Featuring the Mycological Twist, MBJ and Hector Patch reading excerpts from Octavia E. Butler’s “Bloodchild and Other Stories” and “Lilith’s Brood”.
Sound design by Tom Richards.

—————— Description
A psilocybin tea reading invites embodied knowledge of mycelial infrastructures. The “Wood Wide Web” networks plants, fungi and other species for mutual benefit of the interconnected; thinking through it offers potential for psychic connections during social or ideological distancing. Observing how mycorrhizal webbings form networks to collectively thrive and survive, queers hierarchical worldmaking to manifest what Denise Ferreira da Silva words as “differences without separability”.
To decolonize reality as a given construct, the tea reading adopts the mind-altering paradigm of psilocybin - in physical and in transcendental sense. The psychoactive compound known as "magic mushrooms” has been used as medicine since pre-recorded history. Indigenous populations believe in its mystical properties as a psycho-spiritual conduit with an ability to manifest the human mind and induce connection with the cosmic. Clinical studies confirm psilocybin’s ability to aid mental health treatments through synaptic recalibration which dissolves a separate sense of self. Recent trends indicate microdosing psychedelics as a widely spread movement, especially popular with the tech start-up industry.
Using psychoactive rootscapes as metaphors, fantasies and hallucinations, the act of lucid dreaming involves science fiction by Octavia E. Butler. Opening portals of awareness to release the rational, we are rewiring the collective unconscious to reimagine a new kind of normal.

The ‘Self Optimization’ series considers biopolitical underpinnings of productivity strive. Previous iterations have engaged contributors from the fields of behavioural economics, AI/ neuroscience and devotional practices, where the participatory formats introduced concept metaphors through raindrop cake and yin practice among others.

Marija Bozinovska Jones, Self Optimization through embodied psilocybin reading, 2021 / Part: One

Spaces of Faux Intimacies is the first part of a series of interventions unfolding over a year, exploring intimacy in the wake of socially distanced capitalism, digital technologies and the pandemic. 

Today’s neoliberal, hyper-connected society, has capitalised the very notion of intimacy. Screened semblances of emotional abundance are promised to us within only a few swipes away while corporate conglomerates are profiting from our desire for physical and emotional connections. As the pandemic and the accompanying social distancing measures are driving us even further apart, and amid the already existing turbulence around the world, how can we work together to produce new channels of care, social resilience, and affective solidarity? 

"Spaces of faux intimacies" brings together artists of various disciplines to contribute to the discussion with individually commissioned auditory works.

Curated by Katerina Gnafaki for Centrum

The exhibition is part of the Vorspiel program of the CTM and transmediale festival 2021 and made possible with the generous support of Musikfonds, by means of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.