French underground raves of the nineties. Aesthetic politics of affect and autonomy (original) (raw)
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The aesthetic politics of two decades of techno-movement in France
openDemocracy, 2012
The spread of raves in France led to a number of controversies during the years 1990-2000. Two phases can be distinguished: a first in which raves were denied their status as aesthetic phenomena, and a second characterized by the identification of electronic dance-music as an accepted artistic practice, but one in which the political modalities surrounding the organizing of raves, especially free-parties, caused conflict. Based on interpretation of these events but also on the comments and actions of those involved in both phases, two types of aesthetic politics can be identified in raves and techno music.
Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, 2010
Without a doubt, the question of rave culture’s politics – or lack thereof – has polarized debate concerning the cultural, social and political value of rave culture not only within electronic dance music culture (EDMC) studies, but in disciplines that look to various manifestations of subculture and counterculture for political innovation. It is time for the groundwork of this debate to be rethought. Ask not what rave culture’s politics can do for you; nor even what you can do for it. Rather, ask what the unexamined account of politics has ever done for anyone; then question all that rave culture has interrogated – from its embodied and technological practices to its production of ecstatic and collective subjectivities – and begin to trace how it has complicated the very question of the political, the communal and the ethical. This complication begins with the dissolution of the boundaries of labour and leisure and the always-already co-optation of culture. To the negation of ethics, community and politics, this tracing calls for the hauntology of technics, precarity and exodus. And it ends with a list of impossible demands demonstrating the parallax gap of rave culture’s politics.
Technics, Precarity and Exodus in Rave Culture
Dancecult, 2010
Without a doubt, the question of rave culture's politics -or lack thereof -has polarized debate concerning the cultural, social and political value of rave culture not only within electronic dance music culture (EDMC) studies, but in disciplines that look to various manifestations of subculture and counterculture for political innovation. It is time for the groundwork of this debate to be rethought. Ask not what rave culture's politics can do for you; nor even what you can do for it. Rather, ask what the unexamined account of politics has ever done for anyone; then question all that rave culture has interrogated -from its embodied and technological practices to its production of ecstatic and collective subjectivities -and begin to trace how it has complicated the very question of the political, the communal and the ethical. This complication begins with the dissolution of the boundaries of labour and leisure and the always-already co-optation of culture. To the negation of ethics, community and politics, this tracing calls for the hauntology of technics, precarity and exodus. And it ends with a list of impossible demands demonstrating the parallax gap of rave culture's politics.
Techno and Raves - Hungry for Expressivity
2023
The research on techno music history especially in Germany and the United States has shown extensive results and chronology. Scholars have also done studies on raves as a strong subculture of techno. But not many have shown techno and raves' materiality and expressivity. The blurry line between sound art and music fuel in techno has often been debated. On an ontological level, this essay aims to discuss techno music's materiality to assess as a musical being that traditional musicology has failed to do. To add to the examination, this paper also engages with expressivity within techno music that surpasses mere musical composition onto other elements such as modalities that are present in raves in sustaining the subculture. In reminiscing early forms of techno raves we would like to see to what extent early techno raves introduce "exploration" or in music expressivity. In this essay, such expressivity will expand from musicology to other social modalities in discerning the affect on the general society or rather the subculture and pertaining figures that it creates. This essay frames the connection between techno as a stylistic marking and rave as the subculture techno produces alongside. The first section traces techno's journey from Germany to the United States that are initially socioeconomically motivated and encouraging, from countering capitalism to new, low cost technology. The following section discusses techno's placement within academic debates and recent theories to support sonic analysis. I will also attempt to illuminate employed musical forces within techno music and propose engagement modalities in tracing rave interactions.
Techno, identite, corps: les experience feminen dans le dance music
Mouvement, 2005
Although dance music and club culture has attracted a certain amount of scholarly attention, the gendered aspects of this culture have largely gone unexplored. Through an examination of the current literature, this paper attempts to tease out gender-related themes and sets out to explore some of the claims made for techno as they relate to women's experiences of producing and consuming dance music in club cultures 1 . In the first part of this paper, I examine the material obstacles that women continue to face in their efforts to become DJs and producers. Techno is one of the first genres of music to exploit all computer forms of the digital age and yet, despite the widespread available of computer technology women remain underrepresented in the cultural production of techno. Secondly, I explore a number of philosophical perspectives taken up by feminist theorists, and the claims they make for the construction of new feminine subjectivities through the embodied experience of dance.
The Graduate Researcher: Journal for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, 2003
Despite a contemporary understanding of "rave culture" as a hedonist, if not consumerist, capitalist, and escapist activity, "rave culture" remixed practices from anarchism to squatting, performance art to immediatism. The liminal edges of rave culture raise a series of questions as to what constitutes the nature of the "political," of the "social" and of the "subject" when such primary models are remixed through sound, movement, and bodily sensation. Rave cuts and filters these practices, strips them down to minimal components, and transforms what cultural studies usually denotes as reactive resistance to an affirmative experience of the sonic body.
Techno, Identit�, Corps�: Les exp�riences f�minines dans la dance music
Mouvements, 2005
Although dance music and club culture has attracted a certain amount of scholarly attention, the gendered aspects of this culture have largely gone unexplored. Through an examination of the current literature, this paper attempts to tease out gender-related themes and sets out to explore some of the claims made for techno as they relate to women's experiences of producing and consuming dance music in club cultures 1 . In the first part of this paper, I examine the material obstacles that women continue to face in their efforts to become DJs and producers. Techno is one of the first genres of music to exploit all computer forms of the digital age and yet, despite the widespread available of computer technology women remain underrepresented in the cultural production of techno. Secondly, I explore a number of philosophical perspectives taken up by feminist theorists, and the claims they make for the construction of new feminine subjectivities through the embodied experience of dance.
Plugging In: The Ecology of Rave
The history of electronic dance music is a long and colourful continuum. Since its inception in the underground house, garage and disco scenes of Chicago and New York, it has developed an ever-increasing matrix of techno-tools and cultural manifestos. It has inspired competing and collaborating worlds of gadgets, gizmos and garments; circuit boards, synthesisers and electronic drum patterns. Rave, its enfant terrible, now stands as a global phenomenon. Born in colloquial terms in the United Kingdom during the Second Summer of Love (1988 – 1989), the cultural significance of rave has oscillated from counter-cultural ekstasis to humdrum corporate leisure-activity. Yet, despite its pre-88 genealogy and current state of techno-globalism, it was specifically the UK Rave scene of the late 80s and early 90s which fuelled the tsunami of electronic dance music that soon swept the world. Attuned to these brief and emphatic years (1988 – 1994), the purpose of this dissertation will be to critically analyse the social and experiential history of UK Rave through the current ecological discourse of Dark Ecology. Published in 2016 by philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology is a bold manifesto for a new form of ecological awareness—or ecognosis—heralded by the urgency of our contemporary geological era – The Anthropocene. Faced with objects so far beyond the limits of human epistemology, the primary task of this new ecognosis is the ontological restructuring of human and non-human relations, or the radicalisation of post-Kantian philosophy toward a weird metaphysical realism. Moving beyond straightforward environmentalism to the corollary proposition of an 'Ecology without Nature', I will look to the work of Morton, supported by further engagement and comparison with the writings Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, to argue that the heyday of UK Rave culture is in many aspects better understood through the concept of Dark Ecology: as the dismantling of post-Kantian correlationism and the opening up of human experience to a truly symbiotic ecological awareness. Furthermore, I will argue that the countercultural phenomenon of UK Rave is thus less a question of social escapism and rather a positive drive towards this new ecognosis. A will to both access and be accessed.
Negotiating Ecstasy: Electronic Dance Music and the Temporary Autonomous Zone
Thresholds of Listening: Sound, Technics, Space, 2015
Electronic dance music (EDM) is an acoustic ecology whose perceptual and cognitive attributes have, since the late 1980s, engendered new modes of listening. The ordering of sound and the construction of electronic soundscapes is in a complex interface with cultural experiences such as clubbing, dancing, and drug taking. This has led to the development of electroacoustic musicology and has had a profound impact on the way we frame the question, what is listening? EDM also pushes to the forefront the essential question, why are we listening? This essay explores these two questions by examining four principal features of the genre: (1) the unique characteristics of EDM, especially concerning its composition and performance; (2) the listening environment, particularly the institution of a “safe space” (a so-called temporary autonomous zone); (3) how chemical sensory alteration through the use of illegal drugs changes the listening experience; and (4) the reasons for participation in EDM events, in particular how listeners seek an ecstatic experience. Because EDM is such a diverse field, this essay moves from general remarks about characteristics of the genre to specifics of the teknival (a portmanteau of techno and festival), a form of EDM that is the epitome of a certain esoteric listening.