Announcing the launch of the world’s first Psychedelic Video Museum
Problems are also opportunities to try something new and exciting. Sometimes, that something is an internet website. In April 2010 I had a recurring problem. Over the years I have developed a deep penchant for colorful, multidimensional psychedelic videos that paint pink arabesques in your mind. The only problem was that the types of unique, alternative mindstates in which such videos are superbly enjoyable are the same type of states where navigating the menus and folders on your desktop proves particularly daunting. God gives psychedelic nuts to those who have not teeth.
As a solution, I decided to start a blog that will serve as a reservoir for these psychedelic videos so that they are easily accessible to scroll through every time I need them. Since the problem appeared to be universal, I decided to make the blog public so that every person who is in dire need of psychedelic videos to feed their soul on, would be able to access them easily. And to make things more interesting I added a concept. The website will have specific rhythm: one psychedelic video a day. And so, the Daily Psychedelic Video (DPV) got started, the first website dedicated to psychedelic videos.
A month passed, and I realized that posting one psychedelic video every day is beyond my abilities. Consequently, the DPV got its international team of seven editors for seven days of the week. This had an immediate advantage. The concept of “psychedelic video” is somewhat vague and means different things to different people. When I started the website, I was surprised by the types of videos people sent me. Some of this stuff was really different from my own definition of a psychedelic video. When the other editors joined in, I understood they were essential to the project. Each had a different vision of psychedelic videos. Since then, we generally keep an open mind and one main guideline: a psychedelic video is every video that’s particularly enjoyable and amazing to watch in a psychedelic mindstate.
When we started the DPV in 2010 people told me we would run out of videos in a couple of months. There aren’t that many psychedelic videos out there! People I talked to could each recommend 2-3 videos worth having on the website, but it was not clear how many other psychedelic videos were out there. Actually, as we kept going, we discovered psychedelic videos are getting created faster than we can post them. The second decade of the 21st century saw a boom in the psychedelic video style. The rapid growth of websites like YouTube and Vimeo, the growing availability of digital production tools and the thriving of online artist communities led to a situation where more psychedelic videos were being made each month than had been made during a whole year or even a whole decade in the past. The widely publicized renaissance in psychedelic research was also accompanied by a renaissance in psychedelic creativity. Even pop stars like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Azealia Banks, Miley Cyrus and Nikki Minaj started churning their own psychedelic videos.
The years passed, and what started as a personal collection kept growing. Every year’s end, I spent dozens of hours watching hundreds of psychedelic videos to curate the year’s best-of list, and these growing lists led to public screenings and even a philosophical paper exploring the aesthetic principles and therapeutic qualities of psychedelic videos (available at the new museum). The website has long become the world’s largest collection of psychedelic videos. There was only one problem. When you got to the website what you got was today’s post, and then yesterday’s post. There was no way to navigate all the intricate richness of psychedelic beauty that was amassed over a decade of exploring psychedelic media.
Again, a problem, and again the solution was found in a new website. The new idea was to take all of the knowledge that was aggregated over a decade of collecting and curating psychedelic videos to create a website of a different type: a museum that includes carefully curated exhibitions of the best, most beautiful psychedelic video works ever created. Since the museum is virtual, we didn’t need the large sums of money you need to erect a museum in physical space. And since all this abundance was already made widely available through YouTube and Vimeo (we’re just collecting and embedding) we also didn’t need any money to buy the art.
The new museum includes 45 exhibitions arranged by theme, style, period and place. You can find exhibitions like “Soviet Psychedelia,” “Japanese Psychedelia,” “1970s Psychedelia,” “Psychedelic Art,” “Psychedelic Cinema,” “Psychedelic Animation,” “Psychedelic Hip Hop,” “Tribal Psychedelia,” and “Psychedelic Activism.” Each of the exhibitions showcases a different aspect of psychedelic creativity.
We’ve built the museum planning to launch it on the 19th of April, on Bicycle Day, which is also the tenth anniversary for the DPV. Then corona happened and we started wondering whether now is the right time to launch. But as the pandemic spread, we realized that now, with people staying home, there is special value in this collection of beauty and creativity. Since the corona pandemic began many people have been talking about the need for virtual museums but many of the existing virtual museums are just pale versions of their physical selves. Digital JPG’s of 19th century oil paintings. The Psychedelic Video Museum is native to the net. It was designed to be virtual, and you don’t lose anything by visiting it from home.
Another thing that distinguishes the new museum is that we understand psychedelic video art as a mindstate dependent artform. It helps to be in a certain mindstate in order to fully appreciate these works of art. We don’t tell people how to get to this mindstate. Drug laws are obviously different from place to place. Some people can get there through meditation or other means, but definitely there is a strong connection between this artform and the psychedelic experience. These works benefit from full undivided attention, a contemplative gaze and even a certain level of ritual. It’s better to watch them on a big screen, with good speakers, and a willingness to let go and dissolve into them.
The new museum is a present for the world psychedelic community. It is non-profit, volunteer based, and designed to celebrate the beauty and richness of psychedelic creativity. On Sunday the 19th of April, at 3PM Eastern Time/8PM Greenwich Time, we will virtually convene to celebrate the 77th bicycle day, the tenth DPV anniversary and the launch of the psychedelic video museum in a psychomagical consecration ceremony which will move between various spots on the planet, open intergalactic gates, and including singing, dancing, speeches and occult rituals. A special psychedelic screening will take the viewers on a journey in a glowing land of psychedelic visuals. You are welcome to join us for the launch from home, and of course, come and visit and the Psychedelic Video Museum at any time you’d like.
Psychedelic Cultures 