Trance Media — Anja Dreschke

Trance Mediums and New Media

Film and research project in collaboration with Martin Zillinger

University of Siegen, funded by Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft, 2007 - 2017

Camera ethnography in Morocco 2008, 2011

Based on the assumption, that during the last decades a significant proliferation of ecstatic practices that are reproduced and circulated via technical media can be noted on a global scale, the film and research project explores the interferences of trance mediumship and new media in Morocco. The members of the Sufi brotherhoods of the ‘Isāwa skillfully enact the powers of lions, jackals and camels in their trance choreographies. Misconceived by colonial and religious modernizers for a long time, their practices currently experience a significant upturn. Beyond the allegedly naive idea of an animated cosmos, their sacred plays present human capacities for transformation and deal with experiences of alterity. Increasingly, the ‘Isāwa design their practices as an art form for transnational publics. The research projects examines how body techniques of trance and the complex ritual practices of spirit possession can be explored with audio-visual media. A crucial question pertains to the representation of the sensory experience of trance through the creative use of image and sound. Part of the research project was the realisation of a video installation that was presented in different versions in the travelling exhibition Animismin Antwerp (2011) and Berlin (2012). The installation (which is still a work in progress) assembled locally produced VHS-videos from the indigenous archives of the ‘Isāwa congregations in Meknes that circulate among spiritual healers, adepts and clients in Morocco and abroad in Brussels or Paris, with video and sound recordings taken during two field trips to Morocco (2008 and 2011).