Altered States: Psychedelic Experimental Cinema as Border Crossing in Bruce Conner’s LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS
Journal of cinema and media studies January 1, 2021 Johanna Gosse 2 citations
The article examines Bruce Conner's film LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS (1959–1967), a key work of experimental cinema linked to psychedelic counterculture. It analyzes motifs such as Mexican village life, hallucinogenic mushrooms, appearances by Timothy Leary, and allusions to the atomic bomb. Contextualizing the film within Cold War discourses of race and nationhood, the author argues that its engagement with psychedelia is shaped by a colonialist logic of expansion and self-discovery, where primitivist projections of Indigeneity play a constitutive role.