SURVIVAL 20. Art Review PIGUŁY / PILLS 24-28.06.2022 former Bethanien hospital Generała Romualda Traugutta 118, 50-422 Wrocław
curators: Michał Bieniek, Anna Kołodziejczyk, Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz, Ewa Pluta, Daniel Brożek
artists: Laia Abril, Krystian Truth Czaplicki, Volkan Diyaroglu, Pablo Ramírez González, Maja Janczar, Kamil Kak, Monika Karczmarczyk, Dana Kavelina, Maksym Khodak, Alina Kleytman, Adam Kozicki, Agata Lankamer, Katarzyna Malejka, Magdalena Mądra, Martyna Modzelewska, Horacy Muszyński, Małgorzata Mycek, Adam Nehring, Iwona Ogrodzka, Zofia Pałucha, Valentina Petrova, Przemysław Piniak, Katarzyna Podpora, Martyna Poznańska, Aleksandra Przybysz, Jakub Rokita, Anna Scherbyna, Jarosław Słomski, Aleksander Sovtysik, Kuba Stępień, Kamil Subzda, Tytus Szabelski, Sofia Topi, Daniela Weiss, Katarzyna Wyszkowska, xyckshyt, Rafał Żarski
Survival Art Review id co-financed by the Municipality of Wrocław / www.wroclaw.pl
The pill as a symbol of choice and change of an individual’s relationship to the surrounding reality goes back at least a century. In the Internet jargon, to be “pilled” may be a shorthand for a general political awakening. The ideology encapsulated in pharmacological symbolism suggests a corporeal relationship with one’s worldview, in which adopting it literally means embodying it.
Taking psychoactive substances is both common and systematically increasing, which is sometimes regarded as a symptom and effect of socio-political, technological and systemic changes. The history of legalising and criminalising individual psychoactive substances is an important testimony to cultural, social and political transformations.
McKenzie Wark in her recent analyses of rave proposed the concept of “ketamine femmunism.” Paradoxically, today’s search for a space of radical possibilities and potential forms of community is associated with a substance whose action is based on the weakening of the transmission of external stimuli to the brain. Dissociation, which leads to depersonalisation and a sense of unreality, turns out to be more than turning one’s back on reality. Perhaps this outlines a new relationship model; perhaps it is just another leap down the rabbit hole.
