Exhibiting A Collective Thinking: Schizo-Culture For Now

This PhD thesis demonstrates, while articulating, a collective thinking through ‘schizo- cultural’ tendencies in experimental and creative practice. It is grounded in a practice- based and collaborative methodology, developed through writing, editorial/curatorial work and exhibition-making, directed towards rethinking theory. Taking the 1975 ‘SchizoCulture’ conference in New York as a point of departure, my thesis focusses on intersecting crises of language, knowledge and institution, arguing for these as emblematic of the breakdown and/or reformulation of codes at the limits of white Western (un)reason. The result is a new understanding of not only the 1975 ‘Schizo-Culture’ conference but of how its actions and ruptures may be used in the present. In the context of developments in critical thought and practice in mid-twentieth century Europe and the Us (in particular 1950s–1970s), I position ‘Schizo-Culture’ at a point of schism between then-prevailing critiques of Western capitalist modernity, which allowed a new understanding of critical/ theoretical interventions through practice by artists, activists, musicians, clinicians, service- users and so forth. This allows for the elaboration of schizo-cultural tendencies in a number of directions; my specific focus here is how a critical relationship to modernity is advanced through a practice-based analysis of power relations as expressed in linguistic, disciplinary and institutional forms rooted in Enlightenment rationality and racial capitalism. Moreover, using the situation in 1970s New York to reflect upon the context of Britain in the 2010s, I diagnose the development of these forms in the shift from ‘disciplinary’ to ‘control societies’ and the emergence of new ecologies of institution.

The published work and contribution to knowledge
This thesis is based on (1) my editing/curation of the field in the 2013 publication SchizoCulture: The Event, The Book edited by Sylvère Lotringer and David Morris; (2) my essay ‘Schizo-Culture in its Own Voice’ included in the above publication; (3) the exhibition and public programme ‘Schizo-Culture: Cracks in the Street’, curated by David Morris and Katherine Waugh with Paul Pieroni (various venues, 2014); (4) selected essays, texts and public presentations, 2011–21. A detailed summary of the published works and their context, reception and interrelationship is given. My analysis is then divided into three parts, which correspond to three different lines of schizo-cultural practice that I identify as follows: ‘information and outside’; ‘disciplinary rationalities’; and ‘institutional analyses’. I follow these three lines across selected elements of the published work. The relationships I describe between apparently singular elements should be understood as an expression of a wider density of associations, individuals, artefacts and references. The present thesis offers a partial view from my own perspective of work undertaken by and between multiple persons. Any faults or misdirections are my own. Above all I wish to emphasise the larger arrangement from which is constructed the present ‘solo’ articulation.