Not sure how long this will be up, but this is a great documentary on youth culture and the rave scene by artist Jeremy Deller. It’s not your usual documentary either, just showing some dancing people in an hanger and then clips of angry news reports – Jeremy is filmed doing a talk to a class of school kids which makes their questions and reactions all the more interesting as they’d be the age of the people in the clips.
And like Jeremy’s work, it asks questions about the connection to the miner’s strike, post-industrial Britain and the US, the gay scene, and also the much-ignored history of early underground black and queer input to the scene. I’ve had arguments with people who don’t know anything about Ron Hardy, the Music Box, or where their beloved Acid House came from originally. We owe it to these groups who started the fire, even if they passed the torch on, it still would not have happened without them – be it a tiny club in Chicago or a youth centre in Moss Side.
I must say before I was slightly unconvinced by Jeremy’s linking of the two, but given the clips and the argument here, it’s obvious that the Miner’s Strike, Battle of the Beanfield, destruction of the traditional working class power base (unions, transfer to service industries etc) played a major part in raves and acid house in the UK – and the US, given Detroit and Chicago.
And still a warning to the politics of today – the division of Brexit, where Paul Staines ended up in right-wing politics (interesting they didn’t mention Colston-Hayter!) and how social media and conformity is king today. Which needs to be smashed because I think there needs to be less internal policing of how the behave and policing of others via social media and mino-CCTV cameraphone control, and more resistance to the dangers of restriction, fascism and peer-pressure. Those skills will be needed shortly.
Well worth watching – long may it stay up!
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