Post by Admin on Jan 27, 2015 0:16:04 GMT
COLD_CUT was a durational event lasting 1 hour.
It consisted of an atmosphere created with a projection of the JK_NET logo, a blue laser and a smoke machine. A DJ set of “rodhad” from boiler room was playing and people were provided with a T-shirt, a bottle of water and a small note.
The documentation that was created by the people can be found on the JK_NET Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/pages/JK_NET/247390332099083
It consisted of an atmosphere created with a projection of the JK_NET logo, a blue laser and a smoke machine. A DJ set of “rodhad” from boiler room was playing and people were provided with a T-shirt, a bottle of water and a small note.
The documentation that was created by the people can be found on the JK_NET Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/pages/JK_NET/247390332099083
Excerpts from “Working Weeks, Rave Weekends: Identity Fragmentation and the Emergence of New Communities”
focus on fragmentation and the project of the self is offered, by arguing for a return to “community”.
Keywords: Rave; Dance culture; Consumer behaviour; Postmodernism; Identity; Popular culture; Phenomenology; Neo-tribes
the rave experience from a phenomenological perspective offers insights into the fragmented and temporary communal life that characterises the rave experience
Hall and Jefferson (1996), Willis (1996), Clarke et al. (1997/1975) and Hebdidge (1997/1979).
The position adopted by these scholars is to locate sub-cultural movements within a framework of social resistance and reaction against dominant hierarchies of control.
Increasingly, sub-cultural spaces are becoming sites of creativity and self expression for both male and female participants from all social backgrounds.
Today, sub-cultural activity is recognised as important for the construction and expression of identity, rather than cells of resistance against dominant orders.
In contrast to this, rave, for the majority, is a “weekend” culture of hedonism, sensation and escape, and has parallels with the life mode communities described by Firat and Dholokia (1998) These communities are based on temporary experiences, evident in the example of cyberspace groupings, whereby individuals are free to construct experiences without withdrawing from mainstream society or committing to the community.
The rave website “Peace, Love, Dancing and Drugs” (1997), comments,
Outside of a rave, ravers appear normal. Many have jobs in technological fields like computer programming. Many are college students. Raving is not an all the time culture as the hippy movement was and is. Rather raving is a temporary activity separate from the daily lives of the individuals.
Similarly, rave provides a venue for collective engagement with new social groups who meet to experience the dance sensation, but are not necessarily core to everyday social interaction. As such, rave might arguably be viewed as an example of the fragmented and compartmentalised nature of postmodern life.
Essentially it may be argued that there are two perspectives on postmodern society. The first perspective views society as dystopian and alienating, with fragmented consumers seeking compensation through the consumption of signs, spectacles and the superficial, and is particularly associated with the work of Baudrillard (1988) and Jameson (1990). The second perspective adopts a more optimistic view of the postmodern consumer, interpreting, for example, fragmentation as a potentially liberating force which frees the individual from conformity (Firat and Venkatesh 1995).
Conversely, within the field of consumer research there is growing acceptance of the notion of postmodernism as a liberatory force
Examples of the latter include increasing rejection of political authority, increasing political instability, disintegrating social institutions (the church, marriage, family and workplace), and the fragmentation of the self.
Firat and Venkatesh (1995, p. 253) suggest that,
fragmentation means, literally, the breaking up into parts and erasing of the whole, single reality into multiple realities, all claiming legitimacy, and all decoupling any link to the presumed whole.
DJs experimented with new techniques to heighten the euphoria of the dancing bodies they “controlled”:
The desires and resistances of the club scene were encoded in the music, enabling their diffusion to a wider culture where questions of personal and cultural identity maintenance became increasingly pertinent.
Promoters meticulously planned each military-style operation with great precision and cunningness, the main objective being to evade police exposure by adding an element of surprise (Wayne 1998). News of such events was spread by word of mouth, they were secret, they were seductive in their hidden appeal and they were places to express identity and communicate with similar others. What distinguished raves from mainstream culture was an emphasis on social bonding, the collective dance experience, a communal state of euphoria and the “happy” vibe (Measham et al. 1998).
Today “house” or “rave” is no longer the music and dance of the disempowered. However, whilst the audience for rave has become more diverse, some of the core values such as the notion of escape, hedonism, free self-expression and importantly the idea of the community remain central to the experience.
hundreds of thousands of people who shared a dance beat. . . shared an experience of communion like no one had before.
Rather, they lease premises for the weekend, on a rolling basis, promoting the brand name rather than the physical club.
Moreover, the organisers have managed to achieve both notoriety and an image of exclusivity.
The room itself is dark, lit only by lasers and strobe lights which are activated by the beat of the music. The whole effect is hypnotic.
An alternative or more liberating way of being socially connected and a way of being detached from social structure. In the dance club there is an emphasis on common experience and a common emotional bond encountered through dance, and communal identity.
Maffesoli (1996) talks about the rise in what he terms “neo-tribes” or the transitory group, which is neither fixed or permanent, but involves a constant back and forth movement between the tribe and the masses.
On reflection, the findings appear to support Maffesoli’s (1996) argument that society, rather than becoming more and more individualistic, is in fact seeing a return to the concept of community.
what links members of rave neo-tribes is not a formal code, as with the music based subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s, rather “shared emotions, styles of life, new moral beliefs, senses of injustice and consumption practices” (Cova 1997, p. 301)
In this context, the shared emotion is not the result of verbal communication. Indeed there were accounts of clubbers going to a rave and not talking until they left.
Alyson You don’t go to a rave to talk, you don’t need to. It’s strange, but I can spend all night dancing, mingling with
people, feeling close to them, sharing something without saying a word. The funny thing is that if I met many of these people away from the club scene, I wouldn’t know what to say to them. I think what it is, is the whole thing, the music, the dancing, lifts you onto another plane where everyone feels the same, we’re all equal.
Jowers (1999, p. 387), in discussing the nature of music and its lived experience proposes,
within the deeper trajectory of electronic dance music an intensifying focus upon the sheer materiality of sound has appeared. Vocal sounds are pulverized to reveal what is always and necessarily elided in most communication, the fact that we communicate by way of the properties of sound waves of varying frequency.
—-> New Materialism!! Non-verbal communication,
The dance club represents a hyperreal environment where communication is based on an understanding of codes and signals.
Consequently, it is the shared consumption of music and an appreciation of its inherent semiotic meaning, and its ability to link individuals together, that not only validates the individual’s self identity but also helps to coalesce and create a neo-tribe. As indicated by Alyson in the previous quote, this juncture may only be temporary and transitory, where shared values exist only for the duration of the experience. The club setting provides many contemporary consumers with an environment, which links them with others who share something that is mutually valued. However, whilst the group may provide the context for the expression of identity and communal bonding, the nature of the experience is also linked to other stimuli such as the laser light shows, the ingestion of drugs like ecstasy and cocaine and the nature of dance itself. These are the things that produce a common bond and a sense of affiliation. They also heighten the sense of being “high” and escaping from reality.
Referring to Gergen (1991) they go on to suggest that “postmodernism permits us to conceive of the individual as engaging in non linearities of thought and practice, in improbable behaviours, contingencies and discontinuities” (p. 255).
According to Campbell (1987) modern hedonism is characterised by a shift in concern from emotions to sensations where what is sought is more often to do with the imagination.
In clubs the beat of the music is repetitive and hypnotic, devoid of lyrics which may require thought and analysis, or according to Redhead (1993) a form of mindless indulgence. The emphasis is on a feeling of well being, in a climate where everyone is experiencing the same emotions.
However, whilst the music, on first analysis, may appear depthless, and the emphasis on mindlessness or “not having to think”, it is far from void of meaning. According to Hesmondhalgh (1998), one of the key features of dance music as opposed to many other sectors of the music industry, is its lack of a star system. This allows for concentration on the music itself, rather than on personalities. He suggests, that this reflects a lack of interest in rock notions of authenticity, sincerity and integrity, and a preference for other values such as immediacy, sensuality and pleasure in secrecy and obscurity.
Mindlessness was counteracted by descriptions of total inner absorption congruent with Csikszentmihalyi’s (1992) account of flow. This concerns conscious effort and the direction of psychic energy to produce a feeling of well-being.
This behaviour supports the notion that “in this world of shifting images there is no single project, or no one lifestyle, no sense of being to which the individual needs to commit” (Firat and Venkatesh 1995, p. 253).
The notion of community has always been a central feature of rave, but unlike earlier subcultures it is not based on a lifestyle commitment. It might be viewed as part of the liberating force of postmodern fragmentation as described by Firat and Venkatesh (1995, p. 253) which frees the individual from “one sense of experience of being”. It is part of the acceptance of paradoxes where no one perspective is privileged and where the “juxtaposition of contradictory emotions and cognitions regarding perspectives, commit- ment, ideas and things in general” are part of the emancipatory condition of postmodern fragmentation.
focus on fragmentation and the project of the self is offered, by arguing for a return to “community”.
Keywords: Rave; Dance culture; Consumer behaviour; Postmodernism; Identity; Popular culture; Phenomenology; Neo-tribes
the rave experience from a phenomenological perspective offers insights into the fragmented and temporary communal life that characterises the rave experience
Hall and Jefferson (1996), Willis (1996), Clarke et al. (1997/1975) and Hebdidge (1997/1979).
The position adopted by these scholars is to locate sub-cultural movements within a framework of social resistance and reaction against dominant hierarchies of control.
Increasingly, sub-cultural spaces are becoming sites of creativity and self expression for both male and female participants from all social backgrounds.
Today, sub-cultural activity is recognised as important for the construction and expression of identity, rather than cells of resistance against dominant orders.
In contrast to this, rave, for the majority, is a “weekend” culture of hedonism, sensation and escape, and has parallels with the life mode communities described by Firat and Dholokia (1998) These communities are based on temporary experiences, evident in the example of cyberspace groupings, whereby individuals are free to construct experiences without withdrawing from mainstream society or committing to the community.
The rave website “Peace, Love, Dancing and Drugs” (1997), comments,
Outside of a rave, ravers appear normal. Many have jobs in technological fields like computer programming. Many are college students. Raving is not an all the time culture as the hippy movement was and is. Rather raving is a temporary activity separate from the daily lives of the individuals.
Similarly, rave provides a venue for collective engagement with new social groups who meet to experience the dance sensation, but are not necessarily core to everyday social interaction. As such, rave might arguably be viewed as an example of the fragmented and compartmentalised nature of postmodern life.
Essentially it may be argued that there are two perspectives on postmodern society. The first perspective views society as dystopian and alienating, with fragmented consumers seeking compensation through the consumption of signs, spectacles and the superficial, and is particularly associated with the work of Baudrillard (1988) and Jameson (1990). The second perspective adopts a more optimistic view of the postmodern consumer, interpreting, for example, fragmentation as a potentially liberating force which frees the individual from conformity (Firat and Venkatesh 1995).
Conversely, within the field of consumer research there is growing acceptance of the notion of postmodernism as a liberatory force
Examples of the latter include increasing rejection of political authority, increasing political instability, disintegrating social institutions (the church, marriage, family and workplace), and the fragmentation of the self.
Firat and Venkatesh (1995, p. 253) suggest that,
fragmentation means, literally, the breaking up into parts and erasing of the whole, single reality into multiple realities, all claiming legitimacy, and all decoupling any link to the presumed whole.
DJs experimented with new techniques to heighten the euphoria of the dancing bodies they “controlled”:
The desires and resistances of the club scene were encoded in the music, enabling their diffusion to a wider culture where questions of personal and cultural identity maintenance became increasingly pertinent.
Promoters meticulously planned each military-style operation with great precision and cunningness, the main objective being to evade police exposure by adding an element of surprise (Wayne 1998). News of such events was spread by word of mouth, they were secret, they were seductive in their hidden appeal and they were places to express identity and communicate with similar others. What distinguished raves from mainstream culture was an emphasis on social bonding, the collective dance experience, a communal state of euphoria and the “happy” vibe (Measham et al. 1998).
Today “house” or “rave” is no longer the music and dance of the disempowered. However, whilst the audience for rave has become more diverse, some of the core values such as the notion of escape, hedonism, free self-expression and importantly the idea of the community remain central to the experience.
hundreds of thousands of people who shared a dance beat. . . shared an experience of communion like no one had before.
Rather, they lease premises for the weekend, on a rolling basis, promoting the brand name rather than the physical club.
Moreover, the organisers have managed to achieve both notoriety and an image of exclusivity.
The room itself is dark, lit only by lasers and strobe lights which are activated by the beat of the music. The whole effect is hypnotic.
An alternative or more liberating way of being socially connected and a way of being detached from social structure. In the dance club there is an emphasis on common experience and a common emotional bond encountered through dance, and communal identity.
Maffesoli (1996) talks about the rise in what he terms “neo-tribes” or the transitory group, which is neither fixed or permanent, but involves a constant back and forth movement between the tribe and the masses.
On reflection, the findings appear to support Maffesoli’s (1996) argument that society, rather than becoming more and more individualistic, is in fact seeing a return to the concept of community.
what links members of rave neo-tribes is not a formal code, as with the music based subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s, rather “shared emotions, styles of life, new moral beliefs, senses of injustice and consumption practices” (Cova 1997, p. 301)
In this context, the shared emotion is not the result of verbal communication. Indeed there were accounts of clubbers going to a rave and not talking until they left.
Alyson You don’t go to a rave to talk, you don’t need to. It’s strange, but I can spend all night dancing, mingling with
people, feeling close to them, sharing something without saying a word. The funny thing is that if I met many of these people away from the club scene, I wouldn’t know what to say to them. I think what it is, is the whole thing, the music, the dancing, lifts you onto another plane where everyone feels the same, we’re all equal.
Jowers (1999, p. 387), in discussing the nature of music and its lived experience proposes,
within the deeper trajectory of electronic dance music an intensifying focus upon the sheer materiality of sound has appeared. Vocal sounds are pulverized to reveal what is always and necessarily elided in most communication, the fact that we communicate by way of the properties of sound waves of varying frequency.
—-> New Materialism!! Non-verbal communication,
The dance club represents a hyperreal environment where communication is based on an understanding of codes and signals.
Consequently, it is the shared consumption of music and an appreciation of its inherent semiotic meaning, and its ability to link individuals together, that not only validates the individual’s self identity but also helps to coalesce and create a neo-tribe. As indicated by Alyson in the previous quote, this juncture may only be temporary and transitory, where shared values exist only for the duration of the experience. The club setting provides many contemporary consumers with an environment, which links them with others who share something that is mutually valued. However, whilst the group may provide the context for the expression of identity and communal bonding, the nature of the experience is also linked to other stimuli such as the laser light shows, the ingestion of drugs like ecstasy and cocaine and the nature of dance itself. These are the things that produce a common bond and a sense of affiliation. They also heighten the sense of being “high” and escaping from reality.
Referring to Gergen (1991) they go on to suggest that “postmodernism permits us to conceive of the individual as engaging in non linearities of thought and practice, in improbable behaviours, contingencies and discontinuities” (p. 255).
According to Campbell (1987) modern hedonism is characterised by a shift in concern from emotions to sensations where what is sought is more often to do with the imagination.
In clubs the beat of the music is repetitive and hypnotic, devoid of lyrics which may require thought and analysis, or according to Redhead (1993) a form of mindless indulgence. The emphasis is on a feeling of well being, in a climate where everyone is experiencing the same emotions.
However, whilst the music, on first analysis, may appear depthless, and the emphasis on mindlessness or “not having to think”, it is far from void of meaning. According to Hesmondhalgh (1998), one of the key features of dance music as opposed to many other sectors of the music industry, is its lack of a star system. This allows for concentration on the music itself, rather than on personalities. He suggests, that this reflects a lack of interest in rock notions of authenticity, sincerity and integrity, and a preference for other values such as immediacy, sensuality and pleasure in secrecy and obscurity.
Mindlessness was counteracted by descriptions of total inner absorption congruent with Csikszentmihalyi’s (1992) account of flow. This concerns conscious effort and the direction of psychic energy to produce a feeling of well-being.
This behaviour supports the notion that “in this world of shifting images there is no single project, or no one lifestyle, no sense of being to which the individual needs to commit” (Firat and Venkatesh 1995, p. 253).
The notion of community has always been a central feature of rave, but unlike earlier subcultures it is not based on a lifestyle commitment. It might be viewed as part of the liberating force of postmodern fragmentation as described by Firat and Venkatesh (1995, p. 253) which frees the individual from “one sense of experience of being”. It is part of the acceptance of paradoxes where no one perspective is privileged and where the “juxtaposition of contradictory emotions and cognitions regarding perspectives, commit- ment, ideas and things in general” are part of the emancipatory condition of postmodern fragmentation.