symbolically) hijack buildings and spaces at the expense of ownership. Clandestine
warehouse parties are the best example of this transgression of propriety rights. Even
in the case of licensed raves, what is determining is the purpose for which the ravers
use the space, by contrast to the usual ‘space-defines-use’ formula. By redirecting
such symbols of culture towards both a playful and feral use, rave catalyses its festive
effervescence. The deliciously unreasonable absurdity of this ephemeral takeover of
locations adds to rave’s mythical construct and heightens the potential for subversive
interpretation.
Another important and defining rupture in techno-rave is its rapport with
technology. Until recently, technology was largely serving productive ends and the
modern ideal of Progress. Techno culture thus marks a significant break from this
handcuffed and stereotypical rapport with technology. In rave culture, technology is
synonymous with possibility, and stands as a prerequisite for creation, gathering and
effervescence.
The characteristics of early techno culture—subversion, a newfound freedom of
expression through use of ‘the technologies of pleasure’ (Collin 1998) and recycling
of the past and the symbolic, a new openness to ritual, a new imperative for
togetherness outside instituted forms and discourses—contribute to a general
ambiance of exploration, experimentation and new possibilities. Consequently,
when techno-rave reached the urban crucibles of the West, feelings were ignited as
though some kind of Kingdom had come. Of course, this idealism and glistening
didn’t last long, but the world, in a sense, had changed for youth, and post-rave
culture carries this shift. The point is that the ruptures at work in techno-rave, on a
cultural level, create a determining narrative, a first disposition that must be taken
into account if we are to understand how the rave experience pushes itself on the
individual consciousness.
Going elsewhere: intimate ruptures in the festive sphereIncessantly, rave brews up mythologies of an ‘elsewhere’. Representations are kept to
a minimum in this subculture, blending the functional and pragmatic to the most
effective and vivid expression of the symbolic. Party flyers (alongside posters and
album covers) are virtually the only iconography in which this visual generation
indulges. Flyer aesthetics exploit syncretism, covering a wide spectrum of cultural
references in a given place at a given time. As Bernard Schütze puts it, writing about
the Montreal scene:
Their [the flyers’] particularity is that they announce nothing more than a
colour, a date, an endpoint, an element, a quantity of memory, a connection,
a state, a unit, a dimension. The title of the flyer is not even a word anymore,
it is a technical abbreviation and a symbol, so we are really left with a bare
minimum of linguistic substance.
(Schütze 1997:17)68 FRANÇOIS GAUTHIER