Offsite event – Schizo-Culture: Cracks in the Street
An evening with Sylvère Lotringer and invited guests with open discussions, film screenings and artistic interventions to celebrate the publication of Schizo-Culture: The Book, The Event (Semiotext(e) / MIT 2014).
From 6.30pm, 17 May 2014.
Free and open to all.
Venue: Institut Francais, London
17 Queensberry Pl, London SW7 2DT
Drinks kindly sponsored by MIT Press .
" Cracks in the state of things, in the state of places, in the state of norms…
Cracks leading us despite ourselves to new social practices and to new aesthetic practices which will reveal themselves as less and less separate from each other and more and more in complicity…"
Felix Guattari, Cracks in the Street, Flash Art. 1987.
The 1975 event Schizo-Culture: On Prisons and Madness, was a groundbreaking and infamous meeting of the American avant-garde, anti-psychiatry, prison reform and feminist movements, and a group of radical and then little-known French theorists. Organised by Semiotext(e) (whose mission statement was to "bring together two continents of thought through a revolution of desire"), the weekend saw counter-cultural icons such as John Cage, William Burroughs, R.D. Laing, and Ti-Grace Atkinson come head to head with figures now regarded as some of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century: Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. What followed was an explosive combination of seminal intellectual activity, artistic interventions and original theoretical presentations set against intense political confrontations – Michel Foucault declared it ‘the end of the 1960s counterculture’ - yet the event suggested new possibilities for alternative forms of resistance.
On 17 May 17 2014 – on the occasion of the much-anticipated publication Schizo-Culture: The Event, The Book (2014, Semiotext(e)/MIT edited by Sylvère Lotringer and David Morris) and in recognition of Semiotext(e)'s 40th anniversary the French Institute in London will host an evening of open schizo-discussions with theorist and Semiotext(e) founder Sylvère Lotringer (co-organizer with John Rajchman of the original conference) accompanied by contributions from invited guests. The event will include musical performances of work by John Cage by his respected interpreter the composer and artist Susan Stenger, film screenings, and artistic and discursive interventions by artists, writers and theorists, David Morris (co-editor of Schizo-Culture), Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson, Kodwo Eshun,Warren Neidich, Garin Dowd, Anna Hickey Moody, Mischa Twitchin, Paul Pieroni and Katherine Waugh.
The evening will engage with the myriad cultural connections, forces and fractures first exposed by this seminal 1975 event and consider how the strong links with activists from anti-psychiatry to the prison reform movement might be re-configured in our present cultural conditions. It will also seek to map the influence of Schizo-Culture and French theory beyond academic and institutional frameworks through the complex yet visceral legacy it has produced in art, film, music and experimental writing.
Evening curated by Katherine Waugh in collaboration with David Morris . With the kind support of The French Institute and SPACE and with special thanks to Sarah Frappier and Marie-Doha Besancenot.
