Holy Herbs and the Psychoactive Revolution
Celebrated Sheffield-based artist Jessica Heywood and Sheffield historian Phil Withington have created an installation exploring the botanical dimensions of Europe’s psychoactive revolution.
We demonstrate social importance and the relationship between herbs and plants, global modernity, and different states of intoxication.
The intoxicants at the heart of Europe’s first ‘psychoactive revolution’ included locally produced alcohols (fermented and distilled), which underwent processes of industrialization during the period, as well as Atlantic commodities like tobacco, sugar, and cacao and Asian substances like opium, coffee, and tea.
The installation represents varieties of species identified, harvested, and transplanted for these processes: hops and grains as well as sugar cane, nicotiana and poppies.
Credits
Academic Lead
- Phil Withington, Professor in Social and Cultural History at the University of Sheffield
Creative Partner
- Jessica Heywood, Artist