John Cussans

download cv
United Kingdom °1965
research interests: science fiction, anthropology, artistic reasearch, art theory, critical theory, social psychology, Haiti, Vodou, decolonialism, horror, alterity, psychoanalysis, British Columbia, Northwest Coast First Nations, surrealism, diagrams, Ghetto Biennale, colonialism
affiliation: University of Worcester, Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts, London)
en

I am an artist, arts educator and writer working across the fields of contemporary art, cultural history and critical art theory. My work explores the legacies of colonialism, psychoanalysis and surrealism in art, cinema and popular culture from ethnographic, science fictional and social psychology perspectives. I have a multi-disciplinary arts practice, often working collaboratively on projects inspired by the shared interests of an affinity group. My book Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and the Zombie Complex (MIT/Strange Attractor 2017) explores the uses of Haiti as a locus for Euro-American fears about African culture, spirituality and revolutionary excess in the Americas, and their sublimation into popular horror tropes. I am currently working on a long-term artistic research project called The Skullcracker Suite, investigating cultural decolonization in British Columbia, Canada.

research

research expositions

  • BC Time-Slip (The Empire Never Ended) (2019) author(s): John Cussans published in: Research Catalogue
    BC Time-Slip (The Empire Never Ended) is the first phase of a long-term artistic research project called The Skullcracker Suite. Taking its name from Philip K. Dick's 1964 novel Martian Time-Slip, the project uses the story of Dick's visit to Vancouver in 1972, and his stay at a rehab clinic for First Nations ex-cons, as a pretext to investigate the cultural politics of decolonization in British Columbia since the 1960's from ethnographic, Indigenous and science fictional perspectives, with a specific focus on the potlatch culture of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
     open exposition comments (0)