Projects
Photo by Jonathan Carmichael (aka Ronny Simulacrum)
Current Projects
Cosmic Alchemy: The Total Solar Eclipse and its Festivals
The total solar eclipse has become a contemporary mystical phenomenon involving thousands of “eclipse chasers” traveling to remote regions of the planet to align their selves with the Earth, Moon and Sun, in the company of those from a multitude of countries. Since the mid-1990s, dance and visionary arts gatherings rooted in the Goa trance tradition became sacred sites in which eclipse pilgrims could become immersed in this “total” alignment. Totality freaks, artists and musicians have articulated the alchemical and mystical significance of this cosmic synchronicity. This project and eventual book investigates the cultural background to the total solar eclipse as a contemporary planetary event and explores, through study of this natural (geological), cosmic (astronomical) and social (festival) experience, its significance in a world of transition.
Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance
Charts the interfacing of culture, spirituality and technology in the first detailed study of global psytrance. The result of fifteen-years research in over ten countries, the book applies a sharp lens on a little understood yet rapidly globalising dance culture. Using a multi-sited ethnography, it explores the integrated role of technologies and spiritual practice in an alternative cultural movement. (forthcoming with Equinox in July 2012).
Past Projects
The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (edited collection, Routledge 2010) The first book to address the diverse transnationalism of psytrance which is investigated as a product of intersecting local and global trajectories.
Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox 2009) A cultural history of global electronic dance music countercultures.
Performing the Country: Youth Culture and Post-Settler Identity. A research project on contemporary performative contexts for the (re)production of 'Australianness' in the wake of historical and ecological re-evaluations.
Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature As coordinator for Religions, Nature and Culture in Oceania, from 2001-2003, I was an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature.
Rave Culture and Religion An edited collection published by Routledge, 2004 (now in Paperback).
FreeNRG: Notes from the Edge of the Dance Floor An edited collection (in print and fre-ebook) on Australian doof dance culture.
Writings on Earthdream2000 A technomadic festival around Australia (Earthdream links here).
The ConFest thesis The anthropology PhD thesis on the Australian alternative cultural event (other related digressions also here).
Edgecentral Blog Occasional entries on my nomadic wanderings.