The (heart)beat of the city Understanding club culture in post-1989 Berlin through authenticity discourse

Vera Vaessen The (heart)beat of the city Understanding club culture in post-1989 Berlin through authenticity discourse

MA Thesis in European Studies, Identity & Integration Graduate School of Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Vera Vaessen, 12771686 First examiner: Dr. Guido Snel Second examiner: Dr. Alex Drace-Francis April 2021

> Cover photograph: Closed club Paloma Bar in Kreuzberg, Berlin, July 2020, by author

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Foreword While writing this foreword, it is April 2021. The last time I spent a night in a club is over a year ago. Not because I voluntarily decided to quit clubbing, but due to a virus which does not deserve more attention than this sentence only. I now – involuntarily – have a consistent sleep rhythm and a lot of knaldrang, as we say it in Dutch. Despite all clubs being closed, I decided to write a thesis on club culture. And maybe this actually has been the perfect moment to reflect on something so intangible. This period has made me think about what defines clubbing, what it is that we cannot simulate just by dimming the lights and putting on loud music by ourselves in our living rooms. It is hard to capture the essence of this ephemeral phenomenon in words, let alone in an academic thesis. Nevertheless, in this thesis I have tried to do justice to the uniqueness of clubbing experiences – I hope I have succeeded. I would like to thank dr. Guido Snel for his supervision. I hope the insights of my thesis have encouraged him to go clubbing in Berlin once clubs reopen. Also special thanks to my friends Jenneke, Sophie and Johanna. Lastly I would like to thank the current circumstances for a sleep rhythm, for without it I would probably never have been able to spend as much time on this thesis as I have now.

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Abstract This thesis is concerned with club culture within the local context of post-1989 Berlin. It seeks to examine discursive fields within Berlin club culture, focusing on the idea of authenticity. Club culture is a ‘glocal’ and urban phenomenon with an ephemeral and transient character, due to the centrality of the physical, embodied experience. Authenticity is regarded as a discursive phenomenon, subject to local circumstances as well as developments in the global discursive field. Four phases of club cultural discourse will be analysed through Der Klang der Familie (Denk & Von Thülen 2014), Lost and Sound (Rapp, 2010) and a selection of online sources in order to distinguish discursive patterns. Despite processes of globalisation, the scene remained inward-looking and reorients its definition of authenticity, basing it on factors such as seniority in the scene or the originality of music. Several threats to the authenticity of club culture can be found in the material, such as tourism, gentrification and commercialisation. Keywords: popular culture, club culture, Berlin, authenticity discourse, discursivity

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Table of contents

Foreword 3 Abstract 4 1. Introduction 6 2. Theoretical framework 9 2.1 Club culture 9 2.2 Discursivity 13 2.3 Authenticity 15 3. Phase I: The fall of the Wall, the drop of the beat (1980s-1990s) 19 4. Phase II: Challenges for the underground (2000s) 26 5. Phase III: Clubsterben? (2010s) 33 6. Phase IV: Rewriting existing narratives (now) 40 7. Conclusion 45 Bibliography 47

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1. Introduction ‘Techno capital’ Berlin is considered a global metropolis of electronic dance music (EDM)1 culture (Baker 2019). The German capital has transformed from a city of voids into a subcultural utopia, with club culture being the city’s dominant subculture after 1989, which has given shape to the city’s identity and still continues to do so, especially for young people. The common narrative of Berlin as a techno capital connects club culture to German reunification, in which the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 preluded the development of the so-called New Berlin (Bauer & Hosek, 2019). However, the city did not acquire this status spontaneously right after the fall of the Wall, nor did electronic music culture coincidentally bloom in Berlin.

The city already had a longer history of artistic culture – club culture is the latest in a succession of several flourishing subcultures, such as dada, jazz and swing, cabaret and punk communities. Notably after World War II Berlin had a reputation as a cultural refuge for artists, especially from West-Germany but also from abroad. The circumstances for migration were attractive for creative people. Contrary to the GDR, West-Berlin was known for its lack of regulation. Furthermore rents were low and living was cheap. An exchange of inhabitants occurred: Berliners who chose for business migrated to West-Germany, West-Germans who were orientated towards art moved to Berlin (Sievers 2020). Internationally West-Berlin was already attractive to artists as well, with the well-known examples of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. The (sub)cultural character of Berlin had thus already been established long before 1989.

However, the social, cultural, political and geographical circumstances after the Cold War did enhance the rise of club culture. A few years prior to the fall of the Wall the first illegal parties were held in the West. Additionally club music started to reach the East due to the cultural transition based on Gorbatsjov’s glasnost and perestroika, when radio stations in the East were allowed to play new genres (Peter 2014, 177). Immediately after the fall of the Wall, there was not only access to music, but also to empty spaces: especially the Zwischennutzung (temporary use) of empty buildings strongly enhanced the development of a vibrant club scene in Berlin. At the time, the scene completely relied on unregulated, temporary spaces.

Meanwhile, the municipality had big plans to change Berlin into a global capital, after it was determined to be the new, national capital of united Germany. The local government made ambitious plans for urban development and private investors made their entrance into the city (Arandelovic and Bogunovich 2014). There was a feeling of euphoria and speculation about major projects that had commenced. Between 1995 and 1999 the realisation of big building projects started, however, the city did not become the global power the government intended it to be and its growth stagnated from 1999. Many offices and warehouses were still empty, which ensured the club scene, with its temporary character, to further establish itself.

The development of an EDM subculture in the late 1980s and 1990s did not occur solely in Berlin. The complexity of the international electronic dance music scene is illustrated by Reynolds’ (1998) comprehensive history of international rave and club scenes. He describes parallel developments of club culture in the 1990s which were happening across many different styles, actors and local scenes in, for example, Chicago, Detroit, Berlin, Manchester, Ibiza and London. Club culture is thus shown to have a so-called ‘glocal’ character (Knights and Biddle 2007): club scenes manifest themselves on a local, urban level, which together constitute a

1 Thereby referring to electronic dance music as an umbrella term for electronic music, not to be confused with the current genre denomination EDM.

6 global movement, similarly to other music subcultures (Kruse 2010). Local scenes have often influenced each other, the reciprocity between Detroit and Berlin being an important example, but Reynolds illustrates the intricacy of all these connections. Especially in the 2000s, under the influence of globalisation, club culture has involved more people and has grown into a culture with many actors and gatekeepers, ranging from DJs to promoters and from clubs to record shops, and, most importantly, clubbers, who have altogether established their own discourse. A complex international network of producers, promoters and DJs started to form when electronic dance music became more popular – many of which have relocated to Berlin in the early 2000s (Nye 2013).

The latter detail proves that although dance music culture has become a worldwide phenomenon, the subculture has proven to be especially relevant for Berlin. Additionally the German Bundesfinanzhof has recently acknowledged that techno must be considered music, therefore granting German techno clubs to pay the same tax rate (Umsatzsteuer) as other cultural institutions (Radomsky 2020). Concerning Berlin, the positive reputation of techno might rely partly on the fact that the municipality started to use Berlin’s subcultural status as a trademark in the 2000s.

The latest city branding narratives of Berlin have been based on its historical variety of subcultures, framing the city as a cosmopolitan, young and free city with large amounts of space and appreciation for subcultures (Colomb 2012a & 2012b). This is symbolised by former mayor Wowereit’s description of the city: “Berlin ist arm, aber sexy.”2 (Sontheimer 2004). In addition, Erek & Gantner (2018) highlight how strategies of self-historicisation or urban imagineering have been put into play to create a persistent cultural image of Berlin as a cosmopolitan, open minded and creative city. Within this semi-constructed narrative of Berlin’s identity, techno music and club culture are said to have played an important role. Bader & Scharenberg (2009) for example contend that there is a strong link between Berlin’s post-1989 identity and the electronic music subculture. These institutional developments are rather typical for Berlin, since subcultures have long been ingrained in the government’s city marketing – this phenomenon did not originate after the fall of the Wall, but already before 1989, and perpetuated (Lanz 2013).

Club culture is thus being instrumentalised for the economic value of the city. On the one hand, the central role of club culture in city branding has enhanced the establishment of techno culture in Berlin, but scenesters dissent from its side effects, such as the attraction of many tourists who do not ‘belong’ to the local scene, threatening its authenticity. This thesis will focus on the latter, namely discourses of belonging and authenticity. Whereas the economic revenues and institutional structures of club culture are quite straightforward, studying club culture from a cultural perspective is difficult, as it is characterised by ephemerality and transience: as soon as a clubbing experience has ended, all reflection on it is done in hindsight. Rather than focusing on the governmental or economic value of club culture, this thesis will try to grasp patterns within club cultural discourse, focusing on the idea of authenticity. The notion of authenticity is inherent to subcultural discourse: what can be considered ‘real’, or ‘credible’? Who belongs and who does not? For hip hop, for example, there is a fine line between being an authentic artist and ‘selling out’ (Wermuth 2002).

2 Translation: “Berlin is poor, but sexy.”

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This thesis will examine the ways in which authenticity discourse have shaped and continue to shape the understanding of club culture within the local context of post-1989 Berlin. The following sub questions will be central:

● What are the characteristics of club culture as a subculture? ● How is authenticity constructed within popular music cultures? ● How does a discursive approach help explain the development of club culture in Berlin? ● What are the existing narratives on club culture in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall? ● Which authenticity discourses can be distinguished concerning Berlin club culture since the fall of the Wall?

In my examination I will distinguish four phases and conduct a discourse analysis for sources covering these phases. For phase I (1980s-1990s) and phase II (2000s) comprehensive journalistic book publications are available which are illustrative for the scene in those eras: Der Klang Der Familie (Denk and von Thülen 2014), a montage of citations by scenesters who were active in the 1980s and 1990s, and Lost and Sound (Rapp 2010), a personal yet contextual narrative of 2000s club culture. Due to the object of this research, however, the sources for the latter two phases are less encompassing: popular culture develops fast and no comprehensive works are yet available for club culture since 2010. However, the discursive field is increasingly being constructed through online media publications, niche as well as mass (Thornton 1996). Therefore I will be using a selection of online, mainly written, sources for the last two phases I distinguish in defining the discursive patterns.

In analysing my sources, I will attempt to give insight into the discursive fields at play, and more specifically into conceptions of authenticity within Berlin club cultural discourse since the fall of the Berlin Wall. How does this discourse shift? Which aspects remain stable? Which indicators are there for a tension within the conception of authenticity and which threats is this tension based on throughout each phase? The following chapters will illustrate the dynamics of club culture, its transience and ephemerality, the complexity of the Berlin context, the influence of global as well as local developments and the continuous struggles of the local scene in defining who or what can be considered authentic at different points in time.

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2. Theoretical framework

2.1 Club culture 2.1.1 What is club culture? Before elaborating on the central concepts of this thesis, club culture itself must be defined and contextualised in order to understand the discursive mechanisms that underlie authenticity within this culture in a Berlin context. The recent work of Drevenstedt (2020) already gives a comprehensive definition of club culture: “Club culture describes the phenomenon of people meeting in clubs or in similar spaces (e.g., open-air concerts, warehouse raves, or festivals) characterized by a program focused on live music, restricted access of a certain nature to create a protected space with its own rules, and a community to listen to music, dance, and socialize.” (12) Although scholars have made use of several similar terms, such as ‘rave culture’ – which has lost its traditional connotation of illegality (Hutson 2000, 35) – as well as ‘DJ culture’ and ‘electronic dance music (EDM) culture’ (Garcia 2013a), ‘club culture’ will be used in this thesis, as it is considered all-encompassing.

The most important feature of all these terms is the centrality of music in the formation of a community (Haslam 1997, 169). Club culture is generally based on dance music and all its subgenres, defined by Bennett (2000) as “contemporary forms of DJ-oriented music” (73). These subgenres are highly changeable and develop on a monthly basis, accelerated by consumer culture as well as the appropriation of genres by clubbing communities and artists (McLeod 2001).

Two big, overarching EDM genres, namely house and techno, originate in the genre of disco, which was established in the United States in the 1970s by Black and gay communities as a reaction to White rock music, which was considered racist and homophobic (McLeod 2001, 62). By the end of the 1970s, disco reached a mainstream status. Throughout the 1980s the genre went back ‘underground’ to its core Black and gay communities and its legacy evolved into house, which was named after the club Warehouse in Chicago. House reached the UK and was, characterised by slight musical differences, appropriated and renamed to ‘acid house’. Dance music communities in Detroit, led by artists such as Derrick May and Juan Atkins, further developed the music style and ‘techno’ was appropriated as the term to replace ‘acid house’, because the genre name had been overexposed and too associated with drug use (Thornton 1996, 75). This (re)appropriation and (re)definition of dance music genres is a continuous process, ambiguous in terms of authenticity as these definitions rely on cultural constructs, which is characteristic of club culture.

Additionally, club culture can be defined through its spatial dimension. Firstly, club culture is generally an urban phenomenon, manifesting itself in cities, often capitals or other big cities (Chatterton and Hollands 2002). Furthermore club cultural experiences mostly take place at clubbing locations, such as clubs, raves and other venues (Drevenstedt 2020, 12). There is also a temporal dimension: club culture is often referred to in terms of night culture or nightlife. Although it also manifests itself outside of night time hours, for example through radio stations focused on electronic dance music, communities getting together at day and dance music festivals, most club cultural experiences entail a club night in a venue, where clubbers physically get together. Club culture thus also holds a powerful physical dimension. Whereas many musical genres are intended to be listened to, the music that constitutes club culture is produced and played to dance to. Instead of rather passively watching a concert, clubbers

9 physically get together on a dancefloor. As Malbon (1999) describes, club culture relies on “experiential consuming” (24), in which the embodied experience is central.

2.1.2 Club culture as a business Despite Malbon’s focus on the experiential aspect, by simultaneously describing club culture as a form of consuming, an economic dimension is added. Whereas club culture originated in low-cost initiatives organised in empty warehouses, it has since taken the form of a business. For Berlin it has become an important source of income, generating an annual economic turnover of 216 million euro (Damm and Drevenstedt 2019, 28). This is also related to Yudice’s (2003) theory about the expediency of culture. Culture is being instrumentalised for policy purposes such as economic growth and the attraction of tourists. In Berlin this is especially relevant, as club culture is incorporated into city marketing and the attraction of tourists (e.g. Pogoda and Traxler 2018; Peter 2014; Stahl 2014). Although economy has become an important aspect of club culture, this thesis will take on a cultural perspective. I would similarly like to contest Malbon’s use of ‘consuming’ as for many clubbers, the club cultural experience is not merely a form of consumption, but a performative practice. Nevertheless, the economic dimension will appear to be relevant for the development of Berlin club culture and its authenticity discourse.

2.1.3 Club culture as a subculture Presently club culture is dominant in creating cities’ cultural characters, not only in Berlin, but for example also in Amsterdam. It is, however, important to remark that club culture was a niche before house, techno and other subgenres entered the realm of popular music in the late 1990s. Although nowadays dance music culture could be considered mainstream, or rather the ‘alternative mainstream’ (Keunen 2014), it originated as a subculture.

Club culture has therefore been theorised within the framework of subcultures, which are characterised by community formation and feelings of belonging among the members of that community, based on common taste, for example in music, culture or sports. Besides being an urban phenomenon, subcultures are generally considered a youth phenomenon, seeing them as a rite de passage towards maturity (Northcote 2006). However, a recent edition of dance culture journal Dancecult (2019) suggests also taking into account older generations of clubbers, organisers and artists, broadening the definition of club culture as a youth culture phenomenon. Moreover Berlin is an example of a club scene that still has many non-youth members who remain involved in the scene, such as club owner Dimitri Hegemann and DJ Marcel Dettmann. As previous generations of club goers are growing older, club culture is not merely a youth cultural phenomenon, although its origin lies in youth culture.

Subcultures have been conceptualised in various ways. Both Malbon (1999) and Bennett (2000) have based their work on Maffesoli’s concept neo-tribe, which he introduced in 1988 (Maffesoli 2019 [1988]). The concept refers to people’s urge to distinguish themselves from mass society by establishing smaller social networks based on organisational principles of post-modern tribes. Within those rather small communities people share similar experiences, based on unwritten rules, conventions and sometimes rituals. The sociologist has recently revisited his theory, thereby emphasising the importance of taste on the one hand, but space on the other (Maffesoli 2016).

Hence a concept that is closely related, connecting taste and space, is ‘scene’. Local subcultures centred around the common interest in a specific type of culture, mostly music, are referred to as scenes, in scholarly research, generally musicology and cultural studies, as

10 well as the club field itself.3 Kruse (2010) describes a scene as a geographically determined, local formation with a certain type of music as their common denominator, which have economic as well as social networks. Drevenstedt (2020, 13) then defines a club scene as a local network of groups of regular clubbers, in which often overlap exists between the roles of organis er, artist and audience: a scene is formed by as well as for members of the scene. These scenes are thus spatial and therefore often referred to by their locality: people specifically refer to the Berlin club scene or the Amsterdam club scene, for example.

Subcultural capital Picaud (2019) states that Berlin’s subcultural capital is being dramatised as a strategy to enhance the city’s identity and, as a result, develop the city’s economy. The notion of subcultural capital in relation to club culture has been introduced by Thornton (1995). She illustrates, following Bourdieu’s (1984) theories of distinction and cultural capital, how the dynamics of club culture are based on subcultural capital: the cultural knowledge, values and uses acquired by members of a subculture, that give them a certain status and differentiate them from other cultural groups. Thornton (1995) examines the following mechanism: insiders of a subculture see themselves as different from ‘mainstream’ culture, based on their own idea of a hierarchy – which is, as opposed to Bourdieu’s conceptions, not based on class. What exactly constitutes the mainstream is abstract, but it is always considered homogeneous in contrast to the subculture, which members of that specific scene will consider heterogeneous. Clubbing spaces are perceived as an alternative world to ‘normal life’, in which clubbers experience other conceptions of space and time (ibid, 57). Subcultural capital within club culture can be based on knowledge of dance music, social network of other clubbers or time involved in the scene. Keunen (2014) additionally remarks that the rejection of economic capital leads to the accumulation of symbolic capital within alternative culture (42).

McLeod’s (2001) perspective on the naming of subgenres is also relevant in this regard: the naming and renaming of dance music genres can be considered a mechanism to generate cultural capital. For example, renaming a derivative of Chicago house music to ‘acid house’, a genre which was essential to rave culture in the UK, did not have to do so much with the musical characteristics, but with the appropriation of this type of music by young, white, middle- class kids. Popular music genres are not just determined by their musical characteristics, but also entail a cultural process of belonging and group identity formations. McLeod describes that “the naming process acts as a gate-keeping mechanism that generates a high amount of cultural capital needed to enter electronic/dance communities” (60) – being ‘in the know’ of a certain genre that the dance community has determined to be authentic helps to constitute a clubber’s sense of belonging within that community. Thus, genre naming is a determinant for what is authentic at a specific moment and what is not.

2.1.4 Ephemerality As Malbon (1999) emphasised, physical experience, or embodied experience is central to club culture. I would like to further explore this sense of experience, by elaborating on the ephemerality or elusiveness of club cultural experiences. This transience is a unique feature of performance culture in general, but several aspects make it especially applicable to club culture. Schelvis (2017, 40) describes electronic dance music as having a post-semantic meaning, given that the experience of club music evokes extra-cultural effects that go “beyond Figure 1. Clubbing experience at e-werk in Berlin, by Tilman Brembs (1995)

3 In the interviews I did for my report about club culture in Utrecht (Vaessen 2020), multiple people from club cultural organizations referred to a ‘club scene’.

11 comprehension”, in which effect of the music on the body is elementary. I think that the understanding of these effects can be found in the idea of ephemeral and transient character of club culture.

There are several aspects that together constitute the ephemeral and transient character of club culture. Firstly the centrality of the physically present dancing body makes clubbing a very corporeal and momentary experience (Drevenstedt 2020). The often repetitive and bass- focused character of the music, as well as the darkness and loudness that are fundamental and similarly unique to a club setting amplify the intensity of this temporal experience (Hutson 2000). Stengs (2007) for example describes in detail her sensory and elusive encounter with dance music culture during fieldwork, pointing out the synergy of the music and the bodily reactions of the people who surrounded her in that specific moment. In some clubs (e.g.

Berghain and Tresor in Berlin) clubbers are Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 2. Clubbing experience at e-werk in furthermore required to cover their phone cameras,Berlin (Brembs which 1995) makes it impossible to capture tangible memories of the experienced night. Also intoxication due to the use of substances, such as alcohol, but more commonly party drugs like MDMA or XTC, enables the temporary sensations and even ‘altered states of consciousness’, as for example Malbon (1999) and Reynolds (1998) have mentioned, although the latter emphasises that drugs are not necessary to reach such a state. St. John (2004) also uses the idea of ephemerality to explain how a clubber can achieve a form of spirituality during a rave.

2.1.5 Community: between global and local A seemingly paradoxical characteristic of club culture, but also of music subcultures in general, is the interaction between the local and the global, which is emphasised in Biddle & Knights’ (2007) volume. Whereas their work refers to the national when using the term local, this thesis will use local to refer to a smaller entity than the national, namely cities as urban centres of club culture.

Club culture on the one hand forms an international network, with many different actors, manifesting itself as an imagined community. The often recited concept of the imagined community was coined by Anderson (1983) with regard to awareness of national identity. In this thesis I will not use the term with reference to nationalism, however, imagined community is considered a productive concept in its more general sense: the idea of a community with members who are not familiar with each other, but nevertheless feel connected. Globally clubbers feel connected to other clubbers they do not know personally, through listening to the same music and taking part in similar performative practices of clubbing. The international appeal of electronic dance music is constituted by its repetitive and bass-focused character, in which lyrics generally are not central. The internationality of club culture, alike other music cultures, is furthermore enhanced by processes of globalisation, such as the increasing amount of cheap flights which allow clubbers to visit other local scenes, access to music through the internet and easier processes of migration, enabled through for example EU regulations.

However, this globally imagined club cultural community, similarly to other musical subcultures, does not function without local scenes. Reflections on club culture generally focus either on manifestations of the urban phenomenon in one local scene, such as Berlin, Paris (Picaud 2019) and Chicago (Rietveld 1997), or a comparison of various local scenes (Nye 2013). In the case of club culture, cities are important junctions in this global network, also interacting with each other. An example is that of electronic music genre ‘acid’, which originated in

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Chicago mid-1980s4, became popular in London and Manchester scenes late-1980s, where it reached a popularity peak during the summer of 1988, and similarly made its entrance into Berlin’s underground. Bader & Scharenberg (2009) describe this dynamic as follows: there are local networks of creativity from which globally popular musical output arises – vice versa, the local music scenes can only be conceptualised in the context of global developments in EDM culture. On a local level, furthermore, embodied experiences are central. The importance of shared embodied experience in club culture has been illustrated previously in different contexts by, for example, Malbon (1999), St. John (2004) and Garcia (2011). Additionally, subcultural theory about club culture centres these embodied experiences as well, as physical presence is also said to determine subcultural capital of a clubber (Thornton 1996; Picaud 2019).

The centrality of the embodied experience in local community formation, in which globally available music is reproduced and reinterpreted in local clubbing contexts, can be explained through Rigney’s (2014) theorisation of embodied communities. In her case study of the commemoration of 19th century writer Robert Burns, she finds how commemoration has shifted from static, physical lieux de memoire (Nora 1989) towards a more dynamic practice of commemoration, in embodied and performative forms. Burns was commemorated globally, but on a local level each community practiced this commemoration differently, which led to the experience of local, embodied communities. Although club culture is a different phenomenon than the commemoration of a writer in the 19th century, the dynamics are similar and I would even like to argue that, due to the centrality of the ephemeral and physical experience in clubbing, club culture is a more vivid example of an embodied community.

Club culture can thus be considered a ‘glocal’ phenomenon, in which the interaction between the local and the global for club culture can be understood as follows: club culture constitutes a global imagined community, existing out of local scenes, which could be described as embodied communities.

2.2 Discursivity Although club culture in post-1989 Berlin has been studied previously, few of these studies have taken on a discursive perspective. A generally consistent narrative of a utopian and creative urban hub with an important role for techno music has been presented by several scholars (e.g. Bader and Scharenberg 2009; Stahl 2014; Oktay 2015). This narrative is about the reinvention of Berlin after the fall of the Wall into a ‘New Berlin’, a creative urban space with techno music as ‘the sound of Berlin’. Most of the existing examinations have not taken into account the fact that the narratives as they are often presented rely on social and cultural constructs and reproduce each other without taking into account discursivity. The consistency of this narrative can be contested by reflecting on the discursivity of this topic.

Due to its ephemeral character, reflection on and reproduction of club experiences is always obsolete. One can never fully grasp the core of club culture, especially not while reflecting on it, in a scholarly or non-scholarly approach. Therefore research on and reconstructions of club culture experiences must always take into account the high level of discursivity. The discursivity of reflections on club culture is furthermore based on the high degree to which club culture is a cultural and social construct. Subcultural capital is (unconsciously), alike other subcultures, considered an indicator for belonging to the group and for being perceived by

4 Although the actual roots of the genre reportedly lie in the album ‘Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat’ by Indian artist Charanjit Singh (1982), which was released several years prior to Phuture’s ‘Acid Tracks’, the EP that is said to have defined the acid genre (Aitken 2011).

13 other clubbers as ‘cool’ (Malbon 1999). These identities are highly stylised and clubbers constantly monitor themselves against the then applicable features of ‘coolness’, which are constantly modified and rather fragmented (Thornton 1996, 98). Club culture is thus selective, already starting before one enters a club, by a process of self-selection: the choice for a certain clubbing experience relies on how a clubber perceives themself in relation to a crowd with which they want to identify (ibid).

This is then amplified by the clubbing experience itself, mainly through club’s door policies. According to clubs themselves, door policies exist in order to maintain a safe space for inclusivity and physical freedom, but also to ensure a certain atmosphere. The latter is related to the construct of coolness and belonging: several clubs are known for excluding people for not adhering to the ‘correct’ identity or degree of coolness that fits that club, for example based on clothing. In my previous research a club promoter stated that they were satisfied with a club night if it had ‘the right audience’ on the dancefloor (Vaessen 2020, 62). The door policy of Berlin’s famous club Berghain is a magnified example of how club culture is a social and cultural construct. It is known for having a very strict door policy – numerous journalist articles have been written about the best strategies to get in (e.g. Dundon 2017; Jaksa 2019), but it has likewise been alleged for arrogance and racism.

Furthermore subcultural formation, as Thornton (1996) illustrates, is not only constructed by lived experience, but also through media perceptions, on which media, but also clubbing communities themselves base their identity (117). For example the conception of the mainstream, against which subcultures form themselves, grows out of the reciprocity between the media and lived culture (ibid 109). Wermuth (2002) also acknowledges the heavily mediatised discursive construction of subcultures, leading to the configuration and reconfiguration by members of a subculture of what constitutes their culture.

Within popular music culture locality is considered very important (Bennett 2000; Knights and Biddle 2007). As described, although electronic dance music is a global phenomenon, the formation of music scenes mostly occurs on a local level, even when under the influence of new media and the internet (Kruse 2010). For electronic dance music specifically the locality is evident, since embodied experiences are important in this culture. The discourse surrounding club culture is thus also dependent on the local context, in this case Berlin. The social and cultural circumstances of Berlin club culture within which the authenticity discourses develop will therefore be taken into account in my analysis.

2.2.1 Methodology Given the discursive character of club culture, a discursive approach is considered the most appropriate method for this thesis. I will carefully take into account the cultural and social mechanisms at play in my material as well as the local context. Despite stating that previous scholarly research specifically into Berlin club culture has not taken on a discursive perspective, there are several scholars who have handled a discursive approach on closely related topics, from which I will draw for my own methodology.

Walkowitz (2012) analysed discourses of cosmopolitanism within the local urban context of Soho, London, from a historical perspective. She emphasises the importance of popular or commercialised culture in the shaping of political formations. Although this thesis does not claim to give all-encompassing insights into political processes in Berlin or Germany, it is important to acknowledge that popular culture, like club culture, does not only function within the realms of that specific culture and its community, but is always embedded into broader

14 cultural, social, political and geographical systems, which together constitute a discourse. Walkowitz in her work first presents a theoretical framework on the central concept of her book and then in each chapter contextualises the discourse she is analysing in a chronological order, which is similar to the structure that this thesis will employ. Considering the urban context of Berlin, Sark (2018) has looked at the discourse formed by cultural production about the city after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She shows how different instances of cultural production around the 2000s constitute a seemingly consistent narrative of nostalgia to Berlin culture in the first decade after 1989 and also references the compatibility within this narrative of the idea that electronic dance music was ‘der Sound der Wende’, as Gutmair (2014) posed it.

Regarding authenticity discourses within popular music culture, Anttonen’s (2017) study is insightful. She elegantly describes a discursive phenomenon as “a cultural construction built with language and communication” (5), which also legitimises the use of written primary sources, which is relevant for this thesis as well. She conducted a comprehensive discourse analysis of written media coverage about three popular music case studies within three different music genres, whereas I will focus on one genre. Anttonen applies discourse analysis from a macrolevel rather than a microlevel, given that authenticity is a broad cultural construct rather than an idea formed by a single outcome of cultural production, which is also the approach that I would like to take on. Jaimangal-Jones (2018) looks more specifically at club cultural discourses, analysing media discourses about the authenticity of DJs in magazines dedicated to electronic dance music culture.

In my own analysis of my primary material, I will present the narratives of club culture that are offered, examining discursive constructions of authenticity. To analyse my primary material I will conduct a discourse analysis, through which I will see which discourses of authenticity my sources convey and how these help to understand existing narratives of Berlin club culture. I will structure my analysis according to four hypothetical phases of discourse, also providing a cultural historical framework for these phases.

Finally I am well aware that the research I am conducting in this thesis is also discursive. Although this thesis will present a discourse of continuity, expecting to find rather chronological, linear phases of understandings of authenticity within the subculture, there is also the possibility of disrupted continuity and unexpected developments to be found in my material. In terms of discursivity it is also relevant to reflect on the researcher’s position in relation to the studied subculture, as the proximity of the researcher influences the research process (MacRae 2007). That being said, I am not conducting field research, for which previous club cultural researchers have had to immerse themselves in clubbing experiences (e.g. Malbon 1999; St. John 2004). As a 22-year old clubber, I have a rather close socio-cultural proximity as well as personal interest in and therefore familiarity with my general research subject of club culture. This helps me in understanding the discourse and distinguishing trends through earlier encounters with niche media and social media that I follow out of personal interest. However, as I am not a part of Berlin’s local club scene myself, a divergence is established between the researcher and the case study chosen for this thesis. My understanding of the primary and secondary material is thus enhanced by my prior knowledge, but I have no connection to and therefore no interests within the Berlin scene, resulting in enough distance from the topic.

2.3 Authenticity The question “What is club culture?”, is thus highly discursive and its conception is dependent on interpretation of ephemeral experience, local context and media perceptions. Following

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Anttonen (2017), I will also regard authenticity as a discursive phenomenon. Within popular music studies, authenticity has long been an important concept. Previously, academic scholars attributed terms such as ‘authentic’, ‘honest’ and ‘actual’ to artists or their musical production, similar to the way in which music critics utilise conceptions of authenticity when examining the extent to which an artist is authentic; often this is either regarded inherent to the characteristics of the music or related to the performance of an artist (Moore 2002). However, academic consensus has now long been established that authenticity is “a matter of interpretation which is made and fought for from within a cultural and, thus, historical position” (ibid, 210), underlining the discursivity of the concept. Similarly Shuker (2017) writes that “we should be asking not if particular stylistic characteristics can be considered ‘authentic’ or non-authentic, but rather how authenticity is constructed in particular music genres and performers, and the strategies involved” (25), seeing conceptions of authenticity as a form of ideology within popular music culture. This thesis will be concerned with the different ways in which authenticity is constructed within club culture given the local context of Berlin.

As an inherently discursive concept, then, authenticity has been attributed to many different determinants to authenticate either the artist, the audience or the Other against which authenticity is formed, such as intimacy, immediacy, social standing, integrity and musical reinvention (Moore 2002). In examining hip hop culture, McLeod (1999, 139) distinguished several semantic dimensions of authenticity, against determinants of ‘fakeness’: staying true to yourself and remaining underground are considered authentic as opposed to following mass trends and becoming commercial. Authenticity can furthermore be attributed to a medium, a genre or even a whole scene. A relevant recurrent aspect which has been rendered central to perceptions of authenticity for subcultures specifically is whether the authenticated entity (whether it is a genre, an artist, a performance et cetera) is able to articulate at that specific moment a figurative place of belonging with which the listener can affirm its identity within or membership to that subculture – in other words, whether it is able to constitute subcultural capital for a member of the subcultural community (Thornton 1996; Moore 2002; Mau and Nicholas 2020).

2.3.1 Authenticity and performativity Driver (2011) poses a critique to previous studies of authenticity of live performances, which is grounded in the ephemerality, but also the performativity of subcultural experience: he problematises the symbolic character of such subcultural theory and accentuates the importance of taking into account affect, based on the physical momentum of human experience, rather than symbolic notions of authenticity. Although it is difficult to take into account the effect that physical experiences create when conducting a discourse analysis of written sources instead of fieldwork, I will be careful in making statements on authenticity based on signs rather than lived experience. Although Driver has researched hardcore music scenes, his work is also appropriate with regards to club culture, to which this ephemeral and performative physical momentum is so central.

Albrecht (2008) furthermore effectively compares the experience of authenticity and performativity in popular music culture to a study by Nauta (2003) about the religious practice of priests. Nauta theorises that authenticity always has a performative and constructed nature, even if it has to represent an experience of the sacred. However, as long as the receiver believes that the performance is authentic, it can be considered authentic. Embodied, momentary experiences, such as a club experience, thus require a sense of surrender in order to be conceived of as authentic. Albrecht (2008) applied this theory to popular music live

16 performance, thereby emphasising the importance of contextualisation of understandings of performance and authenticity. This is relevant for club cultural encounters, since in this context not only the DJ is performing as an artist, but the experience of clubbers is also highly performative. Authenticity is thus discursive, but similarly performative, requiring a sense of surrender to the embodied experience.

2.3.2 Authenticity in club culture Different genres or subcultures are subject to different conceptions of authenticity. Tropes of authenticity can be disseminated by terms as ‘realness’, ‘sincerity’, ‘credibility’ or ‘truthfulness’. ‘Realness’ or ‘the real thing’ has especially come to the fore in authenticity discourses within hip hop culture, as both McLeod (1999) and Wermuth (2002) illustrate, as well as ‘street credibility’. Wermuth also emphasises that the conception of authenticity is discursive, within hip hop predominantly dependent on who is interpreting the idea of authenticity: while insiders of the subculture perceive authenticity mainly as a certain style and street credibility – the acknowledgement of their authenticity by others within the culture –, outsiders see artistic reinvention as a determinant of authenticity. Westinen (2014) shows how authenticity discourses for hip hop culture are furthermore subject to its locality, elaborating on global, national and local authenticity. A term that is often used to constitute a discourse of authenticity within club culture is ‘underground’, which is often rather local and therefore also based on local embodied communities or scenes (Thornton 1996). Bennett (2000) theorises how local dance music scenes are constituted by an “underground sensibility” (85), which is for example established by physical participation in alternative nightclubs, which are defined against ‘mainstream’ clubs – I will further expand on this in the next paragraph.

Wiltsher (2016) employs a descriptive rather than discursive perspective on authenticity and distinguishes three perspectives on how to determine whether a certain form of club culture is underground and therefore authentic: knowledge of genres can discern authenticity, as well as features of the establishment of a scene or original cultural production – the latter predominantly lies in Black communities in the USA, which makes the degree of ‘Blackness’ a determinant for authenticity according to Wiltsher. Jaimangal-Jones (2018) found that within media discourse about DJs innovation and originality in musical style, commitment and effect on the audience constitute ideas of authenticity. Thornton (1996) considers two approaches to authenticity in club culture, one being originality or aura and the other being the naturality with which a musical entity (genre/artist/performance) is perceived among the members of the subcultural community. These conceptualisations of authenticity in club culture help to find similar tropes in my primary material, but are evidently not finite and my analysis will be open to other, context specific discourses.

2.3.3 Authenticity under threat Conceptions of authenticity are discursive, which also implies that reorientation of authenticity discourses occurs according to its historical and local context. One of the contextual influences on these discourses is when members of a subculture experience the authenticity of their community to be under threat. In the theorisation of subcultures and authenticity I have identified several threats that can lead to tension surrounding authenticity discourse and therefore reorientation and I expect to discern more context specific threats in the analysis of my primary material.

Authenticity is always defined against the idea of a mainstream, since members of a subculture have “the desire to be part of something that is not widely distributed” (Thornton 1996, 121). Moore (2002) even states that the opposition of authenticity and mainstream is seen as a

17 paradigm. Popularisation and commercialisation of a musical entity, or ‘selling out’, referring to Wermuth (2002), therefore constitutes a threat to authenticity. This is, however, paradoxical, as musical subcultures are already considered within a framework of ‘popular music’ and Moore (2002) acknowledges that the opposition he poses is illusory, as subcultures also function within a capitalist framework of consumption – be it of records, experience (Malbon 1999) or lifestyle (Thornton 1996). The relation between authenticity and mainstream is even more complex given that record labels, at least within hip hop culture, see authenticity as a trademark (Wermuth 2002, 310).

Another threat to authenticity within music based subcultures is the involvement of authorities, which I expect to also be relevant for Berlin club culture, since this subculture has been anchored into city branding and cultural policy since the 2000s (Picaud 2019). Dance music culture is originally known, however, for its do-it-yourself (DIY) character, typified by precariousness on an economic, legal as well as material level: there was no regular income, spaces were often squatted and equipment was often set up on the spot (Bennett 2000; Vivant 2009, 40). I am interested in seeing whether the tension between the expediency of club culture for policy purposes and ideas of authenticity will be discernible in my material.

McLeod (2001) also relates the trope of ‘going underground’ to commercialisation, but similarly to (re)appropriation of genres: “Throughout the 1980s, it was widely believed that disco was “dead,” but it had simply gone back underground to its core Black and gay urban audiences, and it had taken a new name.” (62) I think it is appropriate to be critical of his use of ‘simply’ in this understanding of genre appropriation, as the underlying mechanisms certainly are not simple. Debates of reappropriation and authenticity claims of music by Black communities, under great influence of Gilroy’s theory on The Black Atlantic (1993), have become an important threat to the conception of authenticity in club music. Although scholarly attention has been granted to this tension, this is especially the case for other genres, like hip hop (Wermuth 2002) and generally focused on the USA. Only more recently, to a great extent related to the expanding visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a vast critique in popular media has emerged on white appropriation and therefore the reclaiming of house and techno music as well, also in a European context. An example is the closing of Amsterdam club De School after, alongside financial struggles, a severe conflict with its own community, accusing the self-proclaimed progressive and inclusive club management of racism and a lack of acknowledgement about the Black roots of techno and house (Miedema 2020). Whether the topical discourse on cultural appropriation affects authenticity discourses within Berlin will also be taken into account in my analysis.

As will be illustrated in the analysis of my primary material, different conceptions of authenticity and what threats affect these conceptions are related to their context, which in the case of this thesis is local as well as chronological. The trope of ‘going underground’ has been used to describe the club scene at several crucial points in time, under the influence of constant factors as well as contemporary threats in that period.

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3. Phase I: The fall of the Wall, the drop of the beat (1980s-1990s)

Figure 1. Geographical distribution of clubs in Berlin, 1980s-1990s

While the Berlin Wall was still standing in the late 1980s, a new scene had started to manifest itself in the city, starting in the West. Following up the punk scene, techno culture – still considered the city’s predominant subculture – has only been given rise fairly recently, around the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 .The social, cultural and political circumstances in Berlin post- Wende are said to have enhanced the development of a vibrant club scene, especially concerning the Zwischennutzung (temporary use) of empty buildings. Not only has popular media propagated a narrative of techno as the “sound of the reunification” (Gutmair 2014), but also scholarly analyses have taken on this perspective, considering techno culture as a “mechanism for separate communities of young people […] to come together in a neutral environment” (Schofield and Rellensmann 2015, 117). The establishment of subcultures, among which club culture or electronic dance music culture, is seen as one of the main characteristics of Berlin city culture after 1989, often neglecting the city’s longer history of alternative culture.

Der Klang der Familie The narrative in Der Klang der Familie by journalists Felix Denk & Sven von Thülen (‘The Sound of the Family’, originally published in German in 2012, English version in 2014) aligns with this general story of Berlin club culture around the fall of the Wall. However, alongside giving insight into the local scene as a whole, Denk & Von Thülen also illustrate the centrality of individual personal experiences, reflection in hindsight and conflicts within the scene. Both

19 journalists were participants of the Berlin scene in the 1990s. Their work is an oral history, based on 150 interviews with around 70 scenesters that were active in Berlin club culture – Berlin natives as well as people who moved there either from elsewhere in Germany or from abroad – since the late 1980s into the 1990s, mostly conducted in 2011. They present their narrative entirely through a collage of literal quotes they derived from their interviews, only for the English version that was published in 2014 they added a short preface. The work offers an insider’s perspective on the early years of Berlin club culture, from the 1980s until mid-1990s.5

Through choosing this form Denk & Von Thülen emphasise the polyphony and discursivity of the topic, as their narrative relies on the reproduction of club cultural experiences long after they have been lived in the 1980s and 1990s. They illustrate that reflection on club culture is based on an individual's experiences of events that have occurred in the past rather than a singular narrative. In this case this past is additionally fairly distant, since the selection of quotations reconstruct club culture 20 to 25 years after the actual experiences have taken place. Furthermore it is important to take into account the fact that the work presents a specific discourse by offering a perspective from members of the early Berlin club scene and thus a perspective from ‘inside’. Such discourse also forms and defines the scene, as Thornton (1996) ascribed. The title is a reference to techno track ‘Der Klang der Familie’ by 3Phase and Dr. Motte, two important artists in the Berlin scene who have also been interviewed by Denk & Von Thülen. Throughout the book, scenesters also refer to the idea of the scene as a family, a trope which I will expand on later.

All the personal accounts are written into one seemingly coherent narrative, which is, however, neither chronological nor consistent, although Denk & Von Thülen have marked three phases by their chapters: the 1980s, 1990-1991 and 1992-1996. The differentiation between these time periods already indicates the fast pace of the development of the scene over time. The demarcation of the second and third phase illustrates the two years of fast development of the scene on the one hand and on the other hand the decline of the club culture after 1992 due to increasing popularity.

The narrative that Denk & Von Thülen have compiled shows the crucial role of the locality of the early scene, as well as singular entities within this scene, such as certain people, venues and party concepts, but also illustrates how all these entities are intertwined, as scenesters were involved in or at least aware of activities of others. The scene commenced fairly small and comprehensive, but towards the second half of the 1990s it became bigger and eventually became internally divided, mainly under the influence of commercialisation. Denk & Von Thülen illustrate that there is not only a discourse shift between this phase and the following years of club culture, but that within the first discursive phase there is already a lack of continuity among scenesters.

From West to East Although club music’s popularity reached a peak right after the fall of the Wall, the culture already started its run-up on both sides of the Wall in the late 1980s. Punk and new wave’s popularity declined at that time (Denk & Von Thülen 2014, 18).The Wall was still up, but in the Western part of the city a small club scene started to emerge slowly as punk and new wave had experienced their best days. Under the influence of Chicago house and UK acid house,

5 Denk & Von Thülen’s work is exemplary for this phase of Berlin club culture, however, additional perspectives are presented by Gutmair (2014) and Hockenos (2017), as well as documentaries ‘We Call It Techno’ (2008) and ‘Berlin Babylon’ (2001).

20 music genres to which the West already had access, the first parties were already being organised in the second half of the 1980s. Simultaneously the cultural transition based on Gorbachev’s reforms in terms of glasnost and perestroika generated the accessibility of radio stations from the West and thus new genres to East-Berlin (Peter 2014, 177). However, when the Wall fell in 1989, the parties in the West were soon deemed commercial and circumstances on the East part of the city further led to the advancement of club culture. As there was a lack of political organisation, many physical spaces were still left empty – they were referred to as Temporary Autonomous Zones (T.A.Z.) – and could be utilised by the club scene to organise parties, at least temporarily. Examples of important temporary locations were Turbine Rosenheim, 90Grad and Quartier Latin, which all existed for a maximum of three years between 1986 and 1992, see Figure 1 for the geographical distribution.

Despite the fact that Berlin techno culture originated in the West as this part of the city already had access to predecessors to Berlin club music from the UK and the USA, club culture in the East has repeatedly been considered more authentic. These different conceptions of East and West are not only relevant in terms of authenticity discourse, but also implicitly counteract the ‘techno as the sound of the reunification’-narrative, whereas other scenesters as well as Denk & Von Thülen in their foreword explicate this narrative as well. While the West had already been influenced by capitalism and international forces, the scene that developed in the East had more of a DIY-character and the freedom would supposedly be expressed through the characteristics of the music on this side of the Wall (25). This underlines both conceptions of authenticity based on originality in music, but also against commercialisation (Wermuth 2002; Jaimangal-Jones 2018). For example, Mark Reeder, a music producer who migrated from Manchester (UK) to West-Berlin in 1978 and organised illegal concerts in East-Berlin in the early 1980s, considered techno music from the East more ‘real’ than music from the West:

Mark Reeder It was my dream to start a techno label in the GDR where kids from the East could release their music. […] The future looked so optimistic. And the music should reflect that. I saw it as the soundtrack of the fall of the Wall, of freedom. […] I told Hoffman, ‘The Wall is gone, the Stasi people are gone, the fat cats too. Now you can release real music.’ He didn’t understand what I meant. I wanted them to invest in a music that the western labels didn’t have. (92)

The passage strikingly indicates subversiveness against communism, but also against capitalism. Additionally, the scene in the East was more often considered more credible because of its lack of commercialism, thereby already preluding the eventual divide and decline of the club scene in the beginning of the 1990s due to the threat of commercialis ation and techno selling out.

Alec Empire Virtually overnight, West Berlin became a total non-issue for me. Including the nightlife. I was almost exclusively in the East. There was absolutely no commercial pressure there. You could just get going and try things out. Musically, too. […] Everything was full of possibilities. (80)

“It was somehow liberating to crawl through this hole in the floor” In its early years, however, the scene was mainly occupied with establishing what could be considered ‘underground’ and what not, who belonged and who did not. In Der Klang der Familie, the notion of ‘underground’, which has often been related to authenticity (Thornton 1996; Bennett 2000), appears to be ambiguous. In the earliest years of club culture the term had a literal connotation, referring to the underground spaces in which club culture manifested

21 itself. Love Parade organiser Kati Schwind illustrates how the physical location of parties, often basements, was an important part of the embodied experience:

Kati Schwind It was somehow liberating to crawl through this hole in the floor to the basement. Away from all that ‘80s muff, which was stuffy to the extreme. It just felt like a dead-end road. House had that spirit of awakening. It was totally new. Even just the experience on the dance floor. (34-35)

In this quote, going underground is used in its literal sense, but can similarly be interpreted as a metaphor, referring to the (re)definition of (sub)genres against music from the 1980s. The arrival, development and definition of genres, based on their musical characteristics, appears to be a recurring process in the early years of club music. Genres evolved fast, especially in the beginning, and new impulses were often considered better than previous music, breaking with conventions, evoking new reactions and also responding to local political circumstances, which is acknowledged by Detroit DJ pioneer Robert Hood – although Schwind is also aware of the reflexivity and elusiveness of the club scene:

Kati Schwind This new music, house, was simply groundbreaking, mind-blowing. At least it seemed that way to us. (35)

Robert Hood It was shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there was this resurgence of a new electronic sound – more brutal, more assertive. Before, it was more of a fantasy-based electronic sound; now, it was more reality-based and in tune with what was happening in the world, with the fall of the Wall and the political situation. (147-148)

Within club scene discourse, there existed the conception that the redetermination of which music defined ‘underground’ or coolness was a necessity, something that “had to happen” because “[n]o one could listen to the old shit anymore” (35). Even in hindsight, the combination between the music and the locations was not considered a coincidence or a result of political and cultural circumstances, but as a logical development inherent to the scene: “We didn’t have any other choice but to get going in old barracks. Underground.” (35) This necessity is also reflected in a later period marked by Denk & Von Thülen, when “techno needed a second phase” (171).

Techno as a business Remarkably, development of subgenres and certain musical production could not only lead to the development of a new conception of underground, but could also indicate ‘selling out’ (Wermuth 2002). An example is the development of the acid house scene in Berlin: this genre reached Berlin from the UK, but its popularity quickly declined among the Berlin scenesters when acid house became too popular in the UK after its ‘Second Summer of Love’6. Although the musical characteristics of the genre did not change, the context and popularity did and therefore also its discourse. Gradually the discourse shifted and the threat of professionalisation and corporatisation became the predominant factor against which authenticity was defined.

The professionalisation of the record industry as well as the rise of mass events influenced the indicators of credibility within the scene. Among several scenesters a fear of selling out arose,

6 Refers to the summer of 1988, but also 1989, when electronic dance music and the prevalence of drugs (MDMA and acid) led to mass illegal parties in the UK, drawing parallels with the original Summer of Love in San Francisco.

22 while others were simultaneously involved in the evolution of techno as a business, which the former group saw as the biggest threat: as DJ Dr. Motte states, “[t]he conflict was: true culture or profit?” (212), indicating that true or authentic culture and profit are direct opposites. Mayday, a techno festival first organised in 1991, was seen as one of the accelerators of selling out (160).

However, there were also members of the community who were involved in this process of techno becoming a business – Love Parade organiser and editor of club culture magazine Frontpage Jürgen Laarmann is portrayed as the leading example of the combination between club and capitalism in Der Klang der Familie:

Terrible At the time, Laarmann only ever ran around in tailored suits, convinced he could sell his Frontpage empire to Gruner + Jahr. When he marched down the hall, rolls of money would fall out of his pockets. (274)

Techno family Eventually the commercialisation of techno was not solely a phenomenon of the West anymore and the potential of turning into a business took over the scene. This opposition between commercialised techno and ‘real’ techno further divided the scene, to which DJ Westbam refers as a “techno culture war” (270). In this regard the reference to the scene as a family also appears: “The family couldn’t just keep getting bigger and at the same time remain intimate.” (279) Intimacy was thus considered an inherent characteristic of the scene, thereby also indicating a focus on the local. Although there were already influences from abroad, most importantly the reciprocity between the local scenes of Detroit and Berlin in the early 1990s, the scene was still very much inward-looking.

The increasing degree of commerce within the club scene also led to a realisation about what club culture then was lacking that it was previously able to establish. Rave activist Stefan Schvanke describes it as follows:

The parties were professionally conceived and executed at a high level. If that’s what you were looking for from nightlife, you weren’t disappointed. But for me, something was missing. Something of our own, something that belonged to us, wherein we could recognize ourselves. (256)

The parties were thus not able to evoke a sense of agency as well as belonging to the clubbers. The idea of belonging that Schvanke mentions is conceptualised in different ways throughout Der Klang der Familie. Firstly a genre, performance or party can be rendered authentic if it is able to evoke a feeling of belonging for its audience, being the community or scene that the music or artists serves. This is exemplified through this excerpt from bouncer Arne Grahm, who declares the punk genre dead because a performance did not evoke enough enthusiasm from the audience: “You could tell from the crowd that punk in the West had been dead at least five years.” (30) Techno, however, was able to bear resemblance to its community, although scenesters mainly ascribe this idea to the early years, when the scene was still small, and also oppose it to the economical dimension:

3Phase The feeling of being part of something special produced a moral code of conduct. […] We felt like a part of the whole thing, not like customers. (129)

Related to this idea of belonging and community is the centrality of the community as a whole and the absence of dominant personalities or DJs as stars were seen as an important

23 characteristic of the early techno scene, also being established by the ephemeral character of the culture:

CZYK From the very beginning, techno said: ‘We don’t have stars.’ That’s why the light shone on the dance floor while the DJ stood in the dark. It was a very important part of the concept, this idea that the crowd was the star. […] The idea of commonality was decisive. (239)

Contrastingly, this characteristic shifts along the changing narrative of Der Klang der Familie, as the commercialising scene also went accompanied with the dominance of certain people in the scene and the stardom of several DJs and producers.

Mijk van Dijk At the beginning, the sense was always that DJs aren’t stars, they’re just as important as the dancers. A very democratic sense of equality prevailed in the scene. The more important the movement became, the more it became charged with a DJ cult. (196)

However, the discursive character of the book being written retroactively also shows signs of stardom in earlier phases already: for example, DJs Marusha and Dr. Motte were idolised in the early years (98, 119, 195).

Conclusion Der Klang der Familie gives insight into how the Berlin club scene was small, but divided from the beginning. The montage of quotes and their contents illustrate the discursivity of club culture as well as its polyvocality. Discourses were constantly being reformulated by different scenesters and the movement had never been univocal. The scene, its music and the renowned clubs and party concepts developed fast and the intervals between different conceptions were equally short. Various complementary as well as conflicting definitions of authenticity can be found in personal accounts within the scene, varying over time as well as individually.

However, there are some patterns discernible in the material. The scene was locally orientated, relied on DIY-practices and was inward-looking: it was intimate, like a family – and techno was its sound. Global influences were already there, such as the connection between the scenes in Berlin and Detroit, but those were subordinate to the local developments. An international imagined community had started to form, but the insular embodied community was central in this period. Furthermore, scenesters were mostly concerned with the music itself, such as the characteristics of the genres and the ability of genres to generate an embodied community. Techno culture, however, grew substantially and already started to professionalise towards the mid-1990s. In the next phases, the scope and focus of the scene will further expand due to processes of globalisation which have a significant influence on Berlin’s club scene

The main threat according to many scenesters is exemplified by Dr. Motte’s quote: true culture or profit? Commercialisation and selling out equated to the inability to establish a sense of community or belonging to the scenesters, leading to the urge to ‘go underground’ and reinvent itself. In techno’s early days aversion against commerce also influenced the physical locations of club culture: although club culture originated at illegal parties in the West, the West was considered too commercial in an early stage, and as a result the scene gradually moved towards the formerly communist, unregulated and therefore raw East.

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Towards the end of the book Denk & Von Thülen cite DJ Westbam: “The crowd changed, and Berlin emerged.” (282) – already looking ahead to the next phase.

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4. Phase II: Challenges for the underground (2000s)

Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 7. Geographical distribution of clubs in Berlin, 2000s Figure 2. Geographical distribution of clubs in Berlin, 2000s

“Around the turn of the century the music went back underground in order to revitalise itself.” (Rapp 2010, 13)

After club culture in Berlin peaked in the early nineties, the subculture seems to have declined for several years, as Denk & Von Thülen end their narrative in 1996. Tobias Rapp, a former participant of the early squatting scene in East-Berlin, music journalist and authority concerning club culture, commences his narrative in the early 2000s, not indicating the exact moment he discerns as the beginning of the new phase.

This new period of club cultural discourse is covered in his work Lost and Sound. Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set (2010). The music journalist focuses on Berlin club culture in the 2000s or the ‘noughties’, an era in which the local character of the scene changes due to competing low-cost airlines and therefore the growth of tourism, the idea of underground is challenged by the increasing importance of the internet, but selling out is still seen as a threat. The nineties were considered a playground, a space for post-reunification euphoria, an outlet for escapism (Rapp 2010, 57-60). After a period of great buzz, the scene was subject to Clubsterben (49), the dying out of clubs, and is said to have suffered from a hangover. One of

26 the chapters in Lost and Sound is written by Alexis Waltz7, who states the following: “It all began while Berlin was suffering from its hangover of the late nineties, when the city’s clubs had entered a crisis.” (132)

This crisis according to her was mainly music-oriented: the music genres that had previously been key to the scene, such as Detroit inspired techno, did not appeal to the audience as much as they used to and the crowd had become fragmented due to the development of many different genres and venues. The utopian era made room for a period of professionalisation, institutionalisation and internationalisation of the club scene throughout the early 2000s. Rapp here also distinguishes ‘rave’ from ‘club’: he writes that the Raving Society, based on the temporality of rave parties in the “no man’s land” that Berlin was in the early days of techno, was something of the nineties, now the scene is about club – the techno scene thus proved not to be a temporary phenomenon (34).

Lost and Sound. Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set Rapp’s work was originally written to “tell Berliners something about Berlin” (Rapp 2010, 8), as it was first published in German in 2009 – the intended reader thus being the inhabitants of Berlin, according to Rapp mainly those who are unaware of the nightlife scene in the city. He writes that his work predominantly offers a perspective into Berlin club culture of the noughties and the circumstances that shaped it and that he tells a “second, more personal story” (13) about his own experiences in a week of Berlin nightlife. The structure of the work, however, already indicates that Rapp uses his personal encounters with Berlin club life to reflect on more general themes rather than the other way around, which is reaffirmed by the contents: at the beginning of each segment, he describes in detail his observations of one day of his personal clubbing experience, which then leads to more contextual passages and additional interviews with scenesters.

Different from Der Klang Der Familie, which offers a discursive framework entirely from the inside of the scene, leaving the contextualisation mostly up to the reader, Rapp describes the scene himself, from personal experience. His account is not so music-specific, but rather broad and mainly context based. Furthermore, whereas Der Klang Der Familie is subjective only because of the selection and montage of the interviews, Lost and Sound is more susceptible to the subjectivity of the writer, not only in choice for events, interviewees and descriptions, but also in the very specific personal narrative and expressions of his opinion. This needs to be taken into account when analysing his work, although Rapp himself is an insider and is similarly considered an authority concerning this topic.8

Momentary bliss “Reading this book is one thing; going clubbing is another” (17), Rapp writes, thereby illustrating awareness about the discursive character of club culture: reflections on nightlife are always obsolete and are not the same as experiencing nightlife. It also refers to the transient aspect, which is further made clear throughout Lost and Sound: “At some point it’ll all be over.

7 Her piece was originally published (2008) in Groove Magazin, a Berlin magazine on electronic music and club culture which was published in print van 1989-2018 and now exists online. Most of their content is only presented in German, offering interesting perspectives into (Berlin) club culture since 1989. 8 Rapp is often cited, referred to or interviewed in reflections on Berlin club culture, also in material used for latter chapters of this thesis (e.g. Nation 2011; Rogers 2014). He also wrote one of the chapters in the recently published volume TEN CITIES (Rapp 2010), a publication by the Goethe Institute, about club cultural scenes in ten cities across the globe.

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But it’s also beautiful that it’s so transitory; it means it will have been an experience for all those who were here.” (49)

This citate refers to the importance of temporariness for the embodied clubbing experience, which requires a sense of surrender (Albrecht 2008). The momentary character is, interestingly, not only felt by scenesters, but also perceptible through the absence of physical traces in the city:

It’s amazing how little trace the night life of the nineties has left on the city. Or perhaps not, given the fleeting nature of this nightly reveling. […] [C]onsidering the effect that Berlin’s night life has had, and continues to have, on the image of the city, the fact that the nightly goings on have made no visible impression is surprising. (55)

In terms of the ephemerality of the culture, however, an impression of nostalgia is also noticeable:

Older visitors to Ostgut were reminded of their first contact with this music in the early nineties, while the younger crowd was fascinated by its social authenticity: no one came here to boast about it in the agency where they worked the next morning. All that mattered was what was happening in the here and now, and this quickly became legendary. (133)

This corresponds to a study by Sark (2018), who distinguished a pattern of nostalgia to pre- gentrified Berlin in which 1990s Berlin is mythologised as opposed to the growing commercialisation and governmentalisation of culture in the German capital. The changes that Der Klang der Familie already anticipated become evident in Lost and Sound.

The establishment of club culture Although the scene has claimed, and persists to claim throughout the noughties, not to revolve around certain stars or personas, Rapp’s interview choices makes evident that there are several central entities and similarly that most names of nineties’ scenesters have made room for new ones. Dimitri Hegemann, owner of the renowned club Tresor, is the only scenester who has been featured in both Der Klang Der Familie and Lost and Sound, but other interviewees consist of people involved in more recent club institutions: Christoph Klenzendorf (owner of Bar 25), Olaf Kretschmar (head of the Clubcommission), Andreas Becker (hostel owner) and DJ Ricardo Villalobos are among the interviewed people. Despite the attention for certain personalities, Rapp’s account also emphasises the scene’s intended absence of stardom and the centrality of anonymity and facelessness, as well as the judgment towards people who act superior to others, within the scene:

The stars of this city are not individuals but collective subjects: the Berlin clubs and their crowds. […] In fact, the relative anonymity and facelessness of the Berlin techno scene are a great accomplishment which cannot be stressed enough – for even the accusations that someone or other has let the same go to their head are essentially proof of the importance of staying firmly grounded. (11-12)

This is also the case for the clubs that are central in the narrative of Lost and Sound: a ‘club mile’ was established, or, as Rapp phrases it, ‘born’. Whereas the rave scene was previously centred around the current Mitte district and had a very temporary character, in the noughties

28 it shifted to Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, symbolised by the name of what is often considered the pinnacle of Berlin club culture: Berghain (a portmanteau of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain).

All clubs from the nineties, with the exception of Tresor, have disappeared and with that the insecurity of the scene: all temporary locations were exchanged for clubs with long-term leases, that were established in the early 2000s, such as Watergate, Berghain, Bar 25 and Weekend – see Figure 1 and Figure 2 for the differences in terms of geographical distribution. The government had not been able to realise its ambitious aims to rebuild the city into a big, global force after the fall of the Wall and therefore still had a lot of Freiraum (free space) suitable for clubbing spaces in the East and the scene slowly could let go of its temporary character (Hockenos 2017; Colomb 2012). As the West continued to be gentrified, creatives, to whom Hockenos (2017) refers as ‘gentrification refugees’ (290), established their parties in the East. Some of the municipality’s gentrification plans resonated, however, forming a new intimidation to the physical locations of club culture which were now mainly situated around the banks of the Spree: the Mediaspree, one of the largest property investment projects in Berlin, was a controversial city initiative to turn the banks of the Spree into a business hub for the media and communications sector, threatening the clubs that had just established there (Rapp 2010, 41; see also Hockenos 2017, 295).

There is thus a clear break between club culture in the nineties and the noughties, in terms of people and physical spaces. Furthermore many scenesters, such as DJs, promotors, managers et cetera, moved to Berlin in the noughties as it became renowned for its club cultural reputation. These people constituted a strong, physical local community as opposed to the nineties, when the community was divided over several cities across the world, such as Chicago, Manchester and Frankfurt, where club culture arose earlier than in Berlin. Another difference with the nineties is that the scene has eminently professionalised and institutionalis ed itself. Unlike in Der Klang Der Familie, in which professionalisation was seen as a threat to being underground and authentic, professionalisation and institutionalisation are now considered a reaction to the downfall of club culture after the nineties:

The founding of the Club Commission [sic] was closely related to the collapse which the Berlin scene experienced in the late nineties. The chaos of the post- reunification period was over, a process of permanent professionalisation set in. (49)

The Clubcommission, an institution bridging between the club cultural scene, the government and other stakeholders of Berlin club culture through promoting the sectors’ political, administrative and economic interests to ensure their recognition, was established in 2000. Furthermore, the Goethe Institute has invested in knowledge of club culture since the 2000s, regarding it as an integral part of their music department. These institutional developments are rather typical for Berlin, since subcultures have long been ingrained in the government’s city marketing – this was not a phenomenon which originated after the fall of the Wall, but already before 1989 and perpetuated after then (Lanz 2013). This subcultural image of Berlin culminated when Berlin’s former mayor Klaus Wowereit framed the city as “Poor, but sexy”, to which many studies into Berlin city culture have since referred (e.g. the volume by Stahl 2014). Furthermore the economic dimension is emphasised by Rapp by, for example, choosing to interview Andreas Becker, the owner of ‘techno hostel’ Circus Hotel (Rapp 2010, 84) and similarly leaving little room for music, which is no longer considered as central as in the previous phase (e.g. 129).

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Due to the centrality of the economy behind club culture, there still appears to be a continued tension between professionalisation and club culture becoming too much of an economic factor, as the fear of ‘selling out’ remains relevant. The integral threat of commercialisation is closely related to the importance of locality and the role of tourism. A characteristic of the scene as a whole is that it is characterised as big and small at the same time: the subculture is spread globally, which is increasingly enhanced through the internet, but is still considered a niche. There is a reciprocity between this niche and the mainstream, for the mainstream ignores club culture (“The way the German mainstream ignores club culture…”, 10) and subcultures similarly want to define themselves against the mainstream:

Subcultures never want to be there for everyone, for in the mainstream lurks the danger of selling out. In the case of Berlin night life this has always taken the form of the two dreaded groups, Touris (tourists) and Prolls9 (proles). The emancipatory core of subcultures is always directed inwards. (47)

Druffi, Verpeilt or Durchi? – Ensuring exclusivity Furthermore Rapp defines subcultures as inward-looking. Whereas this characteristic of club culture was previously based on its focus on music genres and musical developments, the expression of distinction in the 2000s shifted towards other aspects of the scene. In the case of club culture there additionally is idiosyncratic vocabulary in a shared discursive space, globally but especially locally, in order to maintain a certain degree of exclusivity in a growing subculture. Local, German vocabulary within the club cultural community includes the earlier mentioned Clubsterben (49) as well as Touri and Proll (47), verstrahlt (literally: ‘exposed to radiation’, referring to a feeling of euphoria after clubbing, often under the influence of drugs, 164) and the distinction between Druffis (people who are high on something), Verpeilte (those who have lost themselves) and Durchis (those who are ‘through’, as in: done, 171).

The latter four terms are associated with another integral part of club culture, namely drugs. Although Rapp writes that the growing importance of the afterparty – which is intertwined with drug use (e.g. 210) – is one of the main themes within Berlin club culture of the noughties, numerous references to drugs indicate that it is the drug, not the afterparty, which constitutes an important part of club culture. Whereas the centrality of music was so important in the previous area of club culture, this seemingly essential element has been abandoned and exchanged for the importance of drugs (129). Insomuch as the interviewees in Der Klang Der Familie were still precarious about whether drugs were a threat or a gain, relating it to the arrogance of scenesters and a distraction from the importance of the music, according to Rapp they are central: “Everyone knows that night life doesn’t function without them, never has and never will.” (210) He does not consider drugs a threat to club culture and its authenticity, but sees them as an integral part.

Given the locality of the previously mentioned German vocabulary, it is no surprise that the clubbing community is likewise still known to have its own local, unwritten rules and customs. These are subject to subcultural capital, which a clubber can only acquire by keeping up with the fast changing club culture. Subcultural capital is mainly related to a clubber’s regular physical presence in the local scene, centring the importance of the embodied experience:

9 Word derived from the German ‘Proletarier’, originally referring to low-wage workers, now referring to uneducated people with bad manners. ‘Roughneck’ could be considered its English equivalent. (‘Proll’ 2018)

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There’s a complicated set of rules governing a city’s nightlife. No one has ever written them down because they’re constantly changing. To keep up with them you just have to carry on going clubbing regularly. (107)

Here the idea of a ‘club’ seems to be related to its literal definition and general connotations of a closed community which requires a membership. This membership is additionally defined by the seniority of a clubber’s active nightlife, one of the “eternal, fundamental principles” (107).

In view of the importance of a clubber’s physical presence and seniority within the local scene, the role of techno tourism can then be considered ambivalent for Berlin club culture and conceptions of authenticity within the scene – who can be considered a real scenester? Internationalism is a central aspect in Rapp’s work, which can already be derived from the title of his work. He writes that the role of the ‘Easyjet set’ has become fundamental for the existence and evolution of club culture. With this term Rapp refers to the increasing influx of tourists who visit Berlin specifically for its club culture, as a consequence of many flights offered by low cost airlines. The use of the subcultural image of Berlin in city marketing appends to the attractivity of the city’s nightlife.

The internet is another force stimulating this international character of club culture, but although it has a worldwide community, this global community considers Berlin as its physical centre (30). According to Rapp, techno tourism has not simply become an integral part of the culture, but in concluding his work, he explicitly examines it as a positive effect: “No one wants a return to the bleak village-like Berlin of the eighties, nor a comeback of the nineties adventure playground for indigenous ravers.” (266) The influence of the internet could be considered a threat to the underground, as “[t]hese days nothing is too underground to appear on the internet” (25), and therefore to authenticity as well, as these notions are often related (see §2.3.2 ‘Authenticity in club culture’). The idea of the underground has evolved, although ‘going underground’ remains an important trope: “Around the turn of the century the music went back underground in order to revitalize itself.” (13) However, the underground could also have a negative connotation, especially when referred to in relation to the earlier phases of club culture, with the city having a reputation of being stuck with one of the “eternal underground” (99).

Conclusion In the noughties, the utopian image of Berlin was not realistic anymore, which is expressed through a sense of nostalgia to the club scene of the nineties (Sark 2018). However, the club scene still managed to maintain itself and experience a resurgence after having gone ‘back underground’. Meanwhile, the city itself developed into a bigger economic force and tourist destination after its post-Wende phase of political disorganisation and Temporary Autonomous Zones, also influencing the discourse of club culture. Professionalisation and corporatisation were not only occurring for Berlin as a whole, but also for the club scene – although the municipality’s ambitions to become a global economic power were not fulfilled, the city kept growing and gentrifying. Club culture managed to establish itself as an integral part of Berlin, partly due to the involvement of city marketing which is a blessing on the one hand, but a curse on the other: club culture rose from a subculture into a mass phenomenon, an idea that scenesters have opposed themselves since techno’s early days (Bader and Scharenberg 2009).

Inherent to the processes through which subcultures define themselves, opposing to and defining itself against the idea of the mainstream remained a constant factor throughout this

31 phase. The fear of selling out, which already became topical towards the end of the previous phase, persisted. A new threat is found in tourism, as well as the internet. However, Rapp illustrates how those factors, from which the club scene tends to dissent itself have also contributed to club culture’s existence and its character. The inevitable professionalisation of the scene and the attraction of tourists also stimulates club culture and ensures its importance for the city. The internet is considered a threat to the underground character, as nothing is too underground to appear online, but paradoxically also constitutes an international imagined community of techno fans who share their passion for dance music and therefore the liveliness of the scene, while the physical dimension of the culture remains central as well. The tension within these factors characterise this second phase of club culture.

The local scene, manifesting itself as an embodied community within this growing international framework, is, however, still inward-looking. While the imagined community grew, local clubbers looked for ways to ensure exclusivity. In determining authenticity, and therefore who belonged to the scene and who did not, other factors than the dynamics of music genres started to matter: seniority in the scene, for example, and the knowledge of idiosyncratic German vocabulary could distinguish the ‘real’ local clubber from a tourist.

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5. Phase III: Clubsterben? (2010s)

Figure 3. Geographical distribution of clubs in Berlin, 2010s-now Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 9. Geographical distribution of clubs in Berlin, 2010s-now The Easyjet set had started to leave clear marks on the club cultural landscape of Berlin in the 2000s. The relation between tourism and Berlin’s nightlife remains ambivalent, however, as it has on the one hand become an integral part of the culture, but contrastingly is also regarded a threat to the authenticity of the subculture, in which cultural capital and seniority are important elements. A constant factor with regard to authenticity since the 1990s is the fear of selling out, that is in tension with progressing professionalisation and institutionalisation, which undeniably also enhanced the culture. In the course of the noughties, the internet became increasingly important in the formation of subcultural identity and the construction of a sense of imagined community, although the embodied community searched for ways to ensure the exclusivity of the scene. The feeling of belonging to the subculture is more and more constituted through the online realm, but actually belonging to the local scene is still based on seniority and physical attendance. In the 2010s a similar influence of the internet remains, as well as the shift from music to business and the tension between those. In addition, the classic narrative of techno as the sound of reunification appears to be rather stable and is still being retold. Yet, also new elements have entered Berlin’s club cultural discourse in the 2010s. Whereas in the 1990s the discourse tended to be focused on the internal dynamics of a predominantly inward-looking scene, Rapp’s work already preluded the importance of the international dimension, which has now become the main focus of many publications: club culture seems to be appropriated for

33 city branding of Berlin as Europe’s party capital. Furthermore, it is no longer merely the authenticity of club culture that is perceived to be under threat, for example of the mainstream, but a more substantial threat is at play: several forces have become a menace to the existence of iconic Berlin clubs, which are reported to be in danger. It is not merely the symbolic aspects of club culture that are vulnerable now, but material club cultural heritage as well. Whereas the scene was previously concerned with maintaining a certain audience, atmosphere or music style, in the 2010s it reportedly became a mere matter of survival for some clubs. Additionally, the role of the government in this has become complex: it seems as if the Berlin municipality has to compromise between supporting and regulating club culture.

Primary sources As Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2015) have illustrated, the media is very important in the construction and consolidation of identities within electronic dance music culture. However, the more recent the period of a subculture that is studied, the more scattered the media sources about that culture are. Print media is not able to keep up with the fast paced developments of the club cultural field. Due to the fast changing nature of my research object, I will use a combination of 2010s publications from niche media, mass media and sources that compromise between the two in defining the discursive patterns in force within this period. The fast changing discourse of popular culture constitutes a topical and interesting research field, but also makes it more complex to find a representative all-encompassing source tying all the knots together, such as Denk & Von Thülen’s or Rapp’s works that were central to the previous chapters. For the most recent years of club culture it is thus important to demonstrate awareness of the media landscape forming the club cultural discourse.

Historically subcultures have always distanced themselves from mass media (Thornton 1996). Therefore these cultures often establish their own media, referred to as ‘niche media’. In the early days of many subcultures, niche media often existed out of printed magazines in a do it yourself style, made by and for scenesters. Since the 2000s, online magazines, fora and more recently social media have taken over the print medium, enhancing a shift from a predominantly local to an increasingly glocal character of subcultures: an imagined community within which scenesters from different embodied communities worldwide are able to exchange information and interests with each other. Examples of club culture oriented online sources are Mixmag, DJ Mag and Resident Advisor. As a result of the focus on these niche media, as illustrated in the previous two chapters, scenes are generally inward-looking. This inward- looking tendency of the scene has been adhered to by Jaimangal-Jones (2018) in analysing the concept of authenticity within recent DJ related discourse.

However, it is the reciprocity between niche media, which often constitute an auto-image of its own scene and have this scene as its only intended audience, and mass media, against which subcultures define themselves, that constitutes the complete discursive field. Thereby the inside as well as outside circulation of the club cultural discourse will be taken into account. I will take on a similar approach as Sark (2018), examining various contemporary sources to describe a broader narrative about Berlin club culture. In addition to the high degree of discursivity that exists for club culture through its ephemeral and transient character, the discursive framework that is established through the nature of the chosen media, the writers’ backgrounds and the years of publication play a role in analysis of these sources.

Firstly I will use two publications by Resident Advisor for my analysis. It is a niche medium which is used by clubbers as a calendar for events, but also offers an online magazine with articles, videos and podcast episodes. Since 2011 they have produced a video series called

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‘Real Scenes’, in which they highlight several global destinations which they consider significant for electronic dance music culture. The third episode about Berlin features several scenesters, among whom Tobias Rapp, who elaborate on their experience with the previous decade of club culture (Nation 2011). In 2013 club cultural researcher Luis Manuel Garcia published an article about the influence of the GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte), a music licensing organisation, who announced a tariff reform (Garcia 2013b). The article is very music specific as well as local and gives insight into the influence of legal practices and a ‘media war’ on Berlin club culture.

VICE generally compromises between a niche and mass medium, as it focuses on youth culture, of which club culture comprises one segment among a broad variety of topics. VICE interviewed Michael Stangl, promotor and presenter of Boiler Room – a very famous platform among the global clubbing community, recording and broadcasting live DJ performances, their YouTube channel has over 9 million views at the time of writing – about safety regulations leading to closure of clubs (Glazer 2015). Despite writing for a broader medium, VICE journalist Glazer is a club cultural journalist and scenester, based in Berlin and therefore provides an insider’s perspective. Additionally, Rolling Stone is a music specific medium. They published an article about the influence of tourism and gentrification on Berghain (Rogers 2014). Rolling Stone author Rogers is also based in Berlin, but does not focus specifically on club culture. In terms of mass media I will take into account an article by Spiegel International, the international department of Der Spiegel, a German weekly magazine and the largest in Europe (Pfaffinger and Poschmann 2012). Also a contribution on The Conversation, a journalist platform based on academic input, will be analysed (Schofield 2016). Schofield has published an academic account about club culture with significant media coverage, of which this is one publication.

A remark already needs to be made with regards to the source material, since the scope of about 6 years that the period in this chapter entails is quite broad, given that discursive patterns within subcultures can change on a monthly basis. Not all the nuances that can possibly be made are therefore encompassed in this chapter, however, I have been able to distinguish several interesting overarching patterns in this material.

International gaze The main narrative of techno as the soundtrack for Berlin after the fall of the Wall is retold throughout each decade: “If you want an explanation for the extreme nature of the Berlin club scene, you need to look at the city’s history.” (Rogers 2014) This history, that again is central, is that of Berlin without a government in the early nineties and therefore the city as a post-war playground in which club culture was able to flourish (Nation 2011; Schofield 2016). After this phase of freedom, temporary venues and an audience which mainly existed of Berliners commenced the development of techno becoming a business, as well as the increasing number of tourists visiting Berlin clubs: “It has become an industry, it works like an industry.” (Nation 2011, min. 11:09-11:50) Accordingly, many themes and tropes within this narrative remain similar. For example, the discursive character of club culture again comes to the fore, as stories of club experiences are being reconstructed in hindsight in order to set the scene. Furthermore, many references are made to the idea of underground culture, although it also becomes apparent that club culture – whereas Rapp referred to this culture as a niche – is growing fast and therefore the definition of underground fluctuates: “What does it mean for a club to be underground when the entire world wants to dance there?”, writes Rogers (2014), yet Schofield (2016) still defines the underground as unfamiliar to a general public. The scene is thus adapting to change and shifting definitions (Pfaffinger and Poschmann 2012; Rogers

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2014). Additionally, despite processes of professionalisation and other changes, the perception of Berlin as an exception to other scenes remains, which in terms of Resident Advisor is framed through authenticity: “Yet Berlin still maintains a credibility that other cities lack.” (Nation 2011)

The club cultural discourse shifts, however, according to the contemporary circumstances. For example, there is a shift noticeable towards internationalism, following the previous decade. Although the gaze of niche media such as Resident Advisor and Rolling Stone – the latter of which is not specifically focused on club, but on music – is still partly internal, illustrating “how important underground music scenes are to those who participate in them” (Garcia 2013b), generally there is more focus on the international dimension of Berlin local club culture. Berlin is framed as a modern European capital, top tourist destination and Europe’s main party city (Rogers 2014; Glazer 2015; Schofield 2016; Pfaffinger and Poschmann 2012). Whereas the attempt to reform the city into an important international actor in the nineties did not succeed, Berlin is gradually gaining this status. Although the rise of Berlin as an international force is partly due to techno tourists, given that many visitors are drawn to Berlin for its nightlife, the ever so divided city becoming a capital leaves less space for club culture (Rogers 2014).

Material heritage and the threat of gentrification Whereas in previous chapters threats to club culture have been identified, these threats mainly influenced internal features of the subculture, such as the people involved and the determination of which music, parties or clubs could be considered cool or not. Those threats often were not made explicit, but could be derived from the examined discourse. Expanding on the threat of tourism and other processes of globalisation in the 2000s, in the 2010s further shifted. Articles, published by niche as well as mass media, explicitly refer to Berlin club culture being under threat. Several articles’ titles already indicate that there is a bigger issue at hand in this decade than a threat to coolness, for example “Here's Why Berlin's Best Clubs Might Be Closing” (Glazer 2015) and “Berlin's Reputation as a Party Town Under Threat” (Pfaffinger and Poschmann 2012). It is no longer the internal threat of authenticity loss or the danger of losing a certain identity which is central, but a new element is added, namely that of material heritage: the genuine possibility of clubs closing arose and therefore the loss of the physical manifestations of club culture. Whereas previously the scene was based on temporality and closure of clubs has happened more often, such as around the 1990s, when venues came and went, the significance now appears to be greater. The explanation for this is twofold. On the other hand the nature of the media examined for this chapter could play a role: online media, especially mass media such as Der Spiegel, take on a more direct and outward perspective than the books discussed in the previous chapters. On the other hand, however, the significance of embodiment of the local scene might have become bigger as a counteract to intangible processes of globalisation.

Various threats to the existence of club culture can be derived from the material. One of the threats leading to the closure of clubs that can be identified is the force of gentrification and, correspondingly, investors wanting to transform Berlin into the global city that the government had promised in the nineties: “The gentrification process means places associated with alternative scenes are being closed down and scenes pushed to the margins.” (Schofield 2016) Following the The Conversation article, gentrification and the club scene are considered absolute opposites, in which the process of gentrification leaves absolutely no room for club culture or other subculture. Club culture, however, is also a catalyst of gentrification: within the framework of creative cities, club culture enhances urban regeneration and is appropriated for

36 urban cultural policies in order to increase the allure of cities (Bader and Bialluch 2009; Mendes 2013). Clubs have an ambiguous relation to gentrification, which can be explained through different understandings of gentrification processes: in the discursive pattern concerning gentrification as a threat, as found in the primary material, club culture is opposed to gentrification in its paradigmatic definition, orientated towards market and consumers, in which the primary gains of the gentrification process are made by real estate developers, businesses and financial institutions – Mendes (2013) also regards this type of gentrification as a harmful effect of the ideas and practices of creative cities. Club culture, however, is a part of ‘marginal gentrification’, a movement closely related to the idea of creative cities, “that involves less privileged sectors of the new middle classes” which are attracted by the social and cultural environment of the city centre (ibid, 144). Marginal gentrifiers are often creatives, who value “diversity, tolerance and the freedom of expression of cultures and lifestyles” (ibid, 147) and oppose themselves against homogeneity – similar to the subversion against the mainstream as an important club cultural value. Furthermore, the stimulation of cultural practices is often one of the first steps in gentrification processes, as “culture tends to operate as a means of displacing local resistance to urban regeneration processes” (Vivant 2009, 49). This explains the ambiguous role of club culture for gentrification, as clubs are considered catalysts in an early stage of urban regeneration processes, whereas further urban development leads to “contradictory mechanisms of expulsion and reappropriation” of culture (Mendes 2013, 141).

Another threat is formed by the 2012 tariff reform of the GEMA and therefore more generally the music industry and its capitalist character, which is against the independent and small- scale nature of the scene: “If nothing else, GEMA's initial tariffs and its public statements afterwards exposed a profound lack of understanding about how small, independent music scenes work in Germany.” (Garcia 2013b) The last distinguishable force leading to the actual closure of clubs is that of safety regulations by the Berlin government (Glazer 2015). Since previously the government’s administration was not well organised until long after the fall of the Wall, clubs could easily get away with insufficient safety measures. In more recent years, however, also taking into consideration the Love Parade crowd disaster in 2010, in which 21 people died and over 500 were injured during a parade in a tunnel due to overcrowdedness in Duisburg, the German as well as local governments require more building regulations and safety measures from clubs.

Under the influence of these threats, the definition of Clubsterben has taken on a more literal interpretation, of clubs dying out, the process of which has been ascribed to gentrification (Rogers 2014). As a reaction to the increasing number of clubs under threat of closing down, tropes of rescuing and saving are used: “to rescue the city's reputation as a trendy party town” (Pfaffinger and Poschmann 2012). The latter citate, derived from a mass medium publication, also illustrates that the discourse is becoming less inward-looking, given that the city’s reputation is now central rather than the scene itself – and thus an external rather than internal perspective. This is confirmed by Rolling Stone, offering a more international focus as well, appropriating Berlin as “Europe’s unofficial party capital” (Rogers 2014). The Berlin scene is also compared to the American electronic dance music scene, stating that in comparison to the USA the Berlin scene is “unspoiled” and the venues look “run-down and authentic” (ibid), the latter being another indicator of the importance of material heritage.

How to remain authentic This authentic image of Berlin is maintained despite the influence of tourism in Berlin, which logically continues to play a role in this decade. Whereas Rapp presents tourism as an integral

37 part of club culture, without which the culture would not have been able to flourish, and continues to do so in his features in this decade, other scenesters consider this differently. There appears to be a tension between tourism on the one hand and authenticity or the degree of underground-ness of the club scene on the other. This is exemplified by one fragment in Real Scenes, in which one of the owners of club Watergate explains why they have a door policy, implying that it is mainly tourists who get rejected from entrance:

Then you have this strange mixture of people that actually come from an underground culture background, they meet people that have never been to a club before in their life. This is why we have selection at the door: separating the ones that themselves would never like the club, we make a decision for them actually, because they just don’t fit. They have never experienced this culture and it kills the vibe inside if you have too many inside. (Nation 2011, min. 9:45-10:28)

Alike to the role of tourism, the role of the government appears to be ambivalent in this decade, altering between regulation and support. On the one hand, the Berlin government is considered a threat to club culture’s existence, for example through the new safety requirements and the involvement of investors in replacing cultural spaces with housing. On the other, however, local politicians for example also have shown to be supportive, therefore acknowledging the value of the scene for the city. A concrete example is the establishment of the Berliner Musicboard in 2013, a governmental funding organisation rooting for the importance of pop music for the city, including club culture. One of their tasks is to help clubs find new locations in case they are subject to closure.

Alongside these developments in the scene and its discourse, the idea of the underground and authenticity have also been put on edge. As illustrated, Berlin’s club culture is still considered unique, compared to other club scenes. What exactly makes the Berlin scene so particular? One explanation lies in the origin of the scene, which remained central even in the 2010s. Sark (2018) distilled a sense of nostalgia from 2000s cultural production about Berlin, in which pre-gentrified Berlin in the nineties with all its empty spaces is mythologised, thereby not only referring to club culture’s material but also immaterial heritage. This seems to resemble the nostalgia trope of longing to an earlier phase of club culture, which can be retrieved from the source material. The Resident Advisor video as well as Rogers’ article both refer to a time when there were ‘freaks’, relating this to authenticity and uniqueness:

Back then it was, like, all the freaks. And I felt attracted to that. More to the music maybe. I felt attracted to the people that were there, to the situation that you had the feeling only you know about it. That was something that made me feel special and I wanted to be part of it. (Nation 2011, min. 7:39-8:02)

Shambhu Leroux, a voluble, heavily tattooed blues singer who for eight years was one of the club’s bartenders, said “there was a genuine vibe at Berghain in the beginning.” She remembers that the crowd welcomed nonconformists, including transgender people like her. (Rogers 2014)

Similar to the 2000s, seniority constitutes a sense of authenticity, as newcomers form a threat and “the elements that created it begin to dissolve” (Garcia 2013b). Furthermore, the unique character of Berlin is said to lie in the ephemerality of club culture:

If you leave the club, you close the door and the only thing that stays it that is was somehow great. You do not remember any melody line. It was just a great feeling.

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And you’ll enter the reality again, but you find good other spaces, breakfast cafes, parks, where the bridge from the club to the reality is not so difficult. And this, you only find in Berlin. (Nation 2011, min. 1:21-1:51)

Additionally, the latter half of this quotation illustrates the conception that the experience of Berlin by day is coherent with the nightlife. This expands on the free, subcultural character of Berlin which had been prominent long before the techno scene emerged. Furthermore, although techno culture is an important part of Berlin’s creative character, it comprises only one aspect of the overarching creative scene of Berlin which gives shape to the ‘creative city’, blending day and night (Stahl 2014a). According to the cited fragment, this is unique for Berlin.

Conclusion Despite the increasingly scattered media landscape, as club cultural discourse is predominantly constructed through the internet, in the analysis of niche as well as mass media, several patterns in Berlin’s club scene discourse have been distinguished which contribute to the identity formation of the scene. The shift towards internationalism had already been preluded by Rapp, but the establishment of a global discursive field has become even clearer. However, the scene is still characterised locally, as Berlin’s atmosphere by day uniquely corresponds to its nightlife.

Previously temporality was considered an integral part of club culture and the scene was not so much employed with the continuation of physical locations, as there were so many empty spaces that new locations would emerge nevertheless. In the primary material from the 2010s a new pattern becomes visible: in terms of embodiment, mainly the embodied experience was central, whereas now the threat to close physical locations appeared preeminent – indicating a shift to the importance not only of immaterial, but also material heritage for club culture. This could be interpreted as a reaction to the increasing globalisation of the city as well as the club scene, engendering the need for tangible, embodied manifestations.

Gentrification was conceived as the biggest threat to these physical locations, although club culture could also be considered a factor that enhances gentrification, as it increases the allure of the city for young people, mainly in the first stages of urban regeneration. Furthermore, tourism is still considered a threat to the understanding of the underground, having a similarly ambivalent role as the Berlin government: while the economic growth of Berlin leads to gentrification and the attraction of investors by the government, club culture also contributes to this economic growth, is instrumentalised for creating a subcultural image of the city. Accordingly, the municipality has also shown support when club culture has been subject to closure.

Similarly to the first two phases, the local scene kept seeking for a means to distinguish itself among globalisation and gentrification. Authenticity was still defined by someone’s seniority in the local scene, which was regulated through, for example, door policies. Thereby it was also defined against tourism, as tourists could not obtain seniority in the scene. Furthermore the physical locations could establish an authentic character. Accordingly, the origin of the scene is considered authentic, which is often referred to with a certain sense of nostalgia, as the character of club culture would never return.

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6. Phase IV: Rewriting existing narratives (now) As with popular culture in general, Berlin’s club cultural landscape is adapting to change. In terms of physical spaces, the geographical distribution of clubs shifted slowly from West to East (see Figures 1, 2 & 3 for visualisation). Over the previously described decades the subculture became subject to influences of globalisation, popularisation and gentrification, eventually being threatened by the phenomenon of Clubsterben. Although the culture became more and more globally oriented, the scene remained inward-looking and constantly reoriented to determine who or what was authentic.

The previous chapters have given insight into these changes by giving an insiders’ as well as outsiders’ perspective on Berlin’s club scene. This chapter will focus on the most recent years of Berlin club culture, of which the beginning and ending cannot yet be demarcated as we are currently in the midst of it. One development is especially significant in this latest phase, namely how a shift in race discourse affects music scene discourses and the peak the racism debate reached in 2020. The glocal character of the scene will remain evident, as a global discursive framework influences the local discourse. Another important force is the COVID-19 crisis, which constitutes an ongoing threat to nightlife globally since March 2020. This threat mainly raises questions to which no answers have been formulated yet, as the crisis continues to affect club culture’s main component: physical experience. Although it was said to be in danger, club culture has not died out, but the question is whether its breath will last long enough to survive this crisis.

Meanwhile, some currents within Berlin’s club cultural field persist. The closure of clubs due to the ending of temporary contracts still remains topical. An example of this is Griessmuehle: the famous club was “on the verge of extinction” due to their rental contract ending and their property lot being sold to investors, writes co-organiser Michaela Krüger (2020). Despite gaining over 50, 000 signs for their petition named ‘#saveourspaces’ and support from the cultural department of the Berlin government, the owner decided to further develop the property site at the Sonnenallee and Griessmuehle was forced to find a new location to continue their club activities – which they were finally able to find amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, accordingly leading to a change of their brand into ‘Revier Südost’ in the course of 2021 (see Figure 3 for the old and new location of Griessmuehle). Aside from the successful conclusion, the case of Griessmuehle is exemplary of the ongoing threat of club closure in Berlin under the influence of gentrification. The threat of closure for this specific club also reached international media, serving as an example of Berlin club culture. Articles continue to emphasise the centrality of Berlin as a symbol for club culture internationally (e.g. McGrath 2020; Sramota 2020).

Furthermore, the support of the government in Griessmuehle’s process is noteworthy. After mobilising club culture for city marketing since the 2000s and, accordingly, the constitution of the Clubcommission, Berlin’s club scene has increasingly become embedded into Berlin government structures. For example, in 2016 Berghain secured the same tax status as Berlin concert venues, followed by all Berlin clubs in 2020 after a declaration of the German court (Radomsky 2020). Gaining the same cultural status as ‘high’ culture, clubs are now being acknowledged by the government as serious cultural venues rather than entertainment businesses.

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Primary sources In terms of internationalism it has become clear that club culture has constituted a shared, international discursive space with English as its main language, reaching a broad audience which is still growing. The previous chapters have already introduced this growth, which has only increased mainly due to the upsurge of social media. A telling example is an incident surrounding world-famous techno DJ Nina Kraviz, who posted a photo of herself with cornrows, a typically African-American hairstyle. She received significant criticism from the international club community, accusing her of cultural appropriation and racism, against which she defended herself on social media (Cetin 2019). This illustrates the fast, reactive development as well as the internationality of the scene’s most recent phase of discourse.

Most sources selected for this chapter are therefore less focused on Berlin specifically, but despite their more general approach to electronic music and club culture, still reference Berlin. The main debates within club culture are held through more international media, but also have an impact on a local level. The media chosen for analysis, with the exception of Thaddeus- Johns’ article in New York Times (2019), can still be considered niche: the article by Goh (2015) is the transcript of an interview held during CTM Festival 2014, a festival for dance music held in Berlin, the piece by Wei (2020) was published on Electronic Beats, a German platform dedicated to electronic music culture, and Brown’s article (2019) was published on Fact Magazine’s website, of which the subtitle states: ‘Transmissions from the underground’, indicating an underground approach. However, these platforms can only be considered niche because of their focus on one type of scene, as they still have a broad audience that is reached through social media and partnerships with commercial businesses. For example, Electronic Beats is sponsored by Telekom Deutschland and has over 500,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook and Fact Magazine has a similar amount of following. It is thus disputable how underground these media still are, despite their handling of niche, electronic music related topics.

Influence of global race discourse The main discursive shift for this period first reached me when scrolling through social medium Instagram in June 2020. The death of African American George Floyd as a result of police brutality in May 2020 triggered a wave of activism and protests globally. Within the club scene labels, clubs and DJs posted a black square image on their Instagram pages, a sign of solidarity within social media initiative ‘#TheShowMustBePaused’, raising awareness for the efforts and struggles of Black people in the music industry. What struck me most, however, was DJs sharing an image posted by New York dance music fanzine about the origin of music genres, all coming from Black people, with the following text: “Remember: Jazz, blues, rock & roll, funk, soul, R&B, disco, house, and techno came from Black people.” (loveinjection.nyc 2020) [emphasis by original author]

Although this is also relevant for rock music and other popular music genres, it is especially topical for dance music and for Berlin club culture, since the origin of house music lies in Black communities getting together in Chicago’s empty warehouses in the 80s as a form of resistance. Contrasting to other music cultures, the momentary and ephemeral character of club culture has led to a lack of reporting and recordings of club culture, which constitutes a difficulty to trace back its history and define its origin. Recently a discursive shift has taken place towards publications focusing on the origin of electronic dance music in Black communities, contesting the common narratives of these scenes. Brown (2019) for example relates the word ‘techno’ to the concept of ‘technocracy’ and the technocratic divide: “When factoring in the specificity of African-Americans’ 400-year-long history of oppression by means

41 of an exclusively white European colonial governing body, the understanding of technocracy looks a lot more sinister.” As electronic dance music is closely related to technological possibilities (e.g. Schwanhäußer 2014, 110), the problematic role of technocracy and technology in terms of colonialism should also be taken into account in the examination of techno culture, Brown argues.

This type of discourse is also illustrated by Wei’s (2020) essay written shortly after Floyd’s death. The appropriation of Black underground culture by white peoples is central to her article, in which she specifically reflects on Berlin’s history of club culture. She presents a nuance to the predominant narrative about techno as the sound of reunification, noting that techno had a similar effect of resistance and freedom on Berlin’s youth after the fall of the Wall as it had on Black and Brown communities in New York and Chicago. However, she also states that “European regional variants quickly became divorced from the genre’s original ethos of sublimating Black and Brown collective trauma into art” (Wei 2020). The dissociation of house music from Blackness seems to be considered a threat to its ‘original ethos’, thus to its authenticity. This authenticity is enclosed in the idea of underground culture, which could not be considered with whiteness according to Wei, quoting club community member Anthony Stevens: “There was no real, kind of white underground culture.” (ibid) Despite not questioning the general narrative of Berlin club culture after the fall of the Wall, Wei emphasises the importance of contextualising electronic music properly, by giving notice of the battle against systemic inequity that the history of this culture entails. The appropriation of club culture by Berlin, possibly by Berlin’s government as instrument for city marketing, but also by the scene itself, is considered absent within the narrative:

There is no doubt that the electronic music had an immediate, indelible impact on Berliners, but it is truly presumptuous for them to believe that it was their city’s post-industrial ruins and their political plight that influenced the subversive sound. (Wei 2020) [emphasis by original author]

The rising presence of race discourse has thus affected club cultural discourse. Although this discourse shift has thus mainly been made visible in recent times, professor of African- American Studies Weheliye already presented such a perspective earlier, for example in an interview at CTM festival, focusing on the politics of Berlin’s electronic music scene (Goh 2015). I came across this interview through the short reference that Ludewig (2020) did. Alike Wei, Weheliye states there is a deliberate dissociation of Berlin techno from Blackness, which is also related to the in- and exclusion of genres:

In these narratives, there is definitely a move to disassociate Berlin techno from Black musical influences. […] For me, it isn’t an either-or question, but a matter of highlighting that there existed other forms of clubbing and musical cultures, which are once again being written out of history. (Goh 2015)

According to Weheliye, this tendency is also related to more general processes of identity formation in Germany and specifically Berlin after the reunification of East and West. Techno is thus considered to be appropriated in forming a coherent narrative of the reunification history. This seemingly coherent narrative has long neglected issues of racism and violence during the early years of club culture, which need to be considered in composing the history of club culture, also regarding the origin of club culture in Black communities (Goh 2015).

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An example of these issues lies in door policies, which have always been infamous, especially for Berlin club Berghain. Although these regulations have always been a topic of discussion, the shift in race discourse makes reflections on door policies even more actual. This is especially relevant since club culture is framed as a progressive and open culture of resistance originating from Black communities and therefore offering them a safe space, while door policies are often said to be racist (Wei 2020; Thaddeus-Johns 2019). The legacy of openness that Berlin has prided itself on is not always being put into practice by bouncers and “there are many who feel that bouncers use racist criteria and exclude people from ethnic minorities from joining the party” (Thaddeus-Johns 2019). The processes of in- and exclusion and hence the power relations that are performed in appropriation are therefore also made evident in the controversy surrounding door policies.

Questions without answers: COVID-19 as a new threat In addition to club cultural discourse changing under the influence of race discourse, there is another development in the most recent period of dance music scenes which is currently putting these scenes on edge: COVID-19 as a great threat to the physical manifestation of club culture. It poses a threat not only to Berlin nightlife, but to club culture in general, which raises questions that cannot yet be answered as this factor of insecurity is still ongoing at the time of writing this thesis (January 2021). Several articles have been published emphasising the bodily experience of clubbing – the lack of physical clubbing forms a threat against the physical experience and ephemerality of club culture – and the changing experience of Berlin as a city when there is no nightlife around (Electra 2020; Hanford 2020). For Berlin specifically the streaming initiative United We Stream – partly funded by the Berlin municipality – illustrated the importance of night culture for the city, raising over €500,000 altogether for the city’s clubs. Despite the current circumstances, this illustrates the continuous embeddedness of club culture in Berlin’s governmental structures as well as clubbers’ appreciation for the culture which remains strong after almost four decades of club culture.

Conclusion This chapter has illustrated the glocal character of club culture, showing the influence of global discourse on the local discursive field. The size of the global community, indicated through the popularity of media, highlights that club culture cannot be considered niche anymore. Most of the sources selected for this period have an international scope, but several refer to Berlin, acknowledging its importance as a local scene within the global imagined community. Whereas in the previous phase the main debates took place on a local level and were based on a timely shift in discourse due to contemporary circumstances, the current topics are discussed within the global realm of club culture, through online (social) media.

The analysed material shows how a global race discourse leads to a tension concerning the lack of nuance in the general historical narrative of Berlin club culture, possibly caused by the momentary and selective character of this subculture which has previously made it easy to neglect the origin, leaving too much room for appropriation. The in- and exclusion mechanisms of club culture, including door policies that embody power structures, are exemplary of this neglect. The emphasis on contextualisation is interesting, as in previous phases the origin of club culture is described as authentic, while the racial origin of club culture has been overlookedFigure or underestimated. SEQ Figure \* ARABIC Only 13. Berghain recently as an the art exhibitiondominant space narrative instead of clubis being in the summer contested and of 2020 (Loos 2020) although the influence of race discourse has mainly come to the fore in the most recent years of club cultural media coverage, it is relevant for the narrative in each phase presented so far. This discursive effect has commenced and has reached a large audience through social media.

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However, it is still the question whether it will change anything for the physical, local experience, as the majority of this debate took place in the online realm, in a time when clubs were closed. The COVID-19 virus has formed a new threat to club culture, since, at the time of writing, clubs in Berlin have been closed for over a year. Will these developments prelude a new phase of club culture and therefore of discourse? The question remains which clubs and, additionally, which elements of nightlife will still exist after the COVID-19 crisis.

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7. Conclusion This thesis has made an attempt at giving insight into the complex dynamics of a subculture with a highly ephemeral character and the polyvocality of its discursive field. It might seem unsatisfactorily to conclude by stating that authenticity is undefinable. However, taking into account the discursive character of club culture, this thesis does lead me to the conclusion that any understanding of authenticity – therefore already indicating that there are different understandings – is constructed and contested. Determining what is authentic and what is not relies on the local context, the moment of asking and the political and cultural circumstances at that point in time, as well as whether you ask someone either within or outside of the scene. Nevertheless, I have been able to discern the circulating narratives about Berlin club culture throughout the four phases I distinguished and will be able to pose general conclusions about aspects of authenticity. Authenticity can be understood as a means to define the identity of club culture. Changing circumstances lead to changing definitions. In my material I have discerned what these circumstances were over time and how these influenced the authenticity discourse of club culture, specifically for post-1989 Berlin.

Firstly, the general narrative of club culture does not shift so much, nor does the discourse, indicating the durability of the subculture since the 1990s. Several aspects remain topical throughout all phases. I have myself constructed a narrative of an increasingly international imagined community of club culture, gradually developing from a generally local, inward- looking embodied community into a global discursive field in which international and local discourse influence each other, constituting a glocal character. The scene became embedded in an international realm of club culture. Nevertheless, Berlin scenesters in each phase remained focused on the exclusivity of their scene, reorienting their definition of authenticity and therefore of belonging. According to the circumstances and threats that were perceived to influence the scene, several aspects could indicate authenticity, such as the (re)invention of musical genres which was indicative of originality and therefore authenticity in an early stage of club culture, whereas later seniority in the scene or knowledge of local vocabulary could constitute subcultural capital for a clubber.

There is one threat to authenticity which originated in the 1990s and which persisted to be a menace to club culture throughout each decade. The subculture – alike other subcultures – has always defined itself against the conception of a mainstream, which remains an abstract entity, but is consequently considered a threat. The idea of the mainstream is closely related to increasing popularity of club culture and, accordingly, the development of techno into a business, which has caused tension from the 1990s onwards. The role of professionalisation seems to be ambivalent, as it has both enhanced the scene, but also led to ‘selling out’. A similarly equivocal role is constructed for tourism and involvement of the government. Furthermore the trope of the underground recurs in every phase: club culture was literally underground in an early stage, as clubbers had to crawl through a hole to go to a party in a basement, or can be considered figuratively underground, as it is not so known to audiences ‘above the ground’.

Nevertheless, I have also identified developments in Berlin’s club cultural discourse. In the early phases these shifts relied on club culture’s local context, with the changing city as its backdrop. The varying definition of the underground indicates a shift in authenticity discourse, as underground and authenticity are often related. In the first phase (1980s-1990s), authenticity was for example determined by the idea of renewal, being in the know, but also by distancing the credibility of club culture from the capitalised West. From this early adapted anti-

45 capitalist character subversion against commercialisation and professionalisation logically followed, forces which have influenced club culture since its early days. In the noughties the city further developed into an economic power, with club culture as an important source of tourist attraction. The scene, however, considered tourism a threat and therefore defined authenticity mostly in terms of seniority within the scene: a clubber had to be physically present on a regular basis in order to keep up with its local discourse. In the 2010s Berlin was literally threatened with Clubsterben, the dying out of clubs. This was partly due to government regulations concerning safety and music licensing, although the main reason was the termination of rental contracts and therefore the attraction of investors to redevelop club’s properties. Club culture has shown to have an ambiguous relation with gentrification: on the one hand dance music culture enhances gentrification, especially in early stages of urban regeneration processes, but gentrification is also considered a big threat to the culture, as making space for regeneration leads to club closure. The primary material from the 2010s indicated a turn towards the importance of material club cultural heritage, whereas previously mainly the embodied experience was central as locations had a temporary character. In the most recent years of club cultural discourse, the subculture shows to be embedded in a broader cultural framework, as the increasing awareness about race influences club scene discourse, referring to the origin of club culture and the lack of nuance in club culture narratives, internationally but also for Berlin specific.

The last phase I described, however, has just commenced and is still sensitive to further development, as club cultural discourse changes fast. Additionally, a new threat has come to the fore: COVID-19 poses a great challenge to the physical manifestations of club culture, which I have shown are very important for the scene. It leaves me questioning whether a new phase of discourse is commencing, as clubs have currently (February 2021) been closed for almost a year. The city will continue developing, whereas club culture is forced to stagnate. Although Berlin clubbers have not quit raving, despite governmental regulations, Clubsterben will presumably become even more topical than it has been in the 2010s (Haarbach 2020). Will the city meanwhile redefine its identity without the presence of this subculture? What will the first clubbing experience after COVID-19 be like? There are many questions that we cannot answer yet, for scholarly research cannot predict club culture’s behaviour. References to a new post-pandemic roaring twenties have already been made (Glenza 2020) – which would most certainly comprise an interesting new chapter to follow up this thesis.

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