Instead of following the leaders, techno tribes in Belgrade march to their own beat
in 1996.
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We never ask ourselves
Too many questions
Too much truth in introspection
Maintain the regimentation
And avoid self-degradation
We act out all the stereotypes
Try to use them as decoy
And we become shining examples
Of the system we set out to destroy.
“Famous
and Dandy (Like Amos ‘n’ Andy)”, from the U.S. group The Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy
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Young Serbs create
a parallel universe with music, building on anarchist dreams of a free culture
 “Tune
in and drop out!” The old slogan rings globally as teenagers, twenty-somethings and
adolescent-thirties plug into music to disconnect from the worries of their worlds.
But in Belgrade, bands of young techno fans are “dropping out” of society with a
vehemence which reflects more than mere defiance of authority. In the Serbian context
of rampant nationalism and corruption, their apoliticism reflects a hardcore political
statement as they create a parallel universe whose members flow like free electrons
through the circuits of clubs, underground parties and pirate music networks.
Outside of the Balkans, the act of “dropping out” usually means ignoring social pressures
and parental pleas to “plan for the future” by studying or working hard to achieve
social status and financial success. In Belgrade, youth are not just rejecting parental
expectations but the probable future of the majority: deprivation. Only the elite
stand a chance of economic escape in this country where five per cent of the population
owns 80 per cent of the national wealth. In the last ten years, an estimated 250,000
teenagers and young adults have left the country, mostly heading West to countries
like Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
“We
won’t be fooled again!”
Only a surrealist
could plan for the future in a federation that no longer exists. One minute you’re
high on the spirit of invading the streets with a united opposition and the next
moment the movement implodes under the searing haze of police tear gas. “We won’t
be fooled again!” cry the techno tribes, who have learned to mistrust virtually everyone
over thirty on either side of the political divide. No tolerance for the petty bickering
of opposition “leaders” and no respect for the establishment–neither of which offer
a clue on how to heal the wounds of growing poverty and criminalisation of the state.
This is not a resurrection of the generic youth rebellion: “No future!” By creating
a parallel universe via music, these techno tribes seem to be building on the Temporary
Autonomous Zone (TAZ)1 of philosopher Hakim Bey, the
anarchist guru based in New York. Imagine “pirate utopias” or “mini-societies living
consciously outside of the law and determined to keep it up,” writes Bey, “even if
only for a short but merry life.” For Bey, a head-on collision with the state amounts
to “futile martyrdom”. Instead of wasting time in the dogma-eats-dogma world of revolution
(wherein one ideology is replaced by another), consider the joys of uprising. “The
TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerrilla
operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves
itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it.”
Veritable
temples for the alienated
Belgrade offers
the ideal terrain for the TAZ. The omnipresent State is riddled with cracks for the
tribes to disappear in. In fact, the techno scene literally developed underground:
in the basement of the State university’s Faculty of Arts in 1992 (the apex of the
former Yugoslavia’s bloody dismemberment). The basement club Adademija staged a music
coup, replacing the old revolutionary avant-garde of rock ’n’ roll bands with the
gadget wizardry of techno disc jockeys. Tribes or bands of teenagers and twenty-somethings
formed around a common goal: to escape war-torn reality for the futurism of techno.
The underground events were like temples for the alienated: by pulsating to a collective
vibe, adherents silently swore allegiance to the positive yet ephemeral life on the
dancefloor.
Slowly they built a parallel universe by almost borrowing a page from Bey’s book:
turn the negative into positive. Reject politics not by apathy but by creating alternative
networks. Reject the capitalist notion of work, not by laziness, but through the
black economy. And so the techno tribes re-claimed space in clubs and abandoned warehouses.
Without cash for equipment, they stealthily borrowed, bartered for and recycled old
turntables and speakers. Without access to a record or CD factory, they smuggled
pirate recordings from Bulgaria.
It’s as if they followed Bey’s words to the letter, and yet most have probably never
even heard of the anarchist. Ask them about their motivation to find vague talk of
“positive change” and club culture as “the only sane way of surviving” and fighting
the system. The lack of eloquence can be forgiven, for these are doers, leaving philosophy
for thinkers like Bey. They don’t bother with what “was” or “will be”–instead they
raid the status quo. For example, in 1996/7, the opposition held three months of
demonstrations after the government tried to annul their victory in local elections.
Instead of following the leaders, the techno tribes staged their own carnivalesque
events.
During the NATO bombing campaign against Belgrade, hundreds of revellers met for
techno parties, organised by two 20-year olds, Marko Nastic and Dejan Milicevic,
known as the Teenage Techno Punks. The uprising floated with the sense of utopia
which, as Bey writes, “envisions an intensification of everyday life, or as the Surrealists
might have said, life’s penetration by the Marvellous.”
Attacking
the State’s nostalgia for the past
“Strike at
the structures of control!” exhorts Bey. And so the techno tribes file past the police
and take aim at the real source of government control: ideas. Devoted to the futurism
associated with music, they attack the State’s nostalgia for past “glory”, while
trampling on the notion that money can pave the way to a better future as the State’s
printing machines churn out the bills of hyperinflation. By “dropping out”, the tribes
won’t topple the government or change their society. But that was never their goal.
As the underground leaders, Teenage Techno Punks, explain, “It’s not easy to be a
drop-out, but, then again, it’s not easy to stay put under the circumstances. This
was the only way we knew to bring about positive change.”
1. The Temporary Autonomous
Zone, Autonomedia, Anti-copyright, 1985, 1991.
www.v2.nl/FreeZone/ZoneText/Diversions/Broadsheets/TAZcontents.html
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