Sometimes, there are advantages to getting your analog film results weeks after an event is over. In the case of “Rave the Planet,” the wait gave me time to read the news, look up some of the artists,1 and reflect on the whole experience. Around 200,000 people are said to have attended, though the police reported about 45,000 participants. Whatever the real number, it definitely felt like a lot of people.

The vision for the event has shifted a bit - now there’s talk of techno being recognized as a cultural form and even becoming part of the UNESCO World Heritage. There were also some strong statements, like the call for a general and nationwide abolition of all dance bans, especially on Christian holidays. I understand and respect the holidays, but I still can’t get behind the “Tanzverbot.”

The marketing for the event was odd though. When I saw the news about the official successor to the ‘Love Parade’ just a few weeks before, I was genuinely surprised.

After two years of pandemic life, I was more than ready to visit the parade. I also wanted to try out Lomography’s 110 slide film, thinking cross-processing might give the photos some interesting vibes. It didn’t deliver the greens and yellows as advertised (I was hoping for a bit of neon nostalgia), but I still like the lo-fi aesthetic.

The line-up was quite interesting, with artists and communities like Freak De L’Afrique, Free People Collective, and acts from the Polish underground,2 but the PRU Y RVU float especially caught my attention. “It will represent artists and performers from different spheres of electronic music, queer, kinky, and club scenes. A significant part of them from Ukraine.”3 That sounded great, and I’d heard about the Ukrainian ‘Berghain,’ the K41 club in a former brewery in Kyiv - a queer safe space with the mathematical sign ∄, meaning ‘it doesn’t exist.’4 It’s sad that these kinds of safe spaces seem to be vanishing or changing so radically because of the war.5 That was one more reason for me to join that float (it was still a demonstration, after all).6

The mood and music from the float were great, and it was really cool to see people dancing again. For some, I made a spontaneous present with a Polaroid, and I hope it created some nice memories for them.

Regarding the small scandal about Dr. Motte and the corona denier group: I believe his excuse. Not everyone wants to research every splinter group and every possible connotation. The Freedom Parade in Łódź/Lodz7 is also still on my “someday I’ll visit this” list.

All in all, I think the parade was a much-needed and welcome counterpart to the other heavy political topics of the day.

  1. Arte had a nice stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-zh9TA0vc0 ↩︎

  2. https://djmag.com/news/berlins-rave-planet-parade-announces-line-and-floats-2022 ↩︎

  3. https://ra.co/events/1545915 ↩︎

  4. https://k41community.fund/ ↩︎

  5. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/k41-kiew-club-eulitz-100.html ↩︎

  6. Although the polish underground had enough reasons to go with them: https://crackmagazine.net/article/profiles/poland-2020/ . But i don’t know if there was similarities with the float on the parade. ↩︎

  7. https://www.onlytechno.net/news/freedom-parade-is-back-to-lodz-after-20-years/ ↩︎