ART-PRESENTATION: Energy Flash-The Rave Movement

Rave culture from the ‘80s and ‘90s was Europe’s last big youth movement. During this period of radical social and political change which also followed the rapid decline of industrialism, rave in its various guises, migrated around the continent from its epci centres of Europe: Great Britain, Belgium and Germany.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: M HKA Archive

Rave as a movement enacted a desire to be autonomous, with a belief in tolerance and experimental living, all built around the latent energy of electronic music. As a music-based culture it embraced self-practice, invention and unbridled creativity, arguably leading to the densest period in history for the diversification of music. “Energy Flash-The Rave Movement” is the first museum exhibition for considering rave, as well as the social, political, economic and technological conditions that led to the advent of rave as a counterculture across Europe. It will look at the ideologies as well as the aesthetics of rave, along with its effects on wider culture. For many who felt failed by both the market and the state, raves opened up a third kind of space, which formed its own logic based on the collective. Regularly drawing tens of thousands of participants, raves themselves have been theorised as ‘temporary autonomous zones’, spontaneously organised concentrations of people and musical energy that eluded formal structures of control. Though embodying both dystopian and utopian impulses, raves possessed some extraordinary qualities, transgressing race, class and geography. Utilising the technologies of the day, the music itself possessed a distinct new aesthetic that redrew the boundaries of music. Each locale grew its own rave culture and music genres, developing countless forms of acid house, techno, hardcore, jungle and beyond. In a situation of moral panic, governments across Western Europe legislated to criminalise rave culture from the mid-‘90s onwards.The exhibition “Energy Flash-The Rave Movement” looks at rave as a highly politicised phenomenon, considering it through the four key notions of ‘autonomy’, ‘civil liberty’, ‘technology’ and ‘creativity’. As an interdisciplinary project, it will display the works of numerous visual artists in dialogue with many artefacts from the fields of design, music and fashion, along with items selected from various archives, television reportage, literature and criminal legislature. In bringing together this diversity of material, this exhibition will argue that rave culture was inhibited due to its ambiguous place outside of neoliberal ideology, existing largely autonomous of both the market and the state. This condition makes it a key case study for those wishing to imagine alternative forms of infrastructure for art and culture.

Info: Curator: Nav Haq, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Leuvenstraat 32, Antwerp, Duration: 17/6–25/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue–Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00–18:00, Thu 11:00–21:00, www.muhka.be