Dreaming as Practice

The Act of Future-Making

To dream in the face of technological determinism constitutes an act of refusal. Pierre Christophe Gam‘s The Sanctuary of Dreams presents precisely such a refusal—a rejection of futures prescribed by Silicon Valley’s techno-capitalist imaginary in favor of spiritual futurity. Through this work, Gam mobilizes traditional African spirituality within digital spaces, creating possibilities that challenge conventional understandings of technology and futurity.

By integrating the ancient West African divination system of IFA into a web-based multi-user platform, The Sanctuary of Dreams challenges conventional understandings of technology and futurity, offering an alternative vision where digital space serves spiritual and communal needs rather than capitalist agendas. This text explores how Gam‘s work mobilizes digital spirituality, redefines temporal politics, and cultivates collective dreaming, ultimately pointing toward a future where technology and spirituality coexist.

Digital Spirituality and Material Presence

The contemporary digital landscape, dominated by algorithmic capitalism and surveillance technologies, represents what Katherine McKittrick describes as a “plantation future”—a continuation of extractive logics that shaped colonial modernity. Against this backdrop, Gam‘s work performs a dual intervention: refusing technology’s colonizing impulses while simultaneously insisting on technology’s potential for spiritual and communal practices of future-making.

In the IFA tradition, achieving a fulfilling life requires consideration of five fundamental pillars: Ce-Meji (Body), Ka-Ogbe (Mind), Gbe-Meji (Spirit), Sa-Meji (Heart), and Yeku-Meji (Soul). These pillars represent the holistic integration of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, rooted in West African cosmology. Gam translates these principles into digital architecture, creating spaces where traditional wisdom and contemporary technology converge. Each of the Sanctuary’s five buildings introduces these pillars through mixed-media photo, 3D, and digital collage animations, examining both visible and invisible dimensions of their corresponding principles.

The technical architecture of The Sanctuary of Dreams serves as more than infrastructure—it functions as a spiritual medium itself. Initially built within Mozilla Hub before migrating to WebGL, the platform demonstrates technical-spiritual persistence, refusing to let technical limitations constrain spiritual possibility. This approach exemplifies what Safiya Noble identifies as technological resistance, creating spaces that prioritize human and spiritual needs over capitalist imperatives. By embedding IFA principles into its design, the Sanctuary challenges the extractive logic of mainstream digital platforms, offering a model for technology that serves as a conduit for spiritual growth and communal connection.


1. Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science and Other Stories (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 45

The Dream Manifesto and Temporal Politics

Central to the Sanctuary stands The Dream Manifesto, an eight-minute film that introduces the philosophy behind the Future-dreaming ritual. This centerpiece challenges conventional perceptions of reality while expanding possibilities for future imagination beyond socially conditioned limiting beliefs. Through animation and spatial audio implementation, the film creates an immersive dreamscape that facilitates collective imagination.

The temporal dynamics of the work refuse both the accelerationism of digital capitalism and false dichotomies between tradition and innovation. Instead, as Elizabeth Freeman suggests in her work on temporal drag, the Sanctuary creates spiral time—a temporal mode where past, present, and future coexist in dynamic relation. This temporal politics extends throughout the entire structure, where each building becomes a time-space of becoming. For example, the Ce-Meji (Body) building might explore ancestral practices of physical well-being while projecting their relevance into future contexts, creating a dialogue across time that enriches the user’s experience.

The embodied experience within The Sanctuary of Dreams emerges through carefully orchestrated digital rituals. These rituals transform the typically isolated experience of digital interaction into collective spiritual practice. As Beth Coleman argues, this kind of digital embodiment creates new forms of presence that transcend conventional understandings of virtual space. The ritual aspects of the platform manifest in several key ways:

Threshold Experience: The entrance sequence creates a meaningful transition. Users don’t simply log in; they move through a designed digital space that prepares them for spiritual engagement. This design choice reflects what Lisa Nakamura describes as “digital ritual making”—the creation of meaningful ceremonies in virtual space.

Sonic Environment: The spatial audio system adds a sonic layer that guides users through different states of consciousness as they explore the IFA pillars. These soundscapes actively participate in creating what Fred Moten calls “the sonic dimension of spirituality,” enhancing the immersive quality of the experience.


2. Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: NYU Press, 2018), 112.

3. Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 78.

4. Beth Coleman, Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 95.

5. Lisa Nakamura, Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 63.

6. Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 22.

Community and Collective Dreaming

Gam‘s work with the Africans Rising movement, encompassing 40,000 members across the continent, demonstrates the platform’s capacity for scaling intimate spiritual experiences without losing their essential character. This achievement addresses one of the fundamental challenges of digital spirituality: maintaining authenticity while expanding access.

The platform facilitates what Ruha Benjamin terms “democratized dreaming”—collective imagination practices that resist the individualistic tendencies of digital capitalism. Through structured group activities and shared visualization exercises, participants engage in collective future-making that draws from both personal and communal wisdom. The integration of Ubuntu philosophy—”I am because you are”—into the digital architecture represents a fundamental shift in how virtual spaces can be conceived and constructed. This philosophy prioritizes communal experience over individual consumption, creating a digital environment that nurtures connection and mutual support. Gam‘s work aligns with Ruha Benjamin’s concept of “discriminatory design” while performing counter-design praxis, using technologies to encode alternative values rooted in African spirituality and communal wisdom. The project’s engagement with future-making demonstrates what Saidiya Hartman terms “critical fabulation” – imagining possible futures while remaining grounded in historical consciousness.

Impact and Future Implications

The Sanctuary of Dreams demonstrates profound implications for the future of digital spirituality and collective dreaming practices. By successfully implementing traditional African spiritual practices in digital space, Gam‘s work offers a model for preserving and expanding cultural practices through technology while resisting digital colonialism.

The project’s impact manifests in several key areas:

Collective Imagination: Providing practical methods for engaging in shared dreaming and future-making practices across geographical boundaries.

Digital Spiritual Practice: Establishing new paradigms for online spiritual engagement that maintain the depth and authenticity of traditional practices.

Technological Innovation: Demonstrating how spiritual principles can inform technical design, creating more humane and community-oriented digital spaces.

Cultural Preservation: Showing how traditional wisdom can be translated into contemporary formats without losing its essential character.


7. Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019), 134.

8. Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 89.

9. Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019), 201.

CONCLUSION: Reimagining Digital Futures

The Sanctuary of Dreams represents a crucial intervention in contemporary digital culture, demonstrating how technology can serve not as a tool of alienation but as a platform for collective dreaming and spiritual connection. Through its integration of IFA principles with new media technologies, Gam‘s work offers a model for future-making that refuses both techno-optimism and spiritual regression.

As technological development continues to accelerate, the importance of works like The Sanctuary of Dreams becomes increasingly apparent. Gam‘s project shows how digital spaces can be reclaimed for spiritual and communal purposes, creating environments where collective dreaming becomes possible. This achievement suggests new pathways for digital development that prioritize human connection, spiritual growth, and collective imagination over profit and surveillance. By merging ancient wisdom with contemporary technology, Gam creates a space where the future can be dreamed collectively, where technology serves spirit rather than capital, and where the digital realm becomes a site of genuine human connection and spiritual practice. The Sanctuary of Dreams thus points toward a future where technology and spirituality are not opposed but work in harmony to support human flourishing and collective liberation. As we navigate an increasingly digitized world, Gam‘s work challenges us to ask: What might technology look like if it were designed not for profit but for collective liberation? By answering this question, we can begin to imagine—and build—a more just and spiritually enriching digital future.


Footnotes

Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science and Other Stories (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 45.

Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: NYU Press, 2018), 112.

Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 78.

Beth Coleman, Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 95.

Lisa Nakamura, Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 63.

Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 22.

Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019), 134.

Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 89.

Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019), 201.


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