Updated: Feb 2, 2021
Research into Rave culture & ecology
I've returned back to a point where I often begin. Rave & ecology/ecology of rave. In 2018 I ran the weekend retreat Wild Philosophy: Raving, Running, Reading which incorporated raving naked in an ex-church turned residency space as a means for making.
I also had the idea of creating a Peatbog rave as an artwork. I am going to investigate what I am trying to get at and how can I link this with what I have been doing with sound?
The darkness of these elements relates back to Murky Horizons:
embracing the eerie
dark undercurrents
death cycles
Energy transfers
Hope can be found close to the griminess of a techno rave floor
The dancing body is political
Links (rave & bogs):
Grimy landscapes
Uncertain landscapes
Always moving & adjusting
Networks of support
Darkness - night
No matter how these spaces are suppressed they manage to carry on or be revived
Othered spaces
Feared spaces
Music sub-genres: acid, techno, breakcore, darkcore, glitch, IDM
Derrick May - Acid music is so-called not because of drugs but because the sound in sulphuric and that's what the kids wanted to call it
Artworks
Everybody in the Place - Jeremy Deller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thr8PUAQuag&ab_channel=TheSoundOfTheUnderground
Ecstacy: The Battle of Rave - BBC Doc series
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08qw04h
Article
Illegal raves: How the underground scene has never really gone away
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/66df895b-af1c-416f-b32a-bb3576dbcb82
'Rave Trilogy' -Rebecca Salvadori
https://www.ica.art/films/rave-trilogy
Quotes from Rebecca Salvadori's film series 'Rave Trilogy'
"The clubs that I want to be in are anonymous in the sense that no dominant culture exists within, no specific way of being there. I feel undefined and can focus on the sound"
"Once you enter the audible field there is no doubt as to why you are there, as the sound takes over and plays with you. To be ok in this unknown, and be guided by this communal folding and unfolding. I think it is the greatest social importance in the long term. Maybe you feel internally shuffled, expanded, moved or squeezed."
"Anything that recognises the unfolding of the living can be a spiritual practice, I think. It assigns a presence to the living. This practice is our cue to take the agency. Eliminating expectation of who you are, or how things ought to be."
The End of the World Has Already Happened - Timothy Morten
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/favourites/m000d8s5
He references club scene, acid house and how this relates to ecology, how you're allowing yourself to be pulled by an experience, adjusting to and taking care of other people in a space. Open up the future and being in the moment, not stepping on anyone else's toes so that everyone can co-exist. What is called being present, is a pulsating and moving thing or group of things, dripping, flowing to their own rhythm. We need to appreciate other rhythms in nature.
https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/695/697
"In both post-colonial and post-industrial contexts, hurting bass frequencies articulate feelings of subjective and shared embattlement"
- jojomatthewsart
- jojomatthewsart
Updated: Sep 30, 2020
IDEA 1: Bog club night - a fantasy proposal
Dance culture - dance culture in Edinburgh - how is electronic dance music valued, is there any queer/ 'alternative" nightlife apart from CC Blooms?
Bogs - uncertain & undervalued landscapes in the city
Uncomfortable and uncertain landscapes
You can put a foot wrong and fall down into the bog
Build on existing research at Red Moss in Pentlands (and Black Woods of Rannoch)
Build on research in my essay: Anarchic Hope: Peatbogs, community & survival
Build on bog recordings library - visit Red Moss for more fieldwork & warped sounds from Undergrowth
IDEA 2: Wardie Bay Beach - radical intimacy - rising tides
Mapping this beach (sound, visuals, drawings)
The colonies of sea birds are intriguing how they group, feed, sound -birds could be: Sandpipers / Sanderlings / Oyster-catchers / Turnstones / Redshank
What will happen to the rock pool feeding birds when the tide rises? Parts of Wardie Bay are predicted to be underwater in 2050.
Record the birds, visit the birds, rock pools
Nature/culture - what has shaped this landscape? Weaving in political & ecological structures.
Queer ecology
Beyond the pastoral
The vulnerability of these birds and also the strength
Ghosts of the future as sea levels rise?
Beach is next to my house - easier to fulfil this fieldwork during the pandemic