THE MESCALINE JOURNALS
Henri Michaux and psychic cartography: Tracing the limits of language and frantic notation.
“I wanted to draw the consciousness of passing time.”
Faced with the shifting landscapes of altered states, the French poet and artist Henri Michaux abandoned traditional lyricism. He turned instead to a radical world-building praxis - inventing imaginary lands, impossible creatures and an entirely new vocabulary to map a geography that blurs the line between mind and matter. This two-hour collaborative salon treats Michaux’s work as a live laboratory, investigating what happens when ordinary grammar breaks down and alternative notation begins.
We sit with his work until the strangeness becomes familiar - and the familiar becomes strange. We ask what Michaux found in the space within, and what it opens in us.
Prior reading of selected textual and visual fragments is required. These will be sent out to participants two weeks before the encounter.
It is not a question of a vision, but of a passage.
The line does not outline; it tracks the movement.
Who this salon is for
Built for anyone driven by an unorthodox curiosity who is fascinated by the limits of language, graphic lines and the places where mind and matter collapse into one another. You do not need a background in art history, literature, psychology or creative practice; your willingness to sit with a strange specimen and think collaboratively is what guides the dialogue.
The Anatomy of the Salon
The session opens by placing one of Michaux's invented creature descriptions and frantic ink drawings in the centre of the room, followed by the opening question: what is this gesture doing? From that collision, the discussion opens into two movements:
Movement I: Fabricated Lands, The Uncanny & Synthetic Language
We enter Michaux’s earlier, constructed worlds where he forces the impossible to become possible. By rendering the strange familiar and the familiar strange, we treat his invented tribes and fabricated bestiaries as a radical praxis - investigating how alternative mythologies allow us to map a plural self that ordinary language cannot reach.Movement II: The Mescaline Journals & Frantic Notation
We shift into the hyper-acceleration of his mescaline writings, where intentional architecture gives way to raw velocity. We analyze his furious text fragments and graphic marks as an intense alchemical praxis - tracing the limits where ordinary grammar breaks down to record a geography where mind and matter completely blur.
The evening concludes with a brief, quiet creative provocation on the page - a simple, unshared five-minute constraint testing alternative notation directly through your own observations and reflections.
The Details
Online via Zoom · Saturday 5th December 2026 · 7pm - 9pm UK Time
Open to writers, artists, researchers and the genuinely curious
No prior knowledge of Michaux required
Places limited to fifteen
Price: £25
Cabinet events are recorded and archived a growing library for those who cannot attend live. By booking a place you are consenting to the session being recorded.