Developing a Rationale
INTERVIEW
Can you notice a visual aspect at a rave to accompany the music? (lights, projections etc)
JP : in the late 80’s and early 90’s the flyers that advertised forthcoming raves and clubs had fantastic artwork. People collected them – I wish I had kept all mine. They sell on Ebay now for a small fortune! The light shows and projections were often really impressive … lazers would come down and touch the dancefloor and people would put their fingers up to touch it. The DJ had the ability to coordinate music, lights and visuals which pushed people to near frenzy.
NP : there was always visual stimulation in the early days it was quite home made but there was always a visual creativity at raves.
Does the rave scene attract a creative crowd?
JP : in the old days the crowd was made up of all sorts of people. What was so noticeable and brilliant was that you could be rubbing shoulders with people across all social walks of life – builders, aristocrats, students, laywers … every kind of person rich, poor and everyone in between.
NP : the rave scene attracted everybody from every walk of life so that there was no 1 type of person identifiable …there was a real feeling of change and community and the tunes and pills were like nothing we had experienced before
Is there a camera presence at raves?
JP : the beginning was pre-camera phone as so there was a complete absence of self consciousness that meant everyone danced like no one was watching. No one was interested in anything except the music.
NP not in our day there was no sense of observation at all …people were completely in the present
Did the rave scene feel like an integral part of history?
JP : yes absolutely. They were tremendously exciting times and led to cultural change … less racism and football violence. I don’t remember any sexual harassment or predatory . No one dressed up it was all about comfortable clothes that you could dance all night in which was very freeing.
Not to me at the time we were just swept up in the moment …as time passes however looking back there were some very significant social changes happening the proof of that being the changes in law that were made to prevent sizeable gatherings . I imagine that the 60s felt the same as young people took on the establishment and refused to be bullied scared or forced in any way to conform to lives that they did not want to live
How did the mood of the time (politically) effect this scene?
NP…it was a reaction against some bleak years ….a splash of colour and noise and fuck you ….working weeks were spent planning our next out out
JP – The 90’s the rave scene came out of a particularly bleak time during British history. It was a way to feel release and to escape the pressure of unemployment and street violence. The music unified people from all walks of life and the dancefloor was a class–less space. The hedonism and resulting drug culture was an antidote to the grey-ness that prevailed at that time and the result was a positivity that prevailed .
SECONDARY RESEARCH
THE BIRDS
Destructive rapacious nature is a theme in Hitchcock’s film
The major bird attack at the Brenner house was based off his experience of the London Blitz
The birds were based off the Scream
In Blackmail (1929), shrill chirping from a bird cage hanging above the heroine’s bed get louder and louder, expressing her sense of entrapment
Earsplitting crescendo
the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
The Chapman Brothers
When they grew tired of making tiny models of hell full of nazis impaled on spikes, the infamous Chapman Brothers took inspiration from the Dead Kennedy’s 1979 album California Uber Alles, and began creating enormous, red Nazi-style banner flags adorned with the smiley face synonymous with rave culture where the swastika should have been. Then in 2013, Dinos Chapman released his debut album Luftbobler, the result of a decade spent experimenting with sound
SWEET HARMONY
An immersive exhibition devoted to presenting a revolutionary survey of rave culture through the voices and lenses of those who experienced it
The new world that emerged from the club scene of the 80s and 90s
Ally Fogg - The Guardian
raggle-taggle kind of army, brought together by loose, anarchic disorganisations
Tom Hunter (born in London)
In the wake of the introduction of the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act in 1994, artist Tom Hunter set off from Hackney with a group of friends on a bus journey that was to take them to festivals and gatherings in Continental Europe. Hunter documented this odyssey in what became known as Le Crowbar, sharing with Sweet Harmony audiences the experiences of the free party traveller community.
Dominic (born in Luton)
Rave would not have happened were it not for the boredom of suburbia and rural Britain.
Derek Ridgers (born in chiswick)
Renowned pop culture photographer Derek Ridgers has spent over four decades capturing the explosion of subcultures from the 1970s to the present. Whilst he is best known for capturing the rise of early skinheads and Punk and the seismic scenes that existed in dark underground subcultures, acid house also caught Ridgers’ critical gaze.
EVERYONE IN THE PLACE
‘Illicit underground gatherings of people’
Marx’s theory of alienation - separation from what you are producing
‘The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production.
‘Like a contemporary history painting
‘The closest equivalent to the night club is the church where people support each other and share common values’
‘These photographs are like the beginnings of a new religion’
‘Illicit underground gatherings of people who were whipped up into frenzies by music and sound’
MEDIA AND PROCESSES
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