Susan Morris

Susan Morris remarks: The title and the piece itself comes from me misremembering a line from a song by The Doors, The Crystal Ship: Before you slip into unconsciousness I'd like to have another kiss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU1sLx1tjPY I always thought Morrison was saying "Before I slip into unconsciousness, I'd like to have another drink”. Once I realised my mistake I thought it was funny - and took it as a cue to make a piece of work taking the misremembered line as an instruction. So I wrote the sentence, then had a drink (a glass of red wine), then wrote the sentence again, poured another drink, wrote the sentence… and so on. The piece combines a conceptual approach to making work with an interest in automatic writing. The Surrealists experimented with drugs and alcohol to try and access the unconscious and so make work - writings and drawings - that was guided by a kind of headlessness. The idea was to cast the ego aside and see what came from ‘underneath’ - the body’s own unruly creatureliness; the human just being not thinking. Later I started using technology such as the Actiwatches and the motion capture software to try and do a similar thing but with a more contemporary and culturally relevant approach. This approach was also safer - “I” produced eighteen drawings in this drunken state and was ill for an entire week as a result.