- Now being German, I can't use my hips.
So what I usually do is
I have my four by four.
And then at some point my arm comes in.
Hi, my name is Beate Peter.
We are here at Juju's in East
London today with Funzing.
And I'm giving a talk on
the psychology of raving.
I think it's quite
important that we talk about
the perceived difference
between the body and the mind,
and I'm trying to convince you
that it's no different really
between the body and the mind.
They interact quite
nicely with one another.
And they inform one another.
And then I need to hit you
with a little bit of theory
in order to build up my big argument.
So I'm going to talk
about Carl Gustav Jung,
Swiss psychologist who
talked about the psyche
in a particular way,
in a unique way that I find
quite fitting for my research
where he distinguishes
between the conscious
and the unconscious.
But within the unconscious,
he talks about the collective unconscious.
And that's the kind of thing
that I want to get into today,
the stuff that makes us all human,
and the whole idea of
trancing on the dance floor,
a few external settings,
like light and music, and
the loudness of the music.
But also how our mind
experiences sensory overload.
And therefore,
electronic dance music
enabling us to trance on the dance floor.
And in the end we talk a little bit about
kind of popular drugs of club culture.
And however youth culture choose as a drug
that kind of enhances the
experience of seeking out.
I'll see you on the stage.
The more you suppress one thing,
the more the thing that is
suppressed wants to come out.
And my proposal here is that
trance is an opportunity
for you to experience the whole psyche.
I'd like you to start
buying into my argument
that maybe there's a connection
that we tend to ignore quite often.
When we talk about the body and the mind,
in western society,
there's still a prevailing idea.
This idea is informed by Descartes.
What Descartes said is this kind of...
There is this really extreme difference
between the body and the mind.
What I would like to suggest today is that
if you just come along
with me for a little bit,
I'd like to argue you that this dualism
doesn't really exist,
that there's such a strong connection
between the body and the mind.
And they constantly inform each other.
And anyway, it doesn't
matter what is material
and what is immaterial,
because what we enter is something new.
And maybe it's a question of
rediscovering
how to listen to ourselves.
Maybe we've forgotten how to do that.
My proposal here is that
trance is an opportunity for you to
experience the whole psyche.
So let's take this into rave culture.
We are referring to the
original rave culture.
So between '85 and '95 is when
it all kicked off in Britain.
And rave traditionally
now within academia it's referred
to a particular period in time.
And it defines the events
in a particular way.
So we're talking about outer events
that are not licensed
where you didn't necessarily
have to pay admission,
where you didn't have sniffer dogs,
where you didn't have bouncers.
And you would just party in a field.
You would call a number
from the phone booth
to find out where you are going.
And there's definitely a
revival in rave culture.
But what we are looking at today
is club culture.
I'm not judging this.
I'm not saying it's better or worse.
I do think there's something good
in every kind of
development and evolvement.
What I'm saying is that
your body can respond
in various ways.
And if you get into one
of these energy surges
and you're starting,
you know with all this freestyle things.
Mine is the word here.
Dance floor.
You know, I'm all over.
Let's push them away with my moves.
You might have a movement overload.
And what that sometimes
leads to is disorientation.
You might not necessarily know anymore
where the DJ is,
where the sound is coming from,
what the lights are doing.
You might just feel really mad,
look up.
Or look into the strobes
just to have the full on experience,
and then start feeling sick.
And of course, rave culture
is a participatory culture.
But of course for those of you
who've been raving for a while,
you will know what dancing the box is.
Or big fish, little fish.
But it still gives you relative freedom
to do with your upper
body whatever you want.
And of course, with your
legs whatever you want.
Something that's really
conducive to my argument is that
in rave culture, you have
no set song structure.
And when you look at
popular music research in academia,
people have looked at the
dance floor forever and ever.
And it's quite interesting
because the dance floor turf
has changed.
So folks, I believe if we take
the dance floor in a disco,
you would usually step down
or step up to the dance floor.
And you would hear the first few lines,
the melody, whatever it is.
You would recognize the song
and you would decide yeah,
I want to go on the dance floor.
And then the song would be over
and you would stand
there for a few seconds
waiting for the next song.
And make a conscious decision again
to stay on the dance floor
or to leave the dance floor.
But every time a song is over,
you get back out of your mode
and you need to really focus
and concentrate and think
okay that's a song I like.
Or oh no, that's, I don't know...
That's a break in that.
Better not dance, better not dance.
I don't know when she comes back in.
But in electronic dance music,
because you have a DJ set
that can last for hours,
you don't ever have a break in which
I have to make a decision.
- Hey guys, we're here with Funzing UK.
And today we're here with Beate Peter
just after a talk on the
psychology of raving.
So we have one question
for you from the audience
that we had today that
we're going to ask you.
How do you feel raving
has changed over time,
over sort of the time that
raving has been around?
And I guess just a little bit
about your research on that.
- So I'm doing this project
with the Lapsed Clubber
because between '85 and '95
is when it all kicked off in Britain.
And I think it started to establish
a mental image and a memory about
rave culture as we think about it today.
It's like a popular image.
But then the rave bill came in.
What was termed the rave bill was the 1994
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act.
And raves became illegal.
But people still wanted to go dancing.
So essentially, raves
moved into night clubs.
And with this change came of course
a change in admission.
So it was definitely sales,
ticket sales,
licensing laws,
what kind of alcohol was sold,
how long it was sold for,
bouncers,
queues,
pre-ticket sales.
So all of this has changed
rave culture massively.
And I would say it's turned into
what I would call club culture.
And people sometimes ask
me if this culture has died
or rave culture has died.
And I would like to say that
the spirit is definitely still there.
So there will forever be people
who would like to try something new
and maybe it's time for a revival
where people go outside
of nightclubs again
and try something different in arty spaces
and empty spaces where
it's about the music,
it's about people coming together,
not necessarily about making money.
And it's still happening.
- It's like really, really interesting.
You can always tell the
quality of the speaker
by how well they answer
questions at the end.
And the whole audience got to ask
every question they wanted
and she was just on it.
Like on it, on it, on it.
And that's how you know
a really good speaker
when they can just
challenge down anything.
Yeah, she was just amazing really.
It was a really interesting event.
I'm kind of really glad I went.
- Just saying that this has
made me want to go to a rave.
- Maybe next weekend.
- Maybe next weekend.
- No, we enjoyed the talk.
And yeah it was really, really great.
