The genealogy of the psychedelic is still informed by – or seemingly forever indebted to – myths of subversion and emancipation. Such 1960s mythology now tends to stand in the way of a critical/imaginative/embodied reassessment of psychedelic drugs; drugs that are currently being normalised through legalisation, commercialisation, therapeutic uses and discourses of self-realization. Art’s role in producing relevance for psychedelic irritability or acid thinking might be to reestablish the terms of our "ontological debt"; that to which we owe our existence. This, according to anthropologist Roy Wagner, is mythology: a discourse about the givens.
Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian and curator. He has (co-)curated exhibitions such as Chronoplasticity (Raven Row, 2024), Incerteza Viva (the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, 2016) and documenta. Politik und Kunst (Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2020-21). His publications include Networks (2015) and Believe Not Every Spirit. The Art of Georgiana Houghton (2026).
Artist tal, 14.1.2026, 2 pm