Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligence
Eighth edition, 22 May 2024
Pluralizing psychedelic experiences
Giorgio Gristina
PhD candidate, DANT (ICS-ULisboa), Systems Neuroscience Lab (Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown)
Potential groundbreaking therapeutic applications are fuelling a resurgence of scientific and clinical interest towards psychedelic compounds. Growing media coverage is popularizing concepts such as “mystical experience” and “ego-dissolution”. Such terms are used in most scientific studies to describe the complex subjective experiences elicited by these substances, possibly playing a role in their therapeutic outcomes. But what’s the history behind these categories? And are there other ways of interpreting the peculiar effects of these substances?
The mystical framework has been dominant in western scientific approaches to altered states of consciousness, and was thus adopted by psychedelic research since its inception. However, I argue that it is not the only possible interpretation of psychedelics’ effects. Ethnographic data and anecdotal evidence show that other communities have approached psychedelics through other epistemologies, and that their effects vary considerably across different settings. To widen our understanding of these substances’ effects and their therapeutic applications, scientific approaches to psychedelics should attempt to include a broader diversity of experiences, contexts and methods.
Giorgio Gristina
Giorgio Gristina holds a BA in Intercultural Communication and a MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology, both from the University of Torino (Italy). He also got a diploma in Sound Engineering from the school APM (Italy), having collaborated to numerous artistic / audiovisual projects along the years. He is currently PhD candidate in Medical Anthropology at the Institute of Social Sciences (ULisboa), with a research project co-hosted by the System Neuroscience Laboratory (Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown). His PhD investigation employs qualitative methods to unravel the historical and cultural frameworks underlying contemporary scientific research and clinical practice with psychedelic drugs, with focus on the Portuguese scenario and its role in the context of the “psychedelic renaissance”. His work explores the socialities emerging around the use and circulation of drugs, and the way scientific discourses shape western conceptions of self, mind and mental health. He has conducted fieldwork in Israel and in different sites in Europe.
https://doutoramento.antropologia.ulisboa.pt/estudantes/giorgio-gristina
Credits
Organised by CADA in partnership with Lisbon Architecture Triennale and Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon
Programmed by Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira with guest programmers: Andrea Pavoni, Justin Jaeckle, Lavínia Pereira and Olivia Bina.
Funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes
Support: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – NOVA LINCS; Instituto Ciências Sociais, Urban Transitions Hub, Universidade de Lisboa; DINAMIA’CET (ISCTE-IUL) and Faculdade Belas Artes, Universidade de Lisboa, Departamentos de Design de Comunicação e Arte Multimédia
Design: Pedro Loureiro
Photography: Joana Linda
Sound: Diogo Melo