Viewed from the passenger seat, Sajid drives through nondescript semi-urban spaces relaying a journey of self-discovery that maps paths through astrology, Islam, and the philosophy and practice of Tantra. Sajid’s narration poses questions around the social function of the sexual where western perceptions of Pakistani male sexuality confine liberatory readings of an expansive and emancipatory erotic. Spatial and temporal shifts weave through the storytelling with archive footage of pre-Islamic Indigenous shamanic rituals in the Hunza Valley, Pakistan – a site of both cultural contestation and popular tourist hiking destination, alongside sequences of plant cultivation and conjuring in a green space performed by Priya Jay artist, writer and healer in communion with Zaman. Your Ecstatic Self transitions between the liminal space of the car, mountainside, or edgeland, where alternative epistemologies and ritual offer possibilities to re-envision and transform.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/31097