Rave
Raves serve a lot of different needs, interests, desires. For distraction, entertainment, exercise, dating, cruising and so on. Those might be met by other practices just as well. I’m interested in a specific set of needs and a particular range of people for whom the rave itself is the need. I’m less interested in what H, another rave friend, calls coworkers: people who just want a night out so they can talk about it around the office on Monday. I’m interested in people for whom raving is a practice that makes it possible to endure this life.
McKenzie Wark is a 2021-22 GIDEST Faculty Fellow and the author, among other things, of Capital is Dead (Verso 2019) and Reverse Cowgirl (Semiotexte 2020). She edited the trans | fem | aesthetics issue of eflux journal (2021). She is professor of culture and media at Eugene Lang College and also teaches in the MA in liberal studies program.