Film screenings and panel discussion in collaboration with Helen Knowles

Presented in collaboration with artist and researcher Helen Knowles, Towards a Cosmotechnic Psychedelia is a screening event followed by a panel conversation looking at alternate states, entity encounters, differing ethical, moral, and social forces, as described in Yuk Hui's concept of 'cosmotechnics'. A framework that continues to shape use of psychedelics and plant-based medicinal tools both in Global South’s communities, like Putumayo in Colombia, and in affluent Western societies.

The event is part of Helen's current PhD research, titled "More Than Human Healthcare", which involves collaborations with the Psychedelic Trials Team at King's College London, the London AI Centre, and members of the Inga community in Putumayo, Colombia.

The screening includes the experimental documentary True Hallucinations, directed by Péter Bergmann based on Terence McKenna’s book Journey to La Chorerra. The film details his brother's journey to Putumayo and the experiments that ensued, blending 90s computational aesthetics with found footage of McKenna and his brother, alongside McKenna’s famously hypnotic oration. This complex historical work forms the basis for understanding the problematic, extractive, Western-centric botanical objective to discover and sail the psychonautical seas of inner consciousness.

From here we see more contemporary takes on the points raised (or ignored) in McKenna’s lifework: Ursula Biemann’s exploration of intelligence in nature from both shamanic and scientific perspectives and Patricia Dominguez’s enquiry into experimental ethnobotany and organic connection technologies that expand the perception of the vegetal and the spiritual world. Looking towards an embodied approach of psychedelics in medicine and mental health, Andrea Khora visualises the effects of 10mg of ketamine inserted intravenously, creating hallucinogenic and otherworldly images. Suzanne Triester approaches non-colonialist plans towards a techno-spiritual imaginary of alternative visions of survival on earth via a body of work titled Technoshamanism. This sees an expansion and redefinition of technology that is engineered and redirected in new ways for global positive futures away from mainstream economic, corporate and governmental forces. Rebeca Romero’s Voyager also questions the legitimacy of the notion of “discovery” and proposes a reassessment of dominant notions of intelligence, technology, and knowledge.

The screening was followed by a panel conversation with artist and researcher Helen Knowles, King’s College Clinical Trials Manager and psychedelic researcher, Catherine Bird, and artist Andrea Khora, with contributions from Dr. Hernando Chindoy Chindoy, former Representante legal de la Entidad Territorial AWAI del Pueblo Inga de Colombia and co-founder of the AWAI Indigenous University.

The conversation aims at looking beyond the West to move towards anti-universalist and pluralist perspectives on technologies and tools of connection, and explore how artistic interventions and methods of narrative-building can assist us in creating collective awareness and connection in the contemporary context of the climate emergency.

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