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Amsterdam
2024
Tags: Amsterdam, club culture, education, writing
Together with comrade performer, exhibition maker and art historian Manique Hendricks I contributed to the launch publication What Is An Institute For NightCulture? The book was controversially launched during a lively public discussion about the need for free club culture at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam during the Amsterdam Dance Event 2024.
Juha van 't Zelfde (JZ): For some time now we have been talking about our need for a pedagogy of club culture. An academy of club culture, even. With the invitation for this publication about the Institute for NightCulture, could you describe what such a curriculum would look like?
Manique Hendricks (MH): I would imagine a course on the history of (Amsterdam) club culture. Centering various values that have been essential to its existence and development such as community, experiment, solidarity, emancipation, and creativity. What would you imagine?
JZ: Collective creativity. Learning consent, consensus, and
collaboration through good praxis. We'd do this by good old field work: going clubbing, interviewing club communities, and doing workshops on regenerative culture, conflict resolution, and how not to cancel us.
MH: What would it mean to institutionalize club culture?
JZ: To me, institutionalized club culture sounds like an oxymoron. Like skateboarding at the Olympics, it's not really on brand. Whether it could work depends on how you do it. If you would form something bottom-up and democratic such as a union, that could be great; if you would become more hierarchical and authoritarian such as a museum, less so. I would choose free association and mutual aid over hierarchy and unaccountable power structures every day of the week. What do you think institutionalizing could mean?
MH: It can be a double-edged sword: on the one side it would be great to have a space dedicated to archiving club culture for example. On the other hand institutionalizing underground, urgent and subversive cultures that are being lived would mean fitting something into a static mold. Various elements that make club culture exciting, progressive, and to a certain extent, accessible can get lost in the process.
What would be the ideal context for club culture to thrive?
JZ: Communism. Of the anarchist kind. Community-owned, cooperatively managed sound systems and dance halls. Examples such as Black Obsidian Sound System and Sister Midnight in London, and Club Co-op in Marseille are the way forward.
The cause of club culture is the love of the community. We do this from each according to our needs to each according to our abilities. To free ourselves. House is a feeling that will set us free. And once free, with Toni Morrison, we free someone else. I believe this is the revolutionary potential of club culture.
This club culture is a postcapitalist, transfeminist, and climate-just collective expression, experience, and eventually exaltation. For us, by us. A new culture for a new society. Total art for total freedom.
You have studied various social histories of numerous club cultures of the past for your exhibitions. What should we salvage from them?
MH: Theatricality, resistance, how to mourn and celebrate, and the centering of queer faces and voices. Parties with purpose, not for profit.
You once said that nightclubs are like schools, museums, libraries, theaters, and cinemas, but club culture doesn't have the same status and appreciation within society. How can we change this?
JZ: Education, education, education. We should study and teach the social, cultural, and political value of club culture.
MH: Next to a course on the history of club culture and collective creativity, what other courses can be imagined?
JZ: DJing, performance, scenography, graphic design, creative production, postcapitalist desire... too many to name!
You have curated exhibitions about club culture. What would you need to develop your practice?
MH: Funding for fair pay, access to (digital) archives, working with many collaborators to make new artworks and to develop public programs. Club culture is often immaterial, it cannot be captured in one single object or material. When making exhibitions about club culture it's important, to me, to link archival objects with the stories from the people behind them, that is when the artifacts come to life. I find it equally important to work with artists that have been personally involved in club culture. Not only as an example of how important club spaces are for artists to often make their first steps and find space for experiment, but also because of their lived experience that is essential in creating the atmosphere and translating intangible aspects of club culture.
JZ: What do you hope this publication will bring?
MH: Long-term appreciation for club culture as a cultural catalyst: possibilities for gathering and sharing of experience and knowledge instead of scattered projects.
You?
JZ: Revolution.
Juha van 't Zelfde is a Finnish-Dutch autodidact DJ, filmmaker, and teacher whose work is rooted in club culture. Manique Hendricks (1992) is a Dutch-Peranakan Chinese art historian and curator of contemporary art at Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.