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Mark Leckey Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999)
‘In the film Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, Leckey spliced altered video footage from dance clubs with an amalgamation of sounds to examine countercultural nightlife, revealing the poignant interpersonal energy among and socio-economic aspirations of its revelers. The video is sourced from footage of British clubs that spans trends in fashion and attitude from the 1970s to the 1990s. Despite the differences among the partygoers, Leckey’s film unites the disparate cultural moments in a frenzy of youthful, euphoric ritual. Tongue in cheek, the title alludes to Italian fashion house Fiorucci, wildly popular during the artist’s youth in the late ’70s. Although dress and taste evolve through Leckey’s edited juxtapositions, brand allegiance and material symbolism are undeniable constants in an otherwise fleeting remix of three decades of dance culture.’
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Michael M. Hughes Hex Putin (2022)
sigil
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MSHR Index Network Entity (2016)
‘MSHR is a collaborative project by Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo builds and explores systems as a way of manifesting ecstatic sensory zones. They work at the intersection of digital sculpture, analog hardware and ceremonial performance. Their current performance series revolves around a unique system of light-audio feedback that employs their hand made synthesizers.’
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Thomas Van Linge Deep Down Inside (2018)
‘Sculptures made from turntable flight cases emblazoned with laser cut motifs were scattered around the space against a sinister backdrop of, a now iconic, anti ecstasy cartoon from The Sun newspaper in 1988. The cartoon is recreated on laser cut sheets of metal and depicts a cloaked Devil offering pills to unsuspecting youths, whilst hidden behind a smiley face.’
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David Swindells Labyrinth Details (1992)
Photo
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Dan Witz Brite Nite (2014)
‘Dan Witz is best known for his monumental paintings of mosh pits, but a recent exhibition saw his work extend to other realms. The artist styles himself as a 21st-century “academic realist painter” and expanded his exploration of sweaty, writhing bodies into (besides the orgy) scenes of dancers at an unidentified party in New York. In contrast to the aggression and masculinity of the mosh pit scenes, Witz’ Brite Nite paintings present, in photorealistic accuracy, the euphoria of losing yourself on the dance floor.’
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Conrad Shawcross GOLDEN LOTUS (INVERTED) (2019)
‘In Golden Lotus (Inverted), Shawcross silences his cerebrum to create a tribute to renegade raves’ pure emotional release. He hung a disemboweled, gold Capri Lotus Elite upside down from the ceiling. Shawcross’s car spins around to a bespoke soundtrack by DJ Mylo (Myles MacInnes).‘
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Justin Piperger Project Zoltar (2019)
mixed media
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Bahar Noorizadeh Teslaism: Economics at the End of the End of the Future (2022)
‘The video is based on a musical racing game featuring Elon Musk, his self-driving car/lover, and life coach as they drive towards a shareholder meeting in a post-gamified Berlin landscape. The work takes the newly built Gigafactory in Berlin as a prism to describe the emergence of Teslaism (succeeding Post-Fordism) as a novel system of production and consumption predicated on advanced storytelling, financial world building, and imagineering “the look of the future”.’
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Chen Wei The Stars in the Night Sky Are Innumerable (2010)
C-print
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Vinca Petersen Timeline of a Raver (2021)
‘The story begins in the ecstatic ascent of rave parties in the early 1990s, which were integral to the development of techno culture. With an emphasis on hedonistic collectivity and gender empowerment, the ideology of raves were clearly at odds with the contemporary policies of the British government under Margaret Thatcher and their concepts of morality and family. This section of the work chronicles Vinca Petersen’s journey from squatting in London and raving every weekend to buying her own van and driving to continental Europe, where she lived on the road for more than a decade. In her travels, she joined up with various loose groups of nomadic music-makers, putting on illegal raves in fields and warehouses everywhere from Portugal to the Czech Republic. The piece provides parallel timelines of her personal life in rave and the progression of the free party movement itself.’
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Tony Regazzoni Celebration (Pretty Dancing) (2011)
‘”The forms of art have no other origin than celebration,” says writer and art historian Georges Bataille. The work of artist Tony Regazzoni echoes this maxim. He explores nocturnal rituals, both current and ancient: nightclubs, funfairs, solstice dances, and even megalithic monuments.’
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Masala Noir Rave Tapes (2024)
‘A compilation of house, techno, trance and jungle audio cassettes from the 90s rave era.’
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Zuzanna Czebatul Tristan, Kewin, Joss (2015)
Foam, polyester, metal
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Cory Arcangel The AUDMCRS Underground Dance Music Collection of Recorded Sound (2011-2012)
‘Once grouped with early net artists, Cory Arcangel’s recent practice delves more into musical tropes. THE AUDMCRS UNDERGROUND DANCE MUSIC COLLECTION OF RECORDED SOUND is a collection of 839 underground trance LPs that the artist bought from retired DJ Joshua Ryan. Realizing that, at a certain age, both the records and the artist himself and would outgrow the dance floor, Arcangel’s project was simply to create a catalogued archive for posterity. It’s been exhibited at museums and galleries in Paris, Montréal, Reykjavik, and more.’
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Andro Wekua Shoulders Grow As Sun Goes Down In My Belly (2012)
Pigmented paper, polyurethane, steel, painted silicone, human hair and basketT-shirt
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The Vinyl Factory & David Simms Wiltshire Before Christ (2019)
‘Visitors were greeted by large spinning cut-outs of the National Trust logo and beaming acid house smiley faces painted on to straw archery targets.’
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Rebecca Salvadori The Sun Has No Shadow (2022)
‘The Sun Has No Shadow is the first chapter of Rebecca Salvadori’s upcoming feature-length documentary film built on an archive of over ten years of experimental music documentation within London’s diverse cross-functional environments and music scenes. The fragmentation of the visual experience, practices of self-observation and the tradition of portraiture are some of the reflections surrounding Salvadori’s visual research.’
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Robin Wen Blue Rave (2023)
Ballpoint pen on paper
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Wolfgang Tillmans Lights (Body) (2002)
‘Vibrant flashes of light flicker through the darkness to the beat of techno music. An armada of rotating spotlights sends dazzling beams of light down from the ceiling. Colored light refracts in the mirrored mosaic surface of a disco ball. A moment of darkness elapses before the spotlights move to the rhythm of the music again. Tillmans’ first video Lights (Body) captures an auspicious moment in a club night that could go on forever.’
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Carl Craig Party/Afterparty (2020)
‘In Los Angeles, you can measure a show’s hype by the number of filthy bus stop benches it’s advertised on. For the last few months, bright yellow signs publicizing CARL CRAIG: PARTY / AFTERPARTY at the MOCA Geffen museum have been plastered across the city’s public transit stations, sandwiched in between Hollywood movie posters and public health campaigns about STDs. These ads, which resembled rave flyers, struck me with their hyper-visibility. Sure, there are party fliers and music festival posters all over these streets too, but never so ubiquitous and reeking of institutional money. Lauded by the media as the one of the first major art exhibitions by a techno artist in the United States, Party/Afterparty is a groundbreaking show—and the museumification of techno* brings up both potent and challenging questions.
‘Many critics also noted that the show’s poignancy drew from the ambient sense of loneliness, alienation, and yearning for dancefloor communion during the lockdowns. Deprived of actual parties that summer, many friends from the New York rave scene took the Amtrak upstate to Beacon to view the show. Some told me they wept as they danced in the nearly empty, social-distanced room. It was the closest they’d come to raving in a long time, and the strobing lights and perfectly-tuned soundtrack formed a spectral reminder of the ritual that had defined their lives.’
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Jeremy Shaw Phase Shifting Index (2020)
7 screen video installation, variable durations
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Tom Friedman Friend (2022)
Oven roaster tins, nuts and bolts
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Tim Hecker Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)
‘Recorded primarily in an Icelandic church, Ravedeath, 1972 evokes a sense of grandeur collapsing into ruin, with compositions that shift between celestial beauty and overwhelming intensity. The album as a whole unfolds like a sonic requiem for lost technology and fading echoes of the past.’
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Andreas Gursky Cocoon (2017)
‘Gursky has long been interested in electronic music and for more than a decade his photographs of raves and concerts have made up an important part of his work. For his newest pictures, Gursky has photographed The Cocoon Club in Frankfurt, a famous German nightclub designed by his friend, the DJ Sven Väth. The club resembles a futuristic hive and two of the photographs on view depict nearly 1,000 people dancing. Two other photographs show the club emptied of its clientele, highlighting the unusual architecture.’
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Lu Yang The Great Adventure of Material World (2020)
‘The great adventure of Material World – game film meshes concepts and imagery from science, medicine, art, Hinduism and Buddhism.Viewers are led by the androgynous protagonist “Material World Knight” through multiple identity transformations. In eight episodes we explore the universe, acquire energy, are destroyed and reborn, and experience internal battles with emotions and desires. Along the journey, Knight comments on life and death, happiness and suffering, desire, eternity, and the cycle of reincarnation.’
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Jeremy Deller Everybody In The Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984 – 1992 (2018)
‘A re-evaluation of acid house, a musical phenomenon that, as this film shows, did not spring out of nowhere, but owed its emergence to the social and political landscape of 1980s Britain.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** Montse Meneses Vilar, Montse!!! Hi, pal. I’m good. Summer here has been dreamy cool and often wet the whole summer apart from about three hellish days. I’m guessing Barcelona hasn’t been so lucky? Nice listening there. A friend of mine is Deafheaven’s manager. I’m happy you’re on the Um, Jennifer? train. And Backxwash’s. Very cool about translating the Lippens book. Wow. Weird re: Sitges: We submitted it right before the deadline but then they declined the submission because they said it was too late, which it wasn’t. So I guess no Sitges. We did submit the film to a Barcelona festival, but it doesn’t happen until June of next year. We’ll look for other ways. So great to see you! Come visit very cozy Paris! xoxo. ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, he’s smart fun. Excellent about the gig! Yes, we’ve submitted ‘RT’ to MIX, and we’ll see. Would be awesome to share the festival berth with you if fate assists. Second. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yay, you’re back in your hood and this hood. I’m fine. Yeah, giving ‘Room Temperature’ life is pretty much the whole story of my life right now. I think we’re right on the cusp of finishing the new film script. I’m waiting to see if Zac agrees. ‘The Passenger’ … the Antonioni film? It’s pretty interesting, if so. Look for the famous single traveling shot. Good for love! Love so disappointed that the Tuileries summer carnival didn’t have a haunted house ride this year that he bought and ate a nutella and banana crepe to cheer himself back up, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Glad you dug Shimamoto. I think John W. told me he could hardly see the first scene in ‘Irreversible’ through his tears of joy. ** julian, Something on the blog feeding the work of someone looking at the blog is kind of the blog’s ideal goal in life. There are haunted water rides, but strangely few and far between. Very strangely. Maybe the props would get mouldy or sag or something. There are a handful of computer games where you build amusement parks. They often have word Coaster in their titles. You would probably need a very sophisticated and very open minded AI program to build the ‘IE’ ride, no? ** Uday, Hi. Oh, well, I like Shimamoto’s work obviously. Um, I don’t know, it charms and amuses and makes me think about what art is, I guess. Dambudzo Marechera is a great translation goal. I don’t know his poetry very well, but his novels would be a tough translation, I think? I feel that way about pigeons, the most underrated bird. Well, actually, I hate beets with a passion, but I will try them yet again just for you. The only food I have in my apartment right now is a baguette, but you can have it. ** jay, Hey. I get what you mean for absolutely sure. I guess the VPN providers must be having an amazing groundswell of financial input right now thanks to y’all. ‘Rimworld’, huh, I’ll see what that is. I still haven’t locked back into my Switch yet, but, when I do, I think I’m going to play ‘Stray’. Love back to you and all of yours! ** nat, Hi, nat, good to see you, it has been a while. I keep trying to imagine what looking at this blog on a phone must be like, and I just can’t. I keep thinking that stupid porn ban will either be rescinded or hacked into smithereens, so hopefully you’ll be finished post-insanity. ‘Closer’ has been known to de-tenderize squeamish innocents on occasion. Cool, obviously, if the book club takes the leap. Thanks. Oh, well, now you’re back, and I’m always here if your memory coughs something up. Have a legendary Wednesday somehow. ** Steve, MIX NYC takes place from November 20 – 22. Ace about the well timed single drop. politekid, If you’re reading this, Steve recommends Jean Douchet’s book on the French New Wave. Thanks for that. I’m actually picking up the new Wire issue today, and that is good news! ** Alice, Hey. People always pooh-pooh the effect of the internet on everyone, but, yeah, I wouldn’t have half of my best friends if it weren’t for that. Absolutely about the mutating/blossoming friendships. So much better than back when it had to happen via becoming pen pals. Okay, I’ll peer at ‘Splendor’ one of these days. James Duvall is such a lovely guy. I did a little project with him way back when. Pray tell what Via makes of ‘Eraserhead’. ** HaRpEr //, But there you go indeed. The porn ban sounds too messy to survive, but famous last words. But isn’t Jeremy Corbyn launching some left party that’s pulling in far more people than Farage’s. That’s what I read. The 70s were kind of the ultimate decade for film, it’s true, when it comes right down to it. Yeah. I of course remember that ‘Lancelot’ scene and, of course, being a Bresson film, the horse wasn’t harmed. Oh, right, that ‘Alexanderplatz’ motif. I forgot. Boy, is that a hell of a film/series/thing. ** Hugo, Oh, okay, I guess that makes sense as to why your friend’s soul bristled in response to ‘Thomas’. Pessoa, interesting. Thanks for feeling the warmth of those two novels of mine. My Tuesday was just a little busy and a bit stressful. Nothing unusual. I think I finally got over the excitement promising Friday effect and the dread producing Sunday effect, but it took forever. Thanks, script is patiently waiting for its next verdict from its collaborator. ** liquoredgoat, Hi, happily surfacing lurker! Good to see you, pal. I’m glad you’re passing through the rehab’s exit. I have two friends in sober living transitional housing right now, and they seem to be thriving actually. Hope the same for you. No, I didn’t read your last book, but I’ll get it. I’m good, doing what I always do. Man, best of luck with everything you’re going through. Stay bright and tough. xo. ** Okay. Today I invite you to explore the components of an overly conceptualised rave. Hang onto your hats. See you tomorrow.