Description

---

A series of painterly and poetic considerations on a feminized history of the rye fungus Ergot, the chemical basis of LSD from the author of Our Fatal Magic.

From the cellular to the galactic, via Paleolithic cave markings to the trace impressions left by drone photography on our mind’s eye, incorporating dancing plagues, communist psychedelic witches, hyper-sexual fungi, chthonic descents, and skyward ascents, The Neon Hieroglyph weaves together a series of painterly and poetic considerations on a feminized history of the rye fungus Ergot, the chemical basis of LSD.
 
The Neon Hieroglyph constructs a house of lyrical reflections for our ghosts to inhabit, a place where the gothic and the hallucinatory collide, where gothic affect and fractal dread form a mausoleum for psychedelic specters. And also the Sun! The Sun is a ghost that haunts the night! Framed with new essays by artist and writer Caspar Heinemann and anthropologist Amy Hale, Tai Shani’s The Neon Hieroglyph continues a journey into the post-patriarchal fictions that animated her first collection Our Fatal Magic.
 

About the Author

---

Tai Shani is a Tutor in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art. Shani's multidisciplinary practice, comprising performance, film, photography, and installation, revolves around experimental narrative texts.
 
Amy Hale is an anthropologist who specializes in contemporary occult and Pagan history, religions, and culture in the United States and the United Kingdom.
 
Caspar Heinemann is a poet, artist, and academia-adjacent independent researcher based in London and Berlin. His research interests include critical mysticism, gay biosemiotics, illegitimate communisms, and professional irreverence.