People from Saxony who have to experience (multiple) discrimination share their view of nightlife here in literary contributions and testimonials.
If I am allowed to choose freely - which of course can never be the case - then I always choose a Tekk.
Man can write tekk with two k, or only with one. It makes a difference, because the more k, the faster and harder the music. I choose the Tekk, and this takes place under the stars.
Previously, we have cycled through a dark forest and the roots have churned the ground under our wheels. The path beer has a different meaning here, because the path is far and uncertain its destination. We may have already seen fireflies or heard wild boars in the distance, as we listen into the night forest. We listen for the basses that find their way through the branches to guide ours. The Tekk lures us with coordinates, only rarely with a music genre or names of the people playing. Tekk fame is difficult, but possible.
Tekks are playgrounds.
Decorated is each Tekk with its location, and no two are alike. Traffic lights converted into spotlights, plastic bag jellyfish swimming in the night wind, strings of pennants. Sunrise champagne on the edge of the sand pit, the machines stretching towards the Sunday sun with a peace that rarely suits them. Acrobatic sessions on the floor as the sand softly catches us, deeptalk in the moss with campfire acquaintances, acid hikes to the copper beech. We populate the forest and worry about the animals, next to the noise of the conveyor belts.
We leave the clearings cleaner than we found them. (Most of the time) We drag the technology into the valleys, where the sound does not reach the residents. But I don't want to just tell you about the forest tetekks. Freetekks can be found wherever a car can go and the sound can't get away: under highway bridges, in flood channels, in old factory buildings, in underground cellars that hopefully won't collapse. Sometimes it's a short bike ride through the night, sometimes it's car rides along deserted country roads to a distant nowhere. There is nothing there but monstrous factories that rumble in the silence like creatures of their own and against which our boxes have no chance.
I choose the Tekk not only because of its diversity. I prefer it to the club nights because it is a place of freedom.
Freedom is a big word, and it is experiencing a renaissance in celebration philosophy. We reach the Tekk and realize: We meet more POC here than in an average Dresden club. We meet young people who are denied access to the party for youth protection reasons and old-established tekno veterans who can't find a place among hip students. We meet people who can't get into a club with their style, who can't afford it and who can't or don't want to go to the club in the next city every week. In turn, we encounter music that we wouldn't find in any club. Tekks are meeting spaces, where the encounter consists in the common euphoria instead of the unconditional will to meet.
Let's leave the romanticized description for a moment. Because of course I romanticize when I write about fireflies and sunrises. I do so because I experience these nights in a state of romanticized intoxication. But I also do it because they represent a celebratory utopia that I am reluctant to let reality set right. In this reality, tekks exclude not with a door policy but with an information policy: only those who know about the dates and coordinates can share in their freedom. In this reality, we escape into nature, because there are hardly any free spaces.
And this reality includes the violence that can take place on a tekk. It is a rare guest, and non-representative studies of my everyday life have shown that it is less likely to stray into the woods than into the clubs. And yet she is there, and she gains menace when I run into her in a dark forest or abandoned hall, rather than in a club that - at least for white people like me - offers a* bouncer as an ally. The idea of the Tekk implies that the Ravenden do not set out with the attitude of consumers, but take responsibility for each other and for the Tekk. Because there is neither door standing nor a door from which one could throw someone out. There is no option - or only at the high price of repression - to involve state authorities like the cops. And even the ambulance doesn't come by with club-typical regularity, because to do so it would first have to find the location and then race along forest paths.
We depend on each other here, and that's what makes the Tekks so interesting for awareness work: the approaches are already included in the concept.
I know collectives that have awareness teams on their tekks: They set up retreats in abandoned factories and plenary on who, and to what degree of abandonment, can imagine convincingly getting rid of assaultive people. At the same time, I know some who have little use for the academicized notion of awareness, and who will not speak of approaches or concepts. Again and again, collectives, whether they are hosting Tekks, Teks, or otherwise uncommercial parties, face the same question: if the party is about open space, if there is no distinction between crew and guest, between shift and party - how does one do awareness work? There is no money for external teams, there are hardly any concepts for awareness in the forest - without light, without security - and after one o'clock often nobody is sober anymore. We can never throw people out of the forest - the people we have successfully left can come back with more people, or make it easy for themselves and give the location to the cops. At the same time it remains: self-organization requires self-protection - against repression, against fascists, against one's own sexist and otherwise violent machinations.
I remember X, who stormed into the forest with an axe in his hand in search of alleged fascists. Y, who was a fascist and stabbed two people on a tekk. To my rage that I took out on a tree after an assault because I felt so powerless. To the moment of chasing away the guy in question with an indefinable crowd. To the loving chaos with which a supposedly disappeared person was searched for, who was sitting safely by the fire the whole time.
Finally, back to romance: in the beauty of tekk, in its spontaneity, lies at the same time its danger - and its potential not only to be a collateral space, but to create with announcement aware, almost free spaces. //
About me: non-binary raver, awareness person, organizer, newly hatched DJ*ane
Favorite Artist: Billx
For me, a successful night is: fast and loud, perhaps speckled with surprise encounters, but also gladly silent and there is a sunset and a sunrise in it.
Favorite location in Saxony: Dresden Heath
