Amok Journal: Sensurround Edition is a compendium of psycho-physiological investigations compiled from the furthest reaches of forensic medicine, sexology, psychiatry, anthropology and hard science research. The focus of this compilation is the pursuit of a neurobiological basis for mystical and ecstatic experience. The Amok Journal: Sensurround Edition brings together accounts of the search for the erotic in the mechanical, the sublime in the visceral, and the spiritual in the electromagnetic, from explorations of the subtle effects of infrasound to death-defying grasps at the ultimate orgasm. The field of inquiry is the prodigious psychic démi-monde of hallucination, schizophrenia, religious fervor, ecstatic possession, sexual obsession, mass hysteria and private ritual, as documented by the rational methodology of science. Heavily and graphically illustrated.
Topics include:
Autoerotic fatalities • Self-mutilation/amputee fetish • Infrasound • Trepanation • Mondo Film • Cargo cults • Neue Slowenische Kunst • Psych-out
"It belongs alongside Krafft-Ebbing's Psychopathia Sexualis and Bataille's Erotism: Death and Sensuality in any well-appointed library of the unusual." – Bay Guardian
"Swezey's anthology is in fact more than the sum of its parts, which are indeed profoundly esoteric... When taken together, these detailed profiles form a commentary on the risks of individuality, conformity and desire... It reminds us, participants in an artistic and political culture, that we need to constantly and expansively examine human experience afresh in order to reveal what is epic, and meaningful. How shocking, indeed." – Buzz
