As the portrait of a fringe group, this book invites the reader to engage with the phenomenon of outcasts; it orders the rich material – which has grown out of numerous projects of artistic research with female drug users in European prisons and therapy institutions – and sets it into context. In this way, the conditions which have become structurally embedded in social processes are laid open and made perceptible as a matter of public concern.

The biographical and artistic work with the inmates, the correspondence, the interventions in the isolated, public, and cultural sphere, the minutes, reflections, and results of the interdisciplinary exchange with scientists are comprehensively documented and illustrated.