Lecture & discussion · Chapter I

High Society

The history of art, told through the history of substances. A lecture, then a real conversation.

17 July 19:00-20:30 CET 18+ €5 entry

In Barcelona at a secret place, or online. Places are limited.

Your hosts

**Roman Selivan** Twenty years turning things into objects of desire for luxury brands. Now he looks for the non-obvious in art - the data and connections most people miss.

**Vladislav Sludskiy** A curator who has worked from New York to Geneva, now at the Tova Foundation. His whole career circles one question: what is art really for, and who decides what counts as art?

Together, co-founders of Forwart Advisory.

The premise

Long before the studio, there was the rite. Art and the altered state grew up together - the first images we have were made by people reaching past ordinary sight.

The substance was never the art - it opened a door. From a Siberian trance to a giant mushroom in a Paris square, one thread runs through all of it. We follow it that evening, out loud. Come curious.

Open a door

Compressed

Forty thousand years in one evening: a shaman's mushroom in Siberia, the painted hands of Patagonia, Bosch's garden, the ergot visions the Church called St Anthony's fire, Alice down the rabbit hole, the green hour of absinthe.

Then the moderns - Beuys, Cage, Nan Goldin, Basquiat, Haring, Hirst - and, today, Carsten Höller's giant fly agaric in a Paris square. The same hunger in every century: to see past the visible and carry something back.

Then the room

Halfway through, it stops being a talk and turns into a conversation. A few open questions go to the whole room - the kind we don't usually ask out loud:

Does a substance make anything, or only remove a filter?
Where is the line between a muse and a crutch?
Can a sober century still make psychedelic art - now that the machine dreams for us?
What do we lose when the rite becomes a productivity tool?

The shape of the evening

19:00 · 15 min

Doors. A drink, the rules of the room.

19:15 · 45 min

The walk. Roman × Vladislav, a history of substances and art.

20:00 · 30 min

The floor opens. The questions - and yours.

The room

17 July, 19:00-20:30 CET. €5, 18+. In Barcelona at a secret place, or online from anywhere. Apply to join - we write back to you personally on WhatsApp and tell you the exact spot. Places are limited.