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Hex, drugs and damage control: Phenomenology, pharmaceuticals and catharsis in performance art 1976-1992

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posted on 2023-03-23, 13:41 authored by Andre Stitt

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In the text I explore how and why I made radical art with the aid drugs to produce altered states of consciousness as a means for conflict transformation. I explore examples of my own formative engagement with mind altering substances (alcohol, prescribed medication, street and pharmaceutical grade drugs) that were used in combination with performance art in Belfast during the nineteen seventies and through my travels in the 1980's. 

For the purposes of the text I draw attention to selected examples of early and later performance work from the period 1976-1992.  I explore the various discursive elements that helped shape this work and how I was trying to formulate a strategy for an ˜experimental exercise of freedom"that utilised a combination of mind, mood and body elevators with physical ritual, to achieve psychic catharsis as a means for liberation from a colonial/cultural conditioning.


History

Published in

Inter, Art Actuel

Publisher

Les Editions Interventions

Year

2016

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Citation

Stitt, A. (2016) 'HEX, DRUGS AND DAMAGE CONTROL: Phenomenology, Pharmaceuticals and Catharsis in Performance Art 1976-1992', Inter, Art Actuel 123 : Addictions. Drugs, creation, augmented consciousness

Print ISSN

0825-8708

Cardiff Met Affiliation

  • Cardiff School of Art and Design

Cardiff Met Authors

Andre Stitt

Cardiff Met Research Centre/Group

Artistic Research

Copyright Holder

  • © The Publisher

Language

  • en

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