The word ‘psychedelic’, from the Greek psyche (mind, soul) and deloun (to reveal or manifest), was first coined in 1956 to describe the mind-altering effects of psychotropic substances. For cultural critic Mark Fisher, however, ‘the crucial defining feature of the psychedelic is the question of consciousness, and its relationship to what is experienced as real.’ If even the most basic categories of experience — time, space, labour, the self — can be altered, then reality is contingent and plastic, shaped by power yet open to transformation by collective desire. In his late writings, he described ‘psychedelic reason’ as a lucid, emancipatory framework that allows us to see through the fatalism of capitalist realism and manifest alternative futures.
This year’s Asymmetry Lecture Series revisits Fisher’s provocation at a time when the grounds of shared reality feel unsettled and fragile, aggravated by disinformation politics and synthetic media. At the same time, new forms of knowledge, from advances in neuroscience, machine learning to distributed intelligence have expanded our understanding of what it means to be ‘conscious’ beyond the human sensorium into a more entangled and relational field.
The invited speakers navigate these contradictions through diverse artistic practices, from projects that trace the emergence of new psycho-social collectivities through digital egregores to filmic explorations of shamanic traditions on the ruins of modernity. At a moment when we no longer fully trust what we see and hear, the series asks how art might open new circuits of perception and sketch pathways toward futures not yet foreclosed.
The Asymmetry Lecture Series is an annual programme of artist talks, conversations and screenings that provide a platform for artists, curators and scholars of East and Southeast Asian heritage to share their research and practice with wider audiences, focusing on issues of transculturality and representation in the global contemporary.
Convened by Dr Wenny Teo, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art at The Courtauld, Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt, Director at Asymmetry and Dr Yayu Zheng, Asymmetry Post-doctoral Fellow at the Courtauld.
