Imaginary fields

04/07/2021

Perhaps hedonism post-modern slogan “to live fast and die young” makes sense for the majority of boomers, ozorians, psytrancers in general. Or these temporary autonomous zones are but imaginary fields build upon the ancient doctrines of hedonism allowing its participants to engage in post-modern religious movements, produced by the global technomad tribes.

For the first time in more than twenty years have been released on internet an historic and ethnographic approach about music genre psychedelic trance and its culture. Boom festival 20 years promotes the event going back to the first edition in 97 and how it have grown from there. It recognizes the history behind the psytrance movement in Portugal, its variations and the endogenous features of an alternative culture. Moreover it recognizes how an underground movement with origins in Goa, India, became mainstream and originated million euro industries to overcome the expectations of its participants. 

Turning Point Ozora documentary released at early August 2021 sets festival origins to Goa and how it started in Hungary. It is important to mention that national cultural properties are implicit at these two documentaries. Language is necessarily one of those differences, among others. 

In Turning Point two of the leading djs on the scene are interviewed and they explain pandemic impact on their job and on their life. Their super busy agendas have suddenly been suspended after festivals, parties and other event alike were cancelled. While they both agree how they got the time to spend with their kids, it is understandable through their testimonies how difficult and uncomfortable has been to be confined at home. Pandemic first and foremost showed humanity how important and necessary is to stop. To have a break from the wheel of life, to give away the rush in which we get involved at industrialized and capitalist nations.

As I watch turning point and listen to this guys I understand the follow paradox: they all proclaim festivals, the psytrance movement, as a big family, one love, a huge community, but that have failed at home as their super busy agendas put them away from their kids and their beloved ones. Given the opportunity how would they change the world if they don’t lead by example at home? If they get to spend most of their time away from their families in order to make money to buy them things they don't actually need and in doing so, they give up something money can’t buy: time. 

Certainly children need their parents love and if you think you can have them loved by buying them entertainment technologies, while you spend most of your time away, you live in a great illusion. Our timeline is uncertain and one never know when it comes to an end so it is important to make strong decisions. At a given moment one shall leave this planet and his story won’t ever be recorded. 

While I listen to the guest speakers at both documentaries I understand they all converge that these particular festivals operate as an escape, a break from every day life where people tend to be what they can’t be in ordinary world. After a week they return from the imaginary fields to the everyday world where they become what they are not but must follow. They put on their jobs and all its cargo (responsibilities; hierarchical systems; duties), their social status, their persona, their masks, only to live according their communities. We are not the clothes we wear; we are not the cars we drive; we are all the singing and dancing terrestrial creatures; we are reality makers. 

Although one may be recharged after an escape from ordinary world, one understands that this promised land is a spacetime dimension about to vanish and sooner than he would like, he needs to address himself into the everyday world. A world he claims: he doesn’t belong; he doesn’t identify with, a world he wants to escape.

Quite frankly, we are only having this conversation because psychedelics are the protagonist of the story, otherwise we would find it hard to decide whether we should spend a week at rural, in nature place or in a five star hotel exchanging promiscuous eye contact with our temporary hotel neighbors while we drink martinis by the pool as a sort of posh hedonism.  

Turning Point - Ozora Festival

Heterotopia, Liminality and Everyday Life - The Boom Festival as an epiphenomenon of alterity

02/09/2021

Abstract

For the past two decades the concept of ‘festival’ has evolved into new connotations on the sociocultural field. This thesis explores these new connotations of ‘festival’ as it develops into a phenomenon of mass culture and industry, i.e., festival business has increased exponentially, as a consequence of a mass consumption and festival related industries. There has been a social effervescence around the transformational festival meme which triggered new perspectives on the cultural sciences scope. This study examines those perspectives along with data analysis to expand social circumstances and cultural frameworks that configure the subjective dispositions and drive the demand for Boom Festival in Portugal. Boomland is Boom Festival’s territory and appears to be both a popular sanctuary and a pilgrimage site for fans of a global movement called psytrance tribe. This alternative movement with origins in the so-called counter-cultural tendencies of the 1960s promotes its hedonistic vibe, a spiritual tendency and a high interest in the trade and consumption of psychedelics. Psytrance, an epiphenomenon of EDMC, is not only the source of Boom Festival but it is the main feature which sets this festival apart from the rest of those on the international circuit. This investigation is about Boomland and the festival itself. It analyses the impact the Boom Festival experience can have on the lives of those who live it. The thesis emphasizes identity modulations associated with the sociological process, i.e., practices and cultural fruition between individuals and groups in contexts of otherness promoted during the event. Simultaneously, it addresses the properties at the festival that can be analyzed as heterotopic transgressive spaces in order to understand how the contexts of temporary suspension and liminality imply a transformative power in the return to everyday life. In addition, it is important to identify neotribalism / heterotopia / ritual process as the key elements to which this thesis is built upon. As a result, it is vital to situate the Boom Festival in the contemporary sociocultural paradigm while keeping track on the impact of digital technology on the anthropological range. The research involved an ethnographic approach, using digital ethnography and auto-ethnography, complemented by semi-directed interviews. The empirical work underlined the three (liminal) moments related to the 2018 edition of Boom Festival – before, during and after the festival –, based on a 20 people discussion/observation group, gathered on the digital platform Facebook, implying fieldwork both in digital and geographic territory.

Boom Diaries - 12th Edition

Ever since 1997, Boom Festival remains as an opportunity to enter the sacred, the mystical and the mythological field of Psychedelic Culture. Its roots are paramount to understand the link between spirituality and the cosmos. Through consciousness one may be able to travel into deep realms unknown to man. The transpersonal and out of body experiences registered in Boomland may be the key to open the doors of your heart and connect you to the very sacred Mother Earth...

Carbon based lifeforms: the illusion of the ephemeral

Boom is an international transformational festival which feeds a worldwide psychedelic culture. The neotribes of the XXI century hope to gather in a symbiotic vibe in order to feel they belong somewhere. It is there in Boomland where magic happens that a new kind of consciousness has been renewed every two years. 

More than being above and beyond the law it is the sense of collectiveness as well as oneness that blooms every and each one boomers hearts and permits themselves to carry worldwide the seeds of a kindred love as the quintessential element to flourish the new countercultural movement that threats so much the power of those who have been in charge as the role model of the greedy society. 

To ditch your ego, to dare you on recycling methods, to lead you on an ecological awareness are principles, political measures promoted by Good Mood production team. Boom runs its own DNA in an unified field, as a living cosmos. This tecnomad heterotopic city belongs to everyone and no one but its vibe, its energy infuses the universal consciousness and every single boomer heart in the very best possible way. 

And yet we live in a very basic timeline where the present moment is all there is, nevertheless we carry on with us all these illusions because we have never lived in the past, neither will we live in the future, but in the present moment. And at this present moment that heterotopic city vanished in a spacetime dimension only to be reborn again in 2020.

BOOM FESTIVAL 2018 - DAY 2

Homage to Elon Musk - SpaceX to Mars

On September 12th, 1962, John F. Kennedy delivered one of his most remarkable speech: “We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding” (...) “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too”.

On February 6th, 2018, Elon Musk against all odds and for the first time in mankind an individual sends out for the stars, planets in deep wonder. 

I wish all major nations could follow the initiative instead of wasting in nuclear weapons of mass destruction, war threats, secret agendas and so on...

Elon Musk one of the most visionary men alive brought a huge smile into JFKennedy face wherever he may be!! 

Thank you Mr. Musk, so very much. 

P.S. Vega - The brightest star in the constellation Lyra  

VEGA - UNIVERSO PARALELLO FESTIVAL 2018

Year Million

As far as science can go and make proof humans are the only animals that dream; 

dreams make us wonder... 

Year Million is a brand new TV series (2017) broadcasted in National Geographic that sets the future farther away than we ever stop to imagine. Although there are pessimistic visions, the given prophecies in the entire show reveals a cyborg world where man and woman (as we know it) are no longer in charge. The farfetch world of technology represented in the show may not be that far though, as they say Virtual Reality, Internet, AI, Wireless connection is already part of our lives. 

I have never seen a claimed non sci-fi TV series reaching out this far! Although I may consider some aspects valuable by the time Planet Earth becomes a technological hive, Humanity will be forever lost in spacetime. 

Michio Kaku is one of the opinion makers in this show. A remarkable scholar followed by many. Godfrey Reggio a master of Fine Arts, said couple years ago: “we are in a cyborg state” but after watching this show you will be ready to understand whether future may look awesome or not...

It is known science and sci-fi share a good impact on each other. The bar has never been this high and although this show goes far beyond our imagination there’s only one matter to which no one can predict, foretell or dare to explain - the matter of which our Universe is mostly made of - The Dark Matter. 

YEAR MILLION

Mr. Robot

Mr. Robot TV Series earns a spot on this blog not because Elliot Alderson, the lead actor (Rami Malek) is a weirdo but mainly because Sam Esmail is a notorious screenwriter and creator. 

This American drama-thriller TV series outstands as a daring portrait of the most advanced and powerful nation on the planet Earth. It shows the out-of-public eye deals between the actual men who rule the world. Or to be more objective deals between USA and China, the great competitors in the race for both world power and control. 

Quotes as “Our democracy has been hacked”; “Control is an illusion” and “Politics is for puppets” pretty much defines what is there for you to watch. If you have a keen interest in detail you may understand how billion dollar companies function in high ends hierarchy, influence the world economy and manipulate politics over own interest and profit. 

Yes, the plot line is a cybersecurity enginneer (the best) on daily basis (who happens to be delusional, drug user and depressive) and a hacker on his private nights builds up a group project to “change the world”. The world starts to change when his friends, family and himself are either being haunted and investigated by the corrupted FBI or worst case scenario murdered.  

I would say Mr. Robot is one of the best spot on TV Series of the Techno World of early XXI century. It works as an allegory. 

MR. ROBOT

Thrive: What on Earth Will It take?

You can see loads of influences from other documentaries on this one. This documentary which thrives to bring you answers for the complex topics humanity’s been seeking is one of the most viewed (of a kind) on youtube platform.   

Torus concept + free energy + food supply is mostly what the first hour deals with leading to the banking system strategies to create money out of nothing... The truth behind elite groups such The Rockefeller foundation et al. is explicit both in this as other documentaries introduced in this blog. 

We have been living under a hegemonic system which is fed by the money we use and work so hard to get. This documentary gives away crystal clear information about the world we live in. So, if you are interested in understanding the vicious cycle the elite groups created, click the link below.  

THRIVE