Kunstverein Milano and Fondazione Galleria Milano are launching a shared research programme dedicated to non-ordinary states of consciousness, understood as experiences that cut across different domains—from trance to dreams, from ritual to sound technologies, and the use of psychoactive substances—as tools for navigation and new possibilities of expression. Artists, researchers, musicians, philosophers, writers, and scholars from diverse backgrounds will take part in a series of talks, screenings, listening sessions, collective practices, and publications, taking place both periodically and through one-off events.
An integral part of the project is the Esperlucat notebook series, which aims to make interdisciplinary research on non-ordinary states of consciousness accessible to a broad audience. Drawing on fields ranging from artistic practices to anthropology, philosophy to psychoanalysis, iconography to musicology, the series seeks to explore the perceptual, physical, and mental experiences that have accompanied human beings throughout history.
The first event in the programme begins with a question: why do we speak of trance? And why, in traditional contexts, is it so often associated with music?
Starting from these questions, the event on 2 July is dedicated to Stambēlī, a musical, ritual, and therapeutic tradition that developed in Tunisia within Afro-descendant communities formed through the trans-Saharan slave routes. Its roots lie in the cultures of the Lake Chad basin, the Bornu region, and the Sahel in West and Central Africa, and include legacies connected to Hausa, Songhay, and other sub-Saharan peoples who, through forced migration and diasporic processes, contributed to the emergence of new cultural forms in the Maghreb.
To this day, StambÄ“lÄ« remains a complex system of relationships between music, the body, healing, and the invisible world. Its pantheon is organised around two major categories: the “White” spirits, saints associated with Islam, North Africa, and the Middle East; and the “Black” spirits, ancestral beings originating from African diasporic cosmologies. It is an embodied and performative system of knowledge: there are no written texts or recited formulas describing the pantheon. Rather, it exists solely through musical performance, in which music continually produces, reproduces, and reorganises the entire system of saints, spirits, and relationships. Musicians must master not only melodies but also the social, hierarchical, and ritual relationships among the various spiritual entities. A profound knowledge of the spirits and of their reciprocal relationships is often more important than a detailed understanding of the patient’s suffering: knowing which spirit is involved already means knowing which musical pathways will be effective in making it manifest itself, appeasing it, and ensuring the success of the ritual.
StambÄ“lÄ« is also an embodied historical archive—a “third space” where music, healing, historical memory, the African diaspora, and social relationships are produced simultaneously through bodily experience. Individual healing and historical memory are inseparable: neither can be understood without the other.
The power of StambÄ“lÄ« lies in the psychophysical involvement it generates, taking the form of what Gilbert Rouget defines as a “sound uniform”—a combination of melody, rhythm, and words experienced through ritualised trance and spirit possession. Its vitality and enduring significance reside in its continuous capacity to reorganise itself—to transform, reinterpret, and reconfigure.
Special thanks to Collettivo Trickster for their collaboration.
Guests
Salah El Ouergli lives in Tunis, where he has devoted decades to Stambēlī as a yenna, a master of the tradition. Alongside his performance practice, he also builds the musical instruments used in Stambēlī rituals.
Ouail El Azhari is an ethnopsychologist based in Turin. For many years he has dedicated his research to Gnawa, promoting its historical and musical heritage through the Gnawa Koyo project.
Francesco Gottardo is an ethnopsychologist based in Turin. His research explores the boundaries of the psyche—death, altered states of consciousness, and magic—and he is a member of Collettivo Trickster.
The Esperlucat series, edited by Katia Anguelova and Andrea Wiarda, emerged through conversations with Antonello Colimberti, Brice Delarue, Michele Giulini, Juan Pablo MacĂas, Alessandra Poggianti, and the Indicibile collective during Lo sguardo dal di fuori. Stati generali degli stati non ordinari di coscienza, a project by Carico Massimo, Magazzini Generali, Livorno, March 2024.
Scientific Committee: Riccardo Arena, Antonello Colimberti, Roberto Dell’Orco, Adelaide Gnecchi Ruscone, Michele Giulini, Juan Pablo MacĂas, Jacopo Natoli, Alessandra Poggianti, Iacopo Seri, Collettivo Trickster.
Research Project Team: Katia Anguelova, Andrea Wiarda – Kunstverein Milano; Nicola Pellegrini, Bianca Trevisan – Fondazione Galleria Milano.
Network of Affinities: This research forms part of a broader collaborative and alliance-based project with Carico Massimo (Livorno), Fondazione Lac o Le Mon, and the Collettivo Indicibile.