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Flash Ethnography at “Soli Rave 1 Year After G20“

There is a guy in a red raincoat and a bicycle standing in the middle of the road on a traffic island. Behind his bicycle, he has a trailer, carrying a big subwoofer and a sound system. A crowd of about 40 people is around his bicycle trailer, 15 of them are dancing more ecstatic, the others less. The most conspicuous of them is a couple in the crowd which looks like the stereotypical ravers. He is wearing construction worker trousers, neon yellow with reflective stripes, a weird hat and a jungle patterned shirt. She is wearing a wide dress with flowers on them. Both of them have their faces painted. Then there are some Hipsters dancing beside them. But most of the other people are wearing black clothes. Some of them wear T-Shirts of the local football club St. Pauli. Others are wearing shirts with “FCK NZS” written on them. And again, some others are standing around those dancing people, watching them while drinking a beer.

This heterogenous peaceful dancing crowd gathered after a demonstration one year after G20-Summit in Hamburg. The G20-Summit is the Event where the 20 countries with the strongest economy in the world gather to discuss about world trade. Even though, they meet with a good aim, the summit is criticised for not changing the grievances in the world and being an exclusive group without hearing the interest of the weaker economies.

To attract attention for these problems leftish organisations from all over Europe organised huge demonstrations. Likewise, 2017 in Hamburg. But the situation in Hamburg escalated and there were riots in the streets and fights between protesters and the police and criminal offences happened on both sides. The happening I am talking about was announced to not forget the riots and the positions oft the G20 criticisers. It was called like a demonstration 1 year ago: “Lieber tanz ich als G20” which is translated to “I prefer dancing more than G20”.

The demonstration was planned not to be a typical demonstration but as a party. It consisted of 4 trucks playing techno music mixed by a DJ on each of the trucks. The demonstration started and ended at a key point of the riots 1 year before, the Neuer Pferdemarkt. From there the controversial left centre for culture Rote Flora isn’t far. And news reported, that parts of the Rote Flora team were the key organizers of the protests and riots in 2017.

The new Lieber tanz ich als G20 Demonstration was announced on facebook. It attracted our research interest as an unusual space for dance music, as it is not staying in one location, but moving through the city. We expected it to differ from most other parties which are on a fixed location in many points. One is that People cannot stand in one place just nodding with their head nor can they stay and dance. Another one is that this event is highly political. This is an interesting point, because there is a public discourse whether Techno as part of the rave scene can be political or not. On the one hand it is seen as reclamation of urban spaces and on the other hand it is seen as a place for hedonistic drug users to dance. I also expected a different drug use than in other dance events which may be caused by the fact, that the demonstration starts at daytime at 16:00 o’clock and because of the political background. The political background will also affect the composition of the participants of the event. When in normal dance events there are many unpolitical people, I expect only political people to be at the demonstration. And I expect the composition of the crowd to be in contrast to the non-participants. At this event those two groups of participants and non-participant will not be as separated as it might be the case in a dance club event. I wanted to give a special attention to the interaction of both.

For our Ethnography, we planned to observe one specific place, where the demonstration will pass. We arrived one hour before the protest march did. For our observation, we chose a critical point in last year’s protests. The Hafenstraße where the Welcome to Hell demonstration escalated. It has the advantages that there is a Bridge above the street, where we planned to stand, and that the street is quite narrow. In the beginning it was a quiet place. There is a park next to the road which is on the same level as the bridge. Many people stayed there and drank their beer, as it was a Saturday afternoon and one could see the harbour and the Elbe river from there. There was still traffic on the road, but since the park is a bit elevated above street level one had no vision to the street. The first sign of the approaching protest was the music. We were the only ones who noticed it so went to the bridge. At first four police vans passed. 20 meters behind them followed 36 police men and another 50 meters behind them was a dense wall of people holding a Banner. A few meters behind them was the first truck with music. About 100 to 200 people were around this truck. Some of them were walking normally and others were walking and moving to the music. This scene repeated 3 times for the next trucks. Only the last music van differed from the first ones, because it was the guy with the bicycle trailer, I talked about in the beginning. Behind him were only twenty people, and he was playing music from his phone. But all of them, including the bicycle guy played similar music and the composition of the crowd behind the trucks was similar. Only in the first group of protesters which were holding the banner, the majority wore black clothing and almost no one had colourful t-shirts. This group of people looked more serious compared to the other following people.

We were the first people who came to the bridge. But when the protest marched under it, the bridge was full of people. Some seemed to be journalist’s others were protesters who wanted to have a look from above and others were passers-by.

I noticed only two interactions between protesters and observers which were the opposite of each other. The first was a middle finger shown by one of the protesters in the first group. The other was a welcoming waving in the second part with the music trucks.

After five minutes the whole march passed. The bridge was empty again and also the park looked the same as before. No trash was left behind and one could not see, that anything happened.

I decided to join the march. It ended 45 minutes later, where the demonstration has begun. All the trucks turned of the music. Except the guy with the bicycle. It was not the first demonstration I participated in. I also joined the protests during the G20 in 2017. Which was good as a comparison to this year’s demonstration but since I sympathize with the protesters, my description might not be completely objective.