Psychedelic Aesthetics and the Body without Organs at the Limits of Perception

Psychedelic experience has an aesthetic dimension that reveals the nonhuman otherness of the universe, a phenomenon explored by Aldous Huxley in *The Doors of Perception* and by Deleuze and Guattari, who describe psychedelic aesthetics as pushing perception to the limit of abstract geometric forms. This article examines two experimental films—Philippe Garrel's *Le Révélateur* (1968) and Morgan Quaintance's *Surviving You, Always* (2021)—to show how cinematographic techniques evoke a psychedelic, mind-revealing experience. The camera's nonhuman perception, its 'body without organs', and its affective intensity create an ethics of 'becoming not unworthy of the event'.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article focuses on the aesthetics of the psychedelic experience. Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception remains one of the few studies that investigates the aesthetic dimension of the psychedelic experience as profoundly meaningful as such, because it gives direct attention to the nonhuman otherness of the universe that is hard to describe in words, but that can be felt and sensed. Similarly, Deleuze and Guattari have investigated psychedelics as a perceptual, aesthetic, phenomenon. They argue that psychedelic aesthetics offers an experience at the limits of perception to the point of ultimate abstraction of geometric figures and grains. Drawing upon the works of two experimental filmmakers from two different generations and backgrounds, Philippe Garrel’s enigmatic Le Révélateur ( The Revealer, 1968 ) and Morgan Quaintance’s thought-provoking Surviving You, Always (2021), the borders of the perceptual field by cinematographic means will be investigated. These works are exemplary of how the nonhuman perception of the camera, its ‘bodies without organs’, and its affective intensity evoke a psychedelic, mind-revealing, experience and an ethics of – in Deleuze’s words – ‘becoming not unworthy of the event’.