Olaf Nicolai, Foucault In, 2018

Michel Foucault was invited to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975. During his visit, Simeon Wade, who assisted and accompanied Foucault, persuaded him to join him and his partner, Michael Stoneman, on a trip to Death Valley and Zabriskie Point, where Foucault took LSD for the first time. Wade wrote about this experience in his unpublished manuscript Foucault in California. When Olaf Nicolai asked to use excerpts from the text for an artist’s publication, he was permitted a maximum of 250 words. He selected 205 words from throughout the manuscript. Although the broader contents can only be guessed at, this abbreviated text is itself a trip.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition by Olaf Nicolai That’s a God-forsaken place; but it’s beautiful, isn’t it?, at Lokremise / Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, curated by Lorenzo Benedetti.