i the Secod WorldWar, where feedback was essetial for the developet of radarsystems; but as the concept’s subsequent career in fields as diverse aspsychology, biology, ad the social scieces attests, cyberetics wasa proiscuous idea. Observig substatial cooalities betwee theproperties of livig orgaiss ad achies, Wieer proposed that“the physical fuctioig of the livig idividual ad the operatioof soe of the ewer couicatio achies are precisely parallel itheir aalogous attepts to cotrol etropy through feedback.”

Because it is self-geerative, feedback is like a orgais, i.e., it carries

or EmBODIES a essage. Ad whe it coes to overcoig thedichotoy of orgaiss ad achies, Leary ad Wieer speak as if withoe, fatal voice. Accordig to Leary, the hua is erely a “trasieteergy structure,” while to Wieer, “we are but whirlpools i a river of

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ever-flowing water ... not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuatetheselves”—a ecessary coclusio, perhaps, for those who refuseto coceive of the orgais as a uity, ad who dey ay closure of theervous syste.

As a sound effect, feedback is a signature of Acid Rock, a genre defined

siply by Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead as “what you liste towhe you are high o acid.” Thus, feedback oise was a arker of thecouterculture, but, uch like michaux’s iferal rodeo, also represeteda departure fro the haroic, spectacular, ad style-orieted fors of psychedelic rock ad its visual couterparts.

Followig Frech philosopher of desire Gilles Deleuze, we ca coceiveof feedback as *the soud of the evet i its ow tie,* or Aion —a“essentially unlimited past and future,” a time of “events-effects” that“retreats ad advaces i two directios at oce, the perpetual objectof a double questio: what is goig to happe? ad what has justhappened?” According to Deleuze, positive feedback’s event-effect isot a soud loop but a “straight lie ad a epty for”—a processof ufoldig. Ad i lie with the Frech word sens , which ca eaeither “directio” or “eaig,” Acid Rock feedback is ot WITHOUTdirection or signification, but rather produces a double-direction and adouble-sese that exerts a cotradictory, agoizig pull o the listeer.

What *akes sese* is either a structure waitig to be discoveredad re-eployed, or a origi or a priciple to which evets ca revert.O the cotrary, sese is always In the akig—“soethig to produceby a new machinery,” and so quite literally always an effect:

“It is not an effect merely in the causal sense; it is also an effect in the

sense of an ‘optical effect’ or a ‘sound effect,’ or even better, a surfaceeffect, a position effect, and a language effect. Such an effect is not atall a appearace or a illusio.”

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I this light, feedback ca be perceived as radically reorgaizig the rela-tion between cause and effect. It produces not only a discrepancy, but alsoa new coexistence between them; a “heterogeneity of cause and effect,”Deleuze would say, that coproises “the coectio of causes betweethemselves and the link of effects between themselves.”

Feedback is a synthetic and vital flow—each moment is the whole of theprevious soud sequece codesed ito a sigle poit that ufolds i twodirectios at oce. Cosidered fro this perspective, its soic or ecologicaldistortios are ot alieatig, but are a for of *pure potetiality* thatwe do’t yet kow how to experiece. Ad we ay potetially speculatethat, i ters of brigig forth ew worlds, souds are ore powerfulthan images: the act of amplifying already amplified sound heaps eventupo evet ad produces spaces i which the future ca arrive.

4. The way it was docueted (LO-FI)

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Kig Kog metaorf wetslides, circa 1970. Courtesy Stee Thure Krarup

5. The way it travelled (UnDERGROUnD)

meawhile i malo, Swedish artist Sture Johaesso started a gallerysalo i the studio of his parter Charlotte, who had icorporated uderthe ae Caabis a few years earlier, hece the ae Galleri Caabis.This was a o-coercial, tribal hag-out that served iforally asthe local udergroud scee’s workshop, iforatio hub, ad (durigdowtie fro the regular be-is ad soke-is) exhibitio space.Johaesso has described how the chagig cast at the Galleri did’trepreset ay sigle, orgaized oveet, but icluded “ecologicalcultivatio, geodesic doe costructio, bootleggig, trascedetalcouicatio ... a kid of ulticultural awakeig; ot i today’s gover-mental definition of multiculturalism, but a community whose coexistencewas stiulated by a diversity of idetities ad ideas.”

Johaesso’s udergroud art, as he prefers to call it, was ot abovearkets ad istitutios. I fact, his ai i producig psychedelic posterswas to ake oey, albeit i the literal sese of producig a ewcurrency. As a primary fiction of capitalist society, money credited bythe state is a agical, abstract object, ad both the stylishess adhigh-end production values of Johannesson’s posters afford an equivalentaura—ideed, they are as desirable as bak otes. His 1968 posterArt Crisis eve carries a aifesto for a ew sovereigty that will otoly lay bare the coodity character of art productio, but also bypassthe established art arket by settig up a idepedet oe:

“Deoetizig paperited posterprits has caused a iteratioal artcrisis for the art’s oetary* syste, oil o cavas—a thig of beauty

ad a joy for ev’ry. The keepers of the pool have ow decided to split itotwo markets; A FREE & HIGH one & a guaranteed low controlled & fixedoe for trasactios betwee goveret & GOVERnmEnT! *FromOnETA, a surae of JUnO, i whose teple oey was coied.”

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Sture Johaesso,Art Crisis , 1968, fro the Daish Collectio, 1977–79

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This euphoric declaratio of idepedece istituted udergroud art’shoe rule, fouded o the political eed to deocratize art i easily adinexpensively disseminated forms. With the mass-produced, offset-printedposter, Johaesso established a ew arketplace for art, cuttig outthe iddlee by sellig work via ail order, at cocerts ad be-is, orfro Galleri Caabis. This was a ercatile positio that retured to

the priciple of the eleetary arket, as opposed to the pro-capitalisticsubversiveess of the burgeoig Califoria (couter-)cultural idustry.Pop Art, by cotrast, could be said to have established a super-arketby turig everyday sigs ito abstract value i art objects. Johaessocarried out a ACTUAL decostructio of the origial—a idea thatWarhol flirted with, but ultimately rendered operational, albeit with maxi-ized iroy: at the Factory, the copy re-autheticated the origial.

I this way,Art Crisis ca be see as the declaratio of a edia warvia the subversio of a traditioal ediu,“oil o cavas.” I fact, theposter also coeorates Johaesso’s abadoet of paitig, adaccordigly caibalizes soe of his old cavases with couterculturalotifs. The pictorial eleets of the poster re-establish couterculturalcodes. They iclude a allegorical 19th-cetury egravig of Europe’siperial powers, Johaesso’s ow drawig of a still life with twofish skeletons on a plate, a score of the first few bars of Bob Dylan’ssog “Visios of Johaa,” ad various udergroud slogas. All theseeleets represet Aquaria lore, a corerstoe of the psychedelicoveet.

Copared with the obvious service fuctio of the West Coast AcidRock poster, Johaesso’s posters were critically autooous. I ostcases, however, they did aouce evets, as they were cotributiosto copetitios for architecture ad public art works, or exhibitioposters. This coectio to the art scee is atypical, sice psychedelicposters were usually coceived ad perceived as The Art of Rock (as at least one book title suggests). There are formal differences, too.I Johaesso’s posters—up to twice the size of their Califoriacousis—surface reais a paiterly cocer. I other words, they areemphatically flat, eschewing the trend for depicting text as if stretchedor projected oto a covex surface. Sice he used stadard fotsor geoetric oes of his ow desig, Johaesso’s graphics were

“faster”—closer to advertisig or political posters. Yet these posterswere not designed to be flyposted in public space, rather hung in thelivig space where they could be studied at close quarters, like michaux’sresearch, i “the laboratory of oe’s hoe.” Here we could easily spioff on another paradoxical tangent (this time between the propagandisticad the doestic) but it sees ore relevat to cosider the way iwhich the couterculture’s subterraea ethos was displaced to thelaboratory—ad this tie ot oly as a etaphor.

At the ed of the 1960s, Johaesso tured fro otagigudergroud posters i Copehage to prograig digital graphics at

IBm’s headquarters i Stockhol. By this tie, he was a fairly otoriouscharacter, cotroversial ad frequetly cesored by the establishet,ad IBm were presuably kee to collaborate with the artist for PRreasos. He was itroduced to a prograer, Ste Kalli, who helped

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hi operate a puch-card-fed aifrae coputer. This was a largeachie with a eory of 100kb that was “blid,” eaig it did’t havea oitor, ad whose activity was followed by egieers who observedblikig sigal laps ad studied pritouts o the cosole typewriters.Its oly output ediu was a dru plotter with a width of about 30co its paper roll.

If, for Aerica artist Sol LeWitt, the idea is the achie that akesthe art, for Johaesso ad Kalli it was rather the case that theachie *becoes the idea* that akes the art. For Johaessoat least, this was a ritualistic process i which the data achie itself perfored. The ature of their project was suggested by the aethey gave it, Intra Secus , fro the Lati intrinsics , eaig itrisic,iherited, built i. They ivestigated the ediu’s potetial by coductigexperiments with the graphic effects of the drum plotter’s behavior.Whe iput paraeters were chaged, the oly way to check the resultwas by plottig, ad i this way the achie’s iterpretatio of the iputcarried a eleet of surprise. The plotter would create blots, oires,ad plateaus of ik o the paper that deviated fro the atheaticallyexact fors calculated beforehad. The result was a exploratioof geoetry through algoriths. Ebles fro psychedelic lore—cannabis leaves, yin and yang, or the 1+2+3 figure—were abstractedas equatios by Kalli, the redered i the plotter’s seisographicscribblig.

Sture Johaesso, Hemp Leaf , 1972

These proceedigs were equivalet to cerebral brushwork: durig plot-out, the achie could act i rado, athropoorphic ways. It pritedi icreetal steps. A plotted circle without oticeable visible jags wasactually a polygo with hudreds of corers. If the paraeter for thesteps had too high a value, the ediu would jot dow a drawig i arage, while a low value would cause the plotter to proceed slowly adthoughtfully. Kalli ad Johaesso would observe how the lie evolvedon paper as it suffered such “emotional” turbulence, and for the benefitof those who were ot preset to watch, this achiic “teperaet”

was iscribed i the drawigs.Rather tha a clea departure fro his udergroud productio, the,Johaesso’s digital experietatio reattached the trasforative

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ethos of psychedelia to historical tie through tactical shifts betweeedia, ethods ad techologies. I both cases, the orbid reverie adorgaic oraetatio of the psychedelic cao were displaced oto asocial stage, ito what we ight cosider a *sociodelic* art—oe thatis society- rather tha id-aifestig ; a ew social body that growsfro the groud up, ad is’t goveretally istituted.

6. The flicker and the strobe (YES. YES. YES)

No one can deny the counterculture its shared planetary signifiers,ranging from a metaphorical India to real conflict zones, whether Vietnam,the Cuba revolutio, Paris ’68 or the Prague Sprig. Still, it is oddto observe the extet to which the couterculture was cocered withthe idetity ad boudaries of the atio state (especially give theprevalet psychedelic otios of trippig/travellig). Eve if you droppedout fro straight society, it sees you did’t bail o your coutry.The atio was soethig to be recostructed ad iproved—healed,turned on—with the conviction that the colors of the flag could burnbrighter ad ore itesely i soe kid of radiat hoecoig.At the sae tie, the atio was hardly cosidered a discrete etity,for the couterculture relied o iteratioal trade routes of ideasad coodities through which usic, iages, ad agazies weredistributed. Their reliace o the culture idustry’s spheres of circulatiofored a geopolitical backdrop. It was a give, for istace, that oewas tued i to Aglo-Aerica usic, ot least i Brazil of the late1960s, whe the Tropicalists started bastardizig 1950s Bossa novawith Psychedelic Rock.

I the 1960s, the questio of atioal idetity looed large i third worldpost-coloial ad ati-iperialist oveets. Lookig back i his 1997eoir Tropical Truth , the usicia Caetao Veloso writes that the goalof the Tropicalists was “to free ourselves fro the Brazil we kew.We had to destroy the Brazil of the atioalists ... ad do away oce adfor all of its iage.” At the sae tie, the artist Helio Oiticica argued ifavor of the “immediate reduction of all external influences to nationalmodels.” The National was also a signifier for countercultures elsewherein the Western world. It could be difficult to distinguish the hippie tribe

fro the atioal deographic, ad the yippies professed a love/haterelatioship to their “Aerika.” I a early essay o the hippies, Britishcultural critic Stuart Hall rearked that eveTime agazie could’thelp oticig a “pure Aerica species” uder “the log hair, the beadsad the kaftas,” while philosopher marshall Bera coeted o asiilarity of spirit betwee “the egaloaiac i the White House” adthose protestig outside the Petago, shoutig the words of The Doors’sog: “We wat the world ad we wat it ow!”

Sice the poet Oswald de Adrade wrote his Manifesto antropofago —literally, “aifesto of hua-eatig”—i 1928, caibalis has bee

a revenant concept for a specifically Brazilian social identity. A brain- child of the Lati Aerica avat-garde, antropafagia was a criticalcocept for the movimenta modernista ad post-war aesthetic experie-tatio geerally, ost proietly the 1960s couterculture that cae

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to be called “Tropicalia.” Artists like Oiticica rejected Aglo-Aericapsychedelia ad proposed istead the cocept of the “suprasesorial”as a explicit alterative to the exaple of Leary ad co.—a rejectiothat questioed psychedelia’s uiversal status, as well as its forativerelatio to coutercultures outside the U.S. As a quasi-ythicalcaibalizatio of sybolic fors, the, antropafagia offers yet another

perspective o psychedelia’s perpetual proliferatio.

Antropafagia signifies the devouring of dominant culture. It describes aconsumption of cultural difference conceived as a process of incorporationi which origis, aterials ad sigs are cosued, reivested adhybridized. The cosuig or appropriatig subject is herself ivolvedi the resultig ix of bodies—a fact that echoes i both Surrealist adpsychedelic orphologies of a ecstatic loss of cotrol, with a view toa reodelig of the self through “ego-loss.” Caibalis, De Adradewrites, is: “Agaist all catechiss ... Agaist all iporters of caed cosciousess... Agaist the plat-like elites ... Agaist the stories of a, begiig atCap Fiisterre ... Agaist the truth of the issioary atios ... Agaisturba scleroses. Agaist Coservatories, ad speculative boredo ...Agaist the torch-bearig Idia ... Agaist meory as habit-source ...Agaist Goethe, the other of the “Gracos,” ad the Court of Do JuaVI ... Plague of the so-called cultured ad Christiaized atios, that iswhat we are actig agaist ...”

The oveet owes uch of its popularity ad viability to the huor of De Adrade’s aifesto, particularly its o-oralizig attitude, as wellas the powerful aesthetic traditios of Brazil that have cotiued to worki this vei. Whe he wrote the aifesto, Brazil was still a segregatedcoutry, where Europea iigratio was ecouraged i order to whitethe populatio. Oce the caibalistic cocept loses its barbaric edgead becoes culturally acceptable, however, it risks producig a kidof repressive tolerace. Ideed, to the poet Waly Saloa, “the yth of racial deocracy”—of which antropafagia is without doubt a propoet—is “disproved by the actual apartheid of the slus.”

The ae of the Brazilia Tropicalia oveet ca be traced back to

a art work. I April 1967, Oiticica exhibited his eviroet Tropicalia as part of the exhibitio Brazilian New Objectivity at the museu of moder Art i Rio de Jaeiro. Accordig to its author, the work was aexperimental image field, “a tropical scenario, as it were, with plants,parrots, sad, pebbles,” ad was explicitly coected to De Adrade’scaibalistic discourse. Oiticica declared that hisTropicalia istallatiowas pitted agaist “the uiversalist yth of Brazilia culture based oEurope ad north Aerica”ad aouted to a SUPER-antropofogia —a project for aother oderity based o hybridizatio ad thecovictio that “purity is a yth” (as the leged over the etrace totheTropicalia eviroet ra). The ter was subsequetly popularized

by Caetao Veloso, Gilberto Gil, ad others o the LPTropicalia: ou panis et circensis (bread ad circuses) fro 1968, ad cae to deotethe cotiguity of protest ad creativity. The poet Decio Pigataripoignantly called this state of affairs the geleia geral —the “geeral jelly,”

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26BoTSL#4 2012 Dec 01 4:53 PM

a fatastic iage of virtuality, with gelati as the archetypal substrate of the psychedelic iagiary, wobblig istituted distictios ad coducive tothe sallest vibratio.

The oveet cae ito existece durig a brief relaxatio of theilitary dictatorship’s repressive politics, though its twi eeses,the Couist Party ad the Old Left, asserted a equally ideologicalcotrol over culture, creativity, ad lifestyle. Despite these claustro-phobic coditios, the oveet was ot a particularly subterraeapheoeo. Oiticica ad other artists of his geeratio were istitu-tioally sactioed, ad usicias such as Caetao Veloso, Osmutates, Gilberto Gil, ad Gal Costa gaied their fae perforigi TV shows like Chacrinha , a carivalesque etertaiet prograaed after its host, a chubby, iddle-aged a who wore outrageouscostues ad awarded a pieapple to the progra’s worst bad.“Like soe Dada experiece for the asses,” Veloso writes,“it seeed at ties dagerous just for beig so absurd ad eergetic.This was the progra that the doestic help would’t iss.” Tropicaliadid’t have the esoteric diesio of a udergroud culture, but wasibued for the begiig with a popularity that was probably uiquefor a 1960s couterculture.

Sensitive to such assimilation, massification, and the dilution of life-experiece, Oiticica laeted the popularity of Tropicalia i a essaywritte oly a year after he preseted his epoyous eviroet.It had, in effect, become a folklore invested in a Brazilian Pop Art.“Ad ow, what do we see?” He despairs:

“Bourgeois, sub-itellectuals, cretis of every kid, preachig Tropicalia(it’s becoe fashioable!)—i short, trasforig ito a object of cosuptio soethig which they caot quite idetify. It’s copletelyclear! Those who ade ‘stars ad stripes’ are ow akig their parrots,

BoTSL# 2013 APR 10 10:48 PM




baaa trees, etc., or are iterested i slus, saba schools, outlawati-heroes ...”

Oiticica’s ati-coforist progra for re-coectig art ad life icluded“the use of halluciogeic drugs o the collective plae,” though this wasexpressly nOT a psychedelic positio. Psychedelia was asked to observe

its place. For Oiticica, there was a considerable difference between hispropositio—ewly dubbed “suprasesorial”—ad that of the likesof Leary ad Kesey. Oiticica posits such West Coast psychedelia o apar with what he called the “aestheticis” of Pop, Op, miialis, adHappeigs, ad we ca surise that his skepticis towards Leary iparticular stes fro a readig of psychedelia as a pheoeo siilarto those Europea avat-gardes that blithely assue their owuiversality. Their Lati Aerica couterparts istead tried to uraveloderity as a expasioist force. Oiticica therefore iveted a coceptto overwrite psychedelia ad restore agecy to the ative atioal:they have psychedelia, we have the suprasesorial.

Oiticica itroduced the idea at a coferece i August 1967. Proposigto dispense with the use of images altogether—another significantdeparture fro a iage-lade, aistrea psychedelic art. The aiaesthetic vector of Oiticica’s suprasesorial ca be uderstood i ters of a social trasforatio of the object ad its aesthetic status. This sociality“eglobes” the subject’s authetic relatio to the artwork, coceptualizedas a *propositio* i oppositio to the “fake” idea of the “solid work tobe sold.” The suprasensorial thus finds rhythm, sensuality and experiencei the “o-evet,” a artistic *hypothesis* that radically displaces theworld of objects ad the ways i which we perceive the. Which is to saythat, i spite of its social locatio, Oiticica’s “supra-forig” is virtualad uihabitable—a “idea of for ad structure [that] will ot exist,”but istead “lies i wait for the possibility to aifest itself, ad awaits--> ultrawaits.”

black and white psychedelia

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