FAX machines, audio cassettes, free software and computer networks’ (ibid.). White
promoted a decentralized social and economic paradigm, observing a network of
‘CyberTribes’ which were operating through autonomous, consensual and
cooperative strategies, and which, while based on the cybernetic model, were being
shaped by Deep Ecology, Distributed Systems Theory and Chaos Theory As a
technology of sharing and cooperation, C5I2 was heralded as ‘the technology
behind Temporary Autonomous Zones’, and the inspired CyberTribe was ‘a step
towards the realization of Global TAZ networks’ (ibid.).
Others would take up the baton and run with the ‘convivial technology’.
Throughout the 1990s, numerous inspired techno-tribes emerged in Europe, North
America, Australia, Japan and other locations in pursuit of the desired ‘revival’
through the facilitation of TAZ-like enclaves. One of the earliest and perhaps most
influential examples of cyber-tribalism was London’s ‘terra-technic’ sound system
Spiral Tribe. With techno as their ‘folk music’, the Spirals believed their free parties
were techno-shamanic rites, ‘reconnect[ing] urban youth to the earth with which
they had lost contact, thus averting imminent ecological crisis’ (Collin 1997:203–
4). While some cyber-tribals, like the Barrelful of Monkeys, build robust conceptual
scaffolding heavily indebted to the likes of McKenna or Sheldrake, others, like the
Midwest’s Future Harmonix, emit cloying off-planet trajectories: ‘together we will
build a galactic network of light. And now we are issuing a call to awakening and
uniting of Starry Family on this planet, so we can all Together go home into galactic
oneness’.^13 Regardless of agenda, these DiY dance collectives and sound systems are
sites of youth belonging and identity. As an umbrella organization in British
Columbia, Tribal Harmonix, states:
By radically rethinking the meaning and function of community, tribal dance
collectives are creating a model of positive social and cultural change in
society as a whole. Moreover, the experience of dancing together brings
healing, understanding, and peace in an otherwise tumultuous and rapidly
changing world.^14Like Maffesoli’s ‘neo-tribes’ (1996), these tech-savvy organizations are voluntary,
unstable and sensuous micro-cultures interconnected in a network of lifestyle nodes
and centres of sociality between which individuals are known to oscillate.^15 And
each node achieves its fullest expression in the festal, the DIY event, the techno-
corroboree—where various new tribes gravitate to share grievances and exaltations,
and to forge a recombinant culture of cyber, psychoactive and ecological concerns.
Thus, in 1999 in Berlin 35 communities representing a spectrum of projects and
agendas founded Sonics-Cybertribe-Network for Rhythm and Change,^16 members
of which converge annually And in more recent times an annual conference-festival,
the LA-based Gathering of the Tribes (GoTT) emerged. In 2002, with Biodiversity
as the event’s theme, the GoTT hosted workshops and presentations on a range of
issues from ‘Indigenous Rituals and the Making of Sacred Space’, through ‘Yoga and
Temple Dance’, to ‘Social, Environmental or Political Change through Music’.^17
216 GRAHAM ST JOHN