DETROIT: TECHNO CITY
Step dow n into a brightly lit bunker. Monochrome paste-ups neatly interspersed with record sleeves, Trinatron monitors on a white plinth. A Techno soundtrack reverberates, still in possession of transformative power, blasting open time, breaking through the walls of this san itised space- Cybertron, Inner City, Underground Resistance. Sound transports you to a network of derelict cham bers, a de-industrialised zone. It conjures a city w here collective m em ories w arp and condense as civic buildings strain under the w eight of abandonm ent- the curlicues of a scorched ceiling rose, window panes scored with agitated glyphs, the m arble ,oor of an abandoned railw ay station.
A threshold realm, stranded on the cusp between booming motor city, dystopian life-world and site of emancipatory potential.
On an end wall a photographic mural opens up a m o n o ch ro m e v ista o f d o w n to w n D etro it- G ra n d H a ll, B est S p o rts B a r, E a st G ra n d River, names conjuring an Am erican city in ruins, a city ossi/ed but porous, possibilities opening in /re escapes, parking lots, the lim inal zones behind hotels.
0e liminal zone is the site of the shaman, the shapeshi1er, the one who guides between worlds. Techno producers emerging in the 1980s- Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson-occupied multiple liminal zones just as they adopted m ultiple nam es, a proliferation of selves, a shattering and reassem bling of ego– the breaking apart in order to re⇤m em ber⌃ For them the apocalypse had already happened, they were living in a dystopian world. Techno articulated an experience of living am ongst the ruins, it took ,ight above the /re blackened buildings of 1967, it hovered over the a1erm ath of the 1973 recession, looked down from a position of supernatural clarity on a city hollowing in the grip of Reaganom ic policies. Ford's were laying o? men and replacing the conveyor belts with robots. It was these new robots that would becom e receptacles, vessels im bued with the spirit Techno producers would breathe into them . 0e futuristic oneiroscapes they conjured were about harnessing powers of strategic transcendence, plotting fugitive lines.
Roland synths appear in this room as fossils, uncannily beached as if recovered from the rubble of a collapsed building. 0ey posses a residual pow er, an alien presen ce, 808 as relic, th e body w hen th e spirit has departed. If the m usic is spectral, the syn th s them selves are husks . Hushed beneath the bright strip lights of this white bunker they appear archaic, nostalgic, a retrofutursist fetish.
0e walls are punctuated by a singular pedagogic voice, the tone is sensible, playing down race and class, imposing order. A narrative, easy to follow- distanced, dispassionate, impartial. Composite images, ,uorescent posters depicting lost scenes- recording studios, mix-tapes, radio stations. I scan the documentaries; th e fo rm at, m en in reco rd in g stu d io s alw ays b reak in g th e sp ell, d raggin g th e th e m u sic in to th e realm o f th e p ro saic. But the spirit, om nipresent in the soundtrack, still contains distilled mom ents of potential, it opens up futures, albeit ones we might have tem porarily lost.
Techno doesn't lay crude territorial claim to Detroit, instead it glides through walls, speeds across freeways, becomes a nomadic, haunting presence. Detroit is a city riven by boundaries, 8 Mile road, Base Line Road, the Northern City Limits- lines of segregation between areas mired by poverty and wealthy upper class suburbs. It is the awareness of these margins and the capacity to transcend th em , to w arp an d d isto rt th em th at gives rise to th is m esm erisin g an d u n earth ly so u n d .
Em bedded within the music is a tangible desire to heal, to re⇤m em ber p u t to g eth er sh a ttered elem en ts. Techno as an imm ersive, auditory hallucination is an escape, not into blissful ignorance but as a strategy of resistance to a ravaged environm ent and an im poverished every day life. In the charcoal shells and derelict factories it escapes ordinary space and tim e.
0is room, this brightly lit bunker is polluted, permeated by the quotidian life of the ICA- sounds from the kitchen, clanks, clatters, the piquant tang of lunch. Bright clinking of glasses and m iddle class laughter create a jarring sensation, D etroit T echno in the heart of a sealed and socially-cleansed central London. 0e sublime potential sizzling in the speakers shoots beyond the locked down 1 and 2 zones and connects in places once called suburbs, the 3,4 and 5 zones. As the Techno geist circu its th ro u g h B leep , S p ira l T rib e, th e Free Party scene it can be heard in the loci of the ruin, sites of transience and becom ing- Edm onton, Croydon, Barking, Tottenham - grim e, broken beat, dubstep- the /zzing, kaleidoscopic sounds of lim inal London.
Speakers here are set at polite volum e, the m usic retains its m esm erising pow er but can't possess the body, it lacks the viscera seizing force of the sound system . I yearn for the electrical charges up and dow n m y spine, those scuttling sensations across m y skin.
Record sleeves are pressed behind clip frames, little museum pieces neatly archived, hemm ed in. I think of the lost network of London record shops, the basem en ts w ith racks of jun gle, hard house, tech-step an d the m oody petrochem ical scen t of vin yl. First time i've really exam ined these sleeves, my understanding of this music was never encyclopedic the way it was for my male colleagues in that seething hive of shops. M y know ledge cam e from the rave scene, the proliferation of scenes that radiated from Techno when it landed in Europe, or more speci/cally when it landed in the North of England. 0is landing, this cataclysmic moment of em ergence resonated across a region that bore an uncanny resem blance to Detroit.
I rem em ber hearing U nderground Resistance Revolution for Change fo r th e /rst tim e in a fo rm er p it v illa g e in S o u th Y o rk sh ire in 1992, the track was being blasted from a sound system outside a housing estate. I rem em ber looking out across derelict m arshalling yards and the abandoned Cortonw ood colliery, I rem em ber the toxic waste seeping through the ecosystem . 0e apocalypse had already happened.
Techno as it emerged in Detroit was an alchemical conjuring , a series of inversions. It occupied a zone between the louche recklessness of P-Funk and the precision and m athem atical ordering of European electronic m usic. In th e in d u strial cities of th e N o rth of E n glan d it en co u n tered a co -ord in ate of its in cep tion , a m u ltifaceted ran ge o f in ,uences- Flock of Seagulls, Hum an League, Cabaret Voltaire- signals broadcast in Europe, received in Detroit, mirrored and returned .
Blake Baxter -Deep Space Soundworks - Xray- a litany of names taking me back to those Sm okescreen parties in SheIeld, to the A1erdark club in Morley, to DiY sound systems in the quarries and /elds of Yorkshire in the early '90s. Industrial infrastructure becam e host as moribund mills, factories and clubs were inhabited by countercultural scenes. In that mom ent, elem ents of working class culture w ere subverted/elevated, the ruins of textile, steel and m ining areas w ere illum inated by a sequence of epiphanies. If D etroit w as steep ed in th e m u sical im p rin t of B erry G ord y's u p beat M oto w n , T ech n o d isassem bled th at, it clam bered o ver th e ripped out con veyor belts, it scaven ged an d rearran ged the rem n an ts of the production lin e an d listen ed to th e n ew rh ythm s of the robots; in th e N orth of E n glan d there w as an in n ate un derstan din g of that.
0e question I was asking then still obsesses me now, if grand civic and industrial buildings are the physical containers of our collective m em ories w hat happens to the auditory textures of those m em ories w hen iconic structures lie in ruins? Techno is the closest I have come to /nding an answer; with its re-routing of spatial narratives, the hypnotic rhythm s and shamanic beat it articulates the territory w e search for, the site of em ancipatory potential. T echno is an echo from a future m om ent, it appears like a hallucination before it exists in the physical realm . T ech n o su m m o n s m u ltip le fu tu res b y si1in g a n d reassem b lin g o f frag m en ts of the past, by re⇤m em bering th o se g lim m ers o f lig h t, em b ers ly in g d o rm a n t in th e ru b b le an d d u st.
I am rem in d ed of a qu ote by F red ric Jam eson ‘It w o u ld be best p erh ap s, to th in k o f an altern ate w orld - better to say th e altern ate world, our alternate world - as one contiguous with ours but without any connections or access to it. 0en, from time to time, like a diseased eyeball in which disturbing ,ashes of light are perceived or like those baroque sunbursts in which rays from another world sudden ly break in to th is on e, w e are rem in ded that U topia exists an d th at other system s, other spaces, are still possible.” 1
1 Fredric Jam eson, Valences of the Dialectic, Verso, 2009, p.612 Im age credits : 1 D ow ntow n D etroit M arie Stagart- 313onelovew eb 2 M a rk B lo w er