Dr. Anita Jóri
Back to Clubbing: New Dialogues and Connections
Online seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Wednesdays, 10-14h, bi-weekly, 8 dates: 20.10., 3.11., 17.11., 1.12., 15.12.2021, 12.1., 26.1., 9.2.2022 plus a visit of the CTM festival

The seminar is full, no registration possible anymore.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, music events and festivals have been canceled or moved to online platforms, and our body contacts have been reduced to the minimum. Dancing and movement with others have become forbidden activities, even though they are crucial for club cultures. This phase also proved how important it is to support local communities: Conversations with and collaborations between the members of the local music scenes became key activities to survive this difficult phase together. Also, by staying in dialogue across chasms we can foster new understandings, especially when it comes to different opinions.

This resonates with Vilém Flusser’s notion of the dialogue. For him, dialogue is the nucleus for creating and sharing information and it is the prerequisite for activating communities and networks of interest. Based on his and other scholars’ thought (in cultural studies, philosophy, popular music studies, among other fields), the seminar focuses on the urge – and the initiatives sustained by this urge – of going local instead of global in music scenes in the very present phase.

This also points to the core agenda and theme of Club Transmediale Festival 2022 – “Contact” – which also reflects on the festival as a place for crossover, interdisciplinary exchange, meeting of communities, crossing of styles and practices. The participants of the seminar will also visit some of the festival’s discourse and music programmes in order to witness and analyze the new ways of connections that are emerging now in Berlin’s electronic (dance) music scene(s).

To be discursively prepared for our field trips and communal investigations, we will study and discuss different texts related to the philosophy of dialogue (e.g. Buber, Flusser), music scenes (e.g. Bennett & Peterson), and networks of support in electronic dance music economies (e.g. Farrugia, Rodgers, Thornton).

Literature:
Bennett, A. & Peterson, R. A. (eds.) (2004). Music Scenes. Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Farrugia, R. (2012). Beyond the Dance Floor. Female DJs, Technology and Electronic Dance Music Culture. Bristol; Chicago: Intellect.
Flusser, V. (2017). Groundless. Brazil: Metaflux Publishing.
Flusser, V. (1996). Kommunikologie. Mannheim: Bollmann.
Rodgers, T. (2010). Pink Noises. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thornton, S. (2003). Club Cultures. Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity.

Requirements for the ungraded Studium Generale credits: The students will be asked to hold group presentations and their active participation is also a requirement for this course.

Anita Jóri is a Post-Doc research associate at the Vilém Flusser Archive, Berlin University of the Arts. Her research and publications focus on the discursive and terminological aspects of electronic (dance) music culture. She is also the first chairperson of the German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research (GMM) and one of the curators of CTM Festival's Discourse programme. She is also one of the editors of the books "The New Age of Electronic Dance Music and Club Culture" (Springer, 2020) and "Musik & Empowerment" (Springer, 2020).