KEYNOTE
09:30
Enthralled by the night. Assembling the night, the city, and the person, Michel Massmünster
When night falls, the city and our mood change. We are open to expecting the unexpected and reinventing ourselves. At the same time, the night offers us the opportunity to calm down and rest. Despite its trusty effects, the night is not a given entity. It is what we make it – and it is as diverse as we are: lively and sleepy, planned and occupied, described and sung about, loved and feared. Michel Massmünster discusses how imaginations and experiences of night and city are entangled and continuously evolve together. Through ethnographic approaches, he traces the mesh of entities in which the urban night is historically and contemporarily reassembled again and again.
Dr. Michel Massmünster is a lecturer at the Seminar for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Basel and a senior researcher at the University of the Arts, Zurich. He is interested in infrastructures, temporalities, urbanities, and in (post-)ethnographic writing. His doctoral thesis was published at Kulturverlag Kadmos: Im Taumel der Nacht. Urbane Imaginationen, Rhythmen und Erfahrungen. Berlin 2017.
PANEL 1: SCENES & COMMUNITIES
09:30-12:00
High Life or Subculture? Clubs as Affective Spaces, Julian Schmitzberger (ISEK, Universität Zurich)
Clubs are understood as spaces where one can escape conventional rules and social norms. They are associated with notions of freedom, togetherness, and intimacy. Since many guests feel free to express themselves, club spaces play an important role for community building, especially for marginalized groups.
However, party crowds are not homogenous. Club-goers may not only vary in ethnicity, class, gender, or sexuality but also in physical appearance, style, and taste. As clubs are semi-public places, it should be assumed that distinctive scenes and the so called “mainstream” coexist and sometimes even intermingle.
Against the background of rather scene-oriented approaches, my ethnographic research on nightlife in Berlin and Munich also deals with ordinary aspects of clubbing. The lecture will focus on dynamics and interactions between the sphere of club culture and everyday life. How does one navigate between societal expectations and subcultural norms and beliefs? What makes a “safe space” a place of retreat? For whom and to what extent do such descriptions apply?
Julian Schmitzberger is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich. His research interests concern pop culture, emotion and affects, and cultural policy. Currently, he is working on an ethnographic dissertation on club cultures and nightlife in Berlin and Munich.
Connecting Detroit and Berlin through techno: articulations between music worlds, affect and economy, Frédéric Trottier (centre Georg Simmel, EHESS)
Techno is associated with nightlife and music. However, as the anthropologist of the night, Jacques Gallinier explains it, the modern nightlife is also the reflection of an enlargement of daylight activities. Techno may not be summarized only through night performance and activities anymore. Moreover, if 90s music journalists and the so-called techno phenomena brought the idea techno was an uniformous worldwide sound system, techno did not escape to a re-territorialization process, recently argued in ethnomusicology about large music category in the last decades. Here, the Detroit-Berlin connexion resonates as a bridge between territories: a music-rooted connexion that went further into music. Finally, after over 40 years of existence, long-term effects or affects may be analysed in both cities. And if Detroit and Berlin had never been so much acknowledged as techno cities, they are not for the same reasons. Their road intertwined, but also grew from different realms and realities.
What do this immaterial and material bridge between cities, people and music, look like throughout the years, until today? What can we learn from power influences between the two parts?
I discuss the evolution of relationships between Berlin and Detroit through a few news articles and video excerpts, but also academic works: Dan Sicko, Denise Dalphond, Sean Albiez, Kodwo Eschun, Mathieu Guillien, Alia Benabdellah, Felix Denk and Sven Von Thülen. Starting through a historical perspective, about artistic exchanges and bounds (Kraftwerk, Maurice Von Oswald, Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills, Floorplan...), I will analyse the recent economical power balance but also a communication analysis on the ways both Detroit or Berlin-based documentaries talk about the origin and evolution of techno. Using data from my fieldwork, I will comment on Detroit techno and house network speech about Berlin's influence on night policies and real estate, precisely about Tresor club and label founder's influence, Dimitri Hegemann.
Frédéric TROTTIER-PISTIEN has a PhD in Music, History, and Societies at EHESS (Advanced School in Social Sciences - Paris), affiliated with Centre Georg Simmel. He did his thesis fieldwork in 2014-2015 in Detroit to make urban and anthropological research, based on festival and club ethnographies arguing about Techno/City and documenting the life of 4 DJs considered as upcoming talents. He was a lecturer at Université de Reims in urban anthropology and sociology (2018-2020). Furthermore, he was consultant-researcher for Philharmonie de Paris (2016-2021) as an IRMM membre (Institut de Recherche sur les Mondes de la Musique).
From Berghain to Balenciaga: Symbolic-aesthetic shifts in meaning between Berlin underground styles and high fashion, Pr. Diana Weis (BSP Business School, Berlin).
Unlike Paris, Berlin is not considered a fashion centre. Despite this (or precisely because of it), the city's underground, art, and club culture have developed into an important source of inspiration for the fashion industry since the last third of the 20th century.
In the context of luxury and glamour, Berlin is always cited when a comforting frisson, a well-placed dose of dirt and brokenness, is supposed to lend “edge” to otherwise overly slick consumer stagings. An early example of this is the film Wir Kinder von Bahnhof Zoo (We Children of Zoo Station, 1981) whose defining stylistic elements have been taken up again and again by luxury brands – most recently by Gucci.
The lecture will focus on the evolution of the French label Balenciaga under creative director Demna Gvasalia since 2015. Together with stylist Lotta Volkova, Gvalsalia has created a controversial luxury aesthetic recently that openly plays with trash and fetish elements.
It will be examined which role the look of Berlin club-goers, especially the “Berghain uniform”, plays in the success of Gvasalia's collections and which cultural and economic shifts in meaning go hand in hand with this. Parallel to the successful re-branding of Balenciaga, the story of Steve Morell is examined: The Berlin-based musician and artist was discovered by Gvasalia and Volkova on the social media platform Facebook at the age of 50 and has since risen as a model to become one of the most recognizable faces of the brand.
Dr. Diana Weis is a professor of fashion journalism at BSP Business & Law School Berlin. She studied Theatre Studies, German Studies and Cosmetology in Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg. Her research interests include youth cultural styles, body norms and beauty action.
Between communities and identities: mapping out hedonistic and leisure-lifestyle behaviours in the techno subcultures of Berlin, Sophia Abidi, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, MAGIIE (ED 625), research lab CREW (EA 4399)
In this article, I map out an exhaustive list of cultural areas of Berlin and the different clubbing scenes and nightlife subcultures it generates. Through insightful ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews with young people participating in the scene, I reflect on the place of leisure-focused lifestyles within the composition of sub-communities.
This project also refers to an analysis of the hedonistic behaviours found within the prominent techno and queer scene of Berlin and the correlation it has with social and cultural identities. By studying different parties and venues, this paper analyses the diversity available in fashion, type of drugs, the genre of music or social interactions. It studies the impact of a subculture and its characteristics on a multifaceted nightlife.
This paper aims to relate the importance of Berlin’s nightlife as a strategic cultural hub, allowing space for young people to be actors in the techno and queer scene to explore their individual and collective identities. It brings a better understanding of the fluidity and diversity of the leisure-lifestyle-related events and places in Berlin and helps evaluate the limits these scenes generate.
Sophia Abidi is a French second-year doctoral student at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, in Paris. My PhD is supervised by Dr Sarah Pickard (MCF HDR). I am attached to the Doctoral School MAGIIE within the CREW Research Lab. My projects rely on interdisciplinary fieldwork such as urban sociology, youth studies, behavioural studies, and cultural studies. It reflects on the mobilities of young people, their individual and collective behaviours and their cultural identity within Berlin’s artistic milieu.
PANEL 2: NIGHTLIFE GOVERNANCE DURING & AFTER THE PANDEMIC
13:30-15:30
Public authorities recognizing nightlife music scènes : a comparative perspective between Paris and Berlin, Myrtille Picaud
This presentation will examine how nightlife music scenes have become an object for local public policies, contributing to the way capital-cities position themselves internationally amidst increasing competition amongst European cities to attract investors and firms. Paris and Berlin serve as case studies. As nightlife scenes have developed, their cultural intermediaries have worked towards more cultural recognition for their activity. This has often been done by insisting on the nightlife scenes’ economic contribution. Public authorities have also drawn on these scenes’ subcultural capital for their touristic and territorial branding to renew the cities’ image. Meanwhile, these music venues have also served as a focal point for spatial planning policies. These policies have also had an impact on the music scenes. In Berlin, urban renewal creates resistance amongst independent cultural intermediaries who feel threatened by the arrival of bigger players in the cultural industries, towards which public policies are geared. In Paris, public support for festive events organized in neighbouring cities participates in gentrification processes, as well as in the symbolic overtaking of the margins by the centre. I conclude on how the COVID-19 crisis was managed in the nightlife sector, and policies that shed light on the type of recognition these venues were offered, or not.
Myrtille Picaud is a sociologist working on music scenes and nightlife spaces. She studies cultural intermediaries, artistic hierarchies and inequalities and their link with urban and cultural policies. She has published the book Mettre la ville en musique (PUV, 2021) and articles in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales or the American Journal of Cultural Sociology on these topics. Her current research examines how digital security policies transform these scenes, as well as public spaces in cities, today.
THE A-TEAM: AWARENESS TEAMS IN BERLIN CLUB CULTURE AS SELF GOVERNANCE PRACTICE FOR SAFE(R) SPACE, Diana Raiselis (Vive Lab/Previous: Humboldt Stiftung Berlin)
Recently, ‘awareness teams’ have become a fixture in more of Berlin’s clubs, parties, and festivals. This feminist practice, created in activist spaces to address sexual assault and discrimination, has been incorporated into Berlin and German festival and club culture contexts to deter discrimination, violence, and other ‘boundary crossings’, and to support affected people when violations do occur (Wiesental 2017). Amidst growing recognition of sexual harassment, violence, and structural inequalities in live music and nightlife, this research sought to understand how awareness concepts are designed and implemented in Berlin’s club culture, how this practice links to histories of ‘safe(r) spaces,’ and the discourses influencing this practice’s current form. Based upon semi-structured practitioner interviews and embodied participant-observation of events, existing awareness concepts were found to vary widely in their organizational forms, the scope of responsibilities, and tools used to communicate their values. As this practice has shifted from activism to club culture, it has filtered through different languages, event contexts and audiences, yielding multiple approaches. This paper offers a definition and typology of awareness in current practice, identifies two strands of influence from feminist and queer-vernacular traditions, and raises key questions for the future of this practice in Berlin and beyond.
Diana Raiselis (they/she) is a cultural manager and urban researcher focused on models of safe, sustainable and inclusive nighttime culture and policy in cities. As Research Lead at VibeLab and co-editor of the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan, they draw upon past experience as a theater director and civic-leadership educator with emphases on LGBTQ+ representation and arts civic practice. Diana has been the recipient of fellowships from Salzburg Global Seminar, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, and Steppenwolf Theater Company. They hold a B.A. in Theater & Civic Engagement from Northwestern University and an M.Sc. in Urban Studies from University College London.
The night lab. Territorial mobilizations and governance of the pandemic nights, Luc Gwiazdzinski (Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Toulouse)
The pandemic and the correlated governmental measures have had a very significant impact on urban nights, their animation, public space, users and on the economic and cultural actors particularly affected. The paper, which is based on work carried out in various French cities with the Plateforme nationale de la vie nocturne, proposes to explore the forms of mobilization, territorial self-organization and governance adopted. Beyond that, they highlight a new interest in nightlife, its effective inclusion in public policies, the acceleration of the networking of public and private actors, the establishment of ecosystems and of collective approaches already at work before the crisis. They point to innovations at different scales, the emergence and sharing of ethical and environmental concerns that make urban nights living labs of adaptation and sobriety and the health crisis a shock and an opportunity.
Luc Gwiazdzinski holds a PhD and HDR in geography. He is a professor at the Ecole nationale supérieure d'architecture de Toulouse (ENSAT) and a member of the LRA Laboratory. His work focuses on the city, metropolization, time, rhythms, night, mobility and situational geography. He has directed numerous conferences, international research programs, theses and books on these issues, including La ville 24h/24, l'Aube; La nuit dernière frontière de la ville, L'Aube; La nuit en questions, L'Aube; Chronotopies, Elya; Night studies, Elya; Territoires apprenants, Elya; Les ateliers de l'imaginaire, Elya; Manifeste pour une politique des rythmes, EPFL (…).
Cohabiter les nuits urbaines, Florian Guérin (Université Paris - Est)
Florian Guérin has a PhD in urban planning (Université Paris-Est) and is specialized in the co-production of urban spaces through the analysis of festive practices, mobility and governance. His work highlights the desynchronisation of social rhythms, as well as the distortions between daily perceptions and the rhythms of urban production in a territory.
He is involved in action oriented research within design offices to build projects in relation to societal problems and to share the results of the research. The goal is to support semi-public structures in a process of control of use to put the user back at the heart of urban reflection.
PANEL 3: GENDER & DIVERSITY
15:50
The Materiality of Queer Infrastructure and the Reproduction of Queer Social Life in the Corona Crisis, Ben Trott (Leuphana Universität)
The Covid-19 pandemic has posed a serious threat to queer infrastructure including queer bars, clubs and other subcultural spaces, many of which have had to close their doors for protracted periods of time over the last two and a half years. This talk explores some crucial material, social and political, as well as aesthetic functions that this infrastructure serves, paying particular attention to the unforeseen encounters and forms of contact that it can sometimes facilitate. It will be argued that while this infrastructure can at times itself reproduce social hierarchies and forms of exclusion it can also when at its best, play an important (if still imperfect) role in sustaining queer socialities: alternative relational systems, expanded networks of friendship, and forms of ‘kin-making’. Such socialities have in part emerged out of necessity, in response to historic forms of exclusion (including from the institution of the family), and in part out of a desire to fashion new ways of being with and relating to one another. The talk argues for an urgent defence of this queer infrastructure, which is not only threatened – in Berlin (the focus of this talk) and elsewhere – by the ongoing pandemic, but also by longer-standing threats including gentrification and property development.
Ben TROTT researches and teaches at the Institute for Philosophy and Art Theory at Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
“Discrimination, Techno and Identity – Queer Nightlife Experiences of BIPoC in Berlin,” Elena Schaetz (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Berlin clubs enjoy the reputation of being places of refuge for a wide variety of people. Typically, they are called places of identity formation, of individual development and expression, especially for queer people. Nevertheless, recently, voices reporting racist and homophobic assaults in the Berlin club scene have become louder. Particularly at risk are multiply discriminated groups such as queer BIPoC, who contribute a significant part to Berlin's techno scene, but often experience discrimination at clubs and festivals. These cases show the need to identify and break down the discriminatory structures in Berlin's nightlife and to find ways to protect marginalized groups. What tools can be used to prevent discrimination at events? How can safe spaces within the scene be created? For whom should these spaces be accessible and how?
Elena SCHAETZ holds a bachelor's degree in German Literature and Regional Studies. She is currently studying African Studies at HU Berlin and works at the Institute for Gender and Media Studies (HU Berlin). Her work on queer safe spaces in times of the COVID-19 pandemic was published in GAMSZine No. 2. Her research topics include queer (pop) culture, feminist literature, queer poetry and performance art. In addition to her academic activities, she writes poetry herself, most recently for Goethe-Institut Chile for an online artist residency.
Gender-related issues in Berlin’s Electronic Dance Music Scene, Dr Anita Jóri & Mascha Naumann (Universität der Künste, Berlin)
Berlin has always had a great history and reputation in supporting gender diversity within the electronic dance music scene. Many non-profit organizations, cultural associations, and individual initiatives work on changing the male-dominated local scene by organizing events and workshops for (emerging) artists. This presentation gives an overview of some of these organizations – based on an earlier study – and shortly analyses their activities. It also reflects on the phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when these activities were on hold or completely stopped. Based on interviews with party goers, professionals, and musicians, the current “post-pandemic” situation will also be highlighted to answer the following questions: How do gender-related issues look like now? What changes were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic? What roles did the online communities play in these processes? These will also leave us room for speculation about the possible future(s) of gender-related discourses within EDM scenes in general.
Dr Anita Jóri is a post-doc research associate at the Vilém Flusser Archive, Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK). Jóri's research and publications focus on the discursive and terminological aspects of electronic dance music culture. She is also the first chairperson of the German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research (GMM) and one of the curators of CTM Festival's Discourse programme. She is also the author of The Discourse Community of Electronic Dance Music (transcript, 2022) and one of the editors of The New Age of Electronic Dance Music and Club Culture (Springer, 2020), Musik & Empowerment (Springer, 2020) and Musik & Marken (Springer, 2022).
Mascha Naumann, Berlin based queer multimedia artist and researcher, currently studying in Thomas Zipp's Class at UdK Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts). Their creative process and practice is deeply rooted and inspired by the transformative power of subcultural and community spaces and specifically Berlin's club culture and nightlife.
Originating from a working class background they have been an active member of Berlin’s subculture from a very early age, working in different positions from bar to awareness to financially support themselves during their studies. Especially at the former Griessmühle they helped and contributed in shaping one of these special places that Berlin is known for and which are far more than partying and hedonism but about individual freedom, lived diversity, and community building. The closing process of the club, forced by an investor in 2019, shifted their focus once more to countercultural research, queer theory and social and political activism. Since the shut down of this visionary space they continued to work as a freelance bartender and being part of the awareness team at various venues with a strong focus on safer spaces, sexpositive and (gender)queer events.
New practices, new knowledge: the techno queer scenes of Paris and their contribution to a new epistemology, Ines Liotard (EHESS)
The social history of queer political ideas requires studying the founding texts, their diffusion by the publishers, media, etc. but also their appropriations and their settings in politics. Queer theory has appeared in the early 1990s in two distinct but not necessarily autonomous spaces: the academic field with de Lauretis and the activist field with the creation of the Queer nation movement. My PhD shows how the work of these two fields could evolve in a joint way, showing how the queer practices of techno contribute to the new construction of queer knowledge.
Through the history of techno and house music, we can understand the particular and linked practices of the techno and house scenes.
In Paris, the main place of my fieldwork, queer parties spread progressively since 2005, reaching a peak of popularity in 2018.
This corresponds to a joint reception of academic queer knowledge, which we can study from the translations of founding texts in French.
In these parties, the practices linked to the techno scene redefine the queer and, in this way, participate in a new epistemology.
How do the practices of queer scenes participate in a redefinition of queer theory by contributing to the emergence of a new queer epistemology? what is the role played by music, especially during night parties?
Ines Liotard is currently a PhD student in sociology (second year) at the High School of advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris. Linked to the European Center of Sociology and Political Science CESSP, my research is supervised by Gisèle Sapiro.
After a comparative study of the queer techno scenes in Paris, Berlin, and Beirut (realized during my master thesis with Régis Schlagdenhauffen), I am now working on the circulation of critical ideas, along the lines of Pierre Bourdieu field theory and the contemporary program of the social history of political ideas.
From a study of critical publishing houses to the reception, the internationalization, the sharing, and the appropriation of ideas on social movements, I examine the construction of knowledge, more particularly in the field of queer and antispecism theories.