Aliens Are Us: Cosmic Liminality,Remixticism, and Alien ation in Psytrance Graham St John Grif fi th University Abstract: This article examines how popular culture is remixed for the purposes of facilitating mystical experiences within a global electronic dance music culture. In particular,it investigates the sampling of space travel and alien contact narratives within psytrance,whose DJ-producers are like media shamans remixing fragments from cinema, TV series,documentaries, NASA ’ s lunar program and other popular cultural sources for gnostic purposes. I explore ways outer space travel becomes a narrative device for interior travels,the “ hero ’ s journey, ” and how the fi gure of the alien other allegorizes the potential for thediscovery of the self. In the arti fi ce of remixticism, the alien is a device for universal consciousness and self-empowerment, a process I dub alienation. Keywords: remix, popular culture, psytrance, space, aliens, ET, mysticism, electronic dancemusic Introduction We journey from ignorance to knowledge. Growth re fl ects the advancement of the species. Theexploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery. 1 In popular culture, outer space is suffused with cosmic liminality. It is a perilous realmpotentiating gothic terror or gnostic awakening. This article explores how extraterrestrial space,and its imagined inhabitants, became a source of illumination within a stream of popular andalternative music evolving since the 1960s — and indeed since televised images of NASAastronauts operating in weightless conditions, orbiting the Earth, and traversing the moonwere transmitted into family living rooms. It offers insight on the creative remix of popularculture in contemporary spiritual life as evidenced within electronic dance music culture(EDMC), and speci fi cally psychedelic trance (or psytrance), a transnational visionary arts anddance culture suffused with the audiovisual tropes of space travel, UFO sightings, and aliencontact. Sampled from fi lm, television series, documentaries, computer games, NASA radiodialogue, and other popular cultural sources, it is argued that, in psytrance, space travel is anarrative device for inner travail, the avatar ’ s quest, the hero ’ s journey. In off-planetary andintergalactic narratives programmed into a de fi nitively “ progressive ” music, psytrance would fi nd in the fi gure of the discovered alien other — through sightings, encounters, abductions, andso on — the potential for the discovery of the self . 2 The liminal ambiance of outer space and theaccompanying fi gure of the alien are deployed within this music and in its event-culture toorchestrate that which is considered highly desirable under the re fl exive pressures of latemodernity: self-awakening and empowerment
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 06:27:18 +0000
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