My initial goal in life was to become an investigative journalist. Watching this field slowly disappear, I discovered that I can take my passion of uncovering injustice and wrongdoings and apply it in an academic context. This passion is exampled in my previous research (M.A) about the Israeli Psychedelic Trance Culture. Among other things, my research revealed the strategy of the Israeli mainstream media to construct this subculture as deviant, illegitimate and dangerous. This framing of moral panic developed since its inception and was driven by interest groups (the IDF, Anti Drug authority and the Israeli government) who were threatened by a new youth subculture that introduced new ways of thinking, identity, expression and politics. In addition, I have analysed two important verdicts through the Critical Legal Studies lens and showed how the narrative projected in these verdicts (although usually presented as objective and neutral) framed this subculture in a biased way while criminalising alternative forms of leisure activity which did not conform to the mainstream culture.
After finishing my research I realized I had to turn my thesis into a book mainly because there were no written documents that described the history of this subculture. The Israeli book market, however, demands authors to contribute large sums of money (around 9,000$) in order to publish a book. After being rejected by various music grants that did not consider Psychedelic Trance a legitimate musical genre, I created a crowd funding project in December 2012. In order to make a video for this project, I approached the people I interviewed in my book and filmed them with my mobile phone, having them re-tell their stories. I then muted the sound to emphasize the importance of giving the culture a voice.
TranceMission is the first written document on the Israeli Psychedelic Trance culture and presents interviews with the pioneers of the culture, analysis of more than a 100 newspaper articles and 2 verdicts related to this culture. The book was made possible by a crowd-funding project done in December 2012. Thanks to the 142 backers the project raised all the funds needed to publish the book. A year later, in December 2013, the book – TranceMission – was published on Resling.
Accompanying the Book TranceMission, I also self-published – TranceMission: The Flyer Memoir 1989-1999. This book presents a collection of Psychedelic Trance parties flyers from the first decade of this culture in Israel. It explores the artwork, themes and representations that were manifested in these colorful documentations.
@Elinor_Carmi 