Project sigma

Abstract

The following chapter will focus on sigma, a network of cultural practitioners that was active roughly between 1963-1965. This highly ambitious project involved a network of writers, artists, scientists and psychiatrists, including William Burroughs, Jeff Nuttall and R.D. Laing. Its successes were modest: the most tangible outcome of the project was the sigma portfolio, an expanding, self-published collection of texts (Trocchi, 1964), ‘part manifesto, part manual’ for art activism (Wark, 2011: 126). Its initiator and convener was Alexander Trocchi, the Scottish novelist, poet, situationist and drug addict. Our intention is to present a close reading of sigma essays to explore the unfolding of an art activist logic within the programmatic texts of the portfolio.