On the Network Culture of Electronic Dance Music

During the last decade of austerity and unemployment, Athens has witnessed a surge in Techno production and rave parties, facilitated by a corresponding increase in social media use. The chapter asks whether the rise of EDM in Athens is linked to the modalities of self-presentation, aesthetic expression, and recognizability opened up by social networking, and explores the desire for innovation, cosmopolitan belonging, and lifestyle experimentation that characterize EDM culture as a vital negotiation of the fable of progress and personal fulfilment. Since its sonic identity formation in 1980s Detroit and Berlin, techno music has been an audio palimpsest inscribed with memories of everyday financial austerity, a desire for creative expression, and a claim to a bohemian lifestyle. Perhaps, reflecting on EDM network culture means delving into EDM’s techno-aesthetic infrastructures, where “public recognition” and “personal success” lose their discursive certainties in the whirlwind of techno-mediated affects and the grassroots (re)negotiation of technological progress.