Originating at the end of the 1980’s in Detroit and Chicago, techno and house are electronic music movements that kept evolving ever since, linked to society changes, and sometimes confronting them. the past few years have seen a resurgence of these cultures, and they are now permeating everywhere, from clubs and big music festivals to soundtracks of fashion shows. These music genres, often seen by the collective unconscious as impersonal, mechanical, escapist and linked to drugs, have become the symbols of the resurgence of a long human tradition of festive, cathartic collective rituals. The context of these events is quite singular : instead of concerts or performances lasting just a few hours, techno parties can extend from a whole night to several days long. These moments, because of the altered states they generate (fatigue, trance), are inspiring on many levels.

THE PROJECT

Since many years now, we have been involved in the techno/house scenes, as label owners, party promoters, graphic designers, DJs, photographers... During these experiences, we systematically documented the parties, the places, the people we met, and all the strange in-between moments. When realising that this documentation work was, like the cultural movement itself, a worldwide phenomenon, we started gathering images from as many photographers as we could (living mainly in Europe, America, and Asia, where techno culture is the most developed). We wanted to discover how people from the different geographical and socio-economical backgrounds adapt these codes and rituals.

After six months of collecting images of these photographers from all around the world, we felt that we reached an ensemble of images that was both rich and coherent.

They were raw, tender poetic, sometimes from amateur photographers, sometimes from professional ones, but they were linked by the desire to capture the visual stigmas of partying. These crossed, slice of life, photographs function as reminders of moments of rare intensity : times during which scopic drive is more powerful than inebriation and self-forgetfulness.

THE BOOK

We decided not to to divide the book into chapters based on specific geographical contexts or on each photographer, but to find subtler ways to connect the photos together.

We weaved formal and thematic links between the photos,

in a structure based on the different intensities,

sensations and emotions that can be experienced throughout a night of partying :

bliss, anxiety, confusion, euphoria,

distress, freedom, emptiness or chaos.

Our aim was to make an immersive object, and to re-create the loss of sensorial and cultural reference points typical of these festive moments. We imagined this book as a subjective reprensentation of the resurgences of the house and techno cultural movements, the new ways of partying that our generation (re)invents, and, by extension, an aesthetic analysis of the places where club and rave culture is consumed nowadays.

This book, as an archive, however fragmented, is a snapshot of a vast spatio-temporal framework. We see it as experimental testimony, halfway between a documentary iconographic ensemble and a livre d’artiste. An artistic proposal attempting to convey the ineffable : partying as a psychological, physical and atmospheric experience.

TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS

185 width x 255 mm height
144 pages
120g offset fedrigoni paper
Silver cover on a glossy 250 rives tradition paper
very limited edition of 200 ex. (each copy comes numbered and signed.)

TO RESUME…

Mydriasis

Mydriasis