Gegen Community

"I loathe crowds. But tonight the drugs and the music and the exhilaration had stripped me of such scruples. We were packed in so tightly we were forced to slither across each other’s bodies and arms; I felt my arm moving like a piston in synchrony against a stranger’s — and I did not pull away. Freed of my shirt and my touchiness, I surrendered myself to the idea that I was just like everybody else. A body among bodies…"
— Edmund White on visiting New York’s Flamingo club in the late 1970s

Communities are born through joyful transformation, when people discover new possibilities together while resisting, inventing, or activating something that is already in play. Yet, the hopefulness that comes with the word "community" has also been weaponized as an engine of normative power and capital.

We were first drawn by the sound. And somewhere around 35Hz, in the heat, dampness, and darkness of it, we came to accept that we are all the same. We came to accept that we are all equal.
To build community means to feel represented because you can influence others and in turn be influenced by them. But to create community also means we must be open to intimacy and risk being wounded. Just as intimacy and closeness can be enabling, they can also be sources of coercion, manipulation, and exploitation. Within every community lies both unity and vulnerability.

Our emotional state of choice is Ecstasy. Our nourishment of choice is Love. Our addiction of choice is technology. Our religion of choice is music.

The feeling of belonging to a community can be exhilarating. But when reduced to an imperative to have always “good relationships” with everyone and everything, community becomes simplistic and reactionary. Love and friendship can be contorted to erase power relations and systemic violence, enforcing obedience to oppressive norms of politeness or devotion.

We are not criminals. We are not disillusioned. We are not naive children. We are one community.

How do we create these communities? How do we relate to them? Who is this “we”? How do we affect each other? Is it through those knowing smiles and the electric glances that pass around when a certain drop happens in a track, or a particular sound or riff comes in, that creates synergy with the vibe everybody’s on?

Our enemy of choice is ignorance. Our weapon of choice is information. Our crime of choice is challenging whatever rules are supposed to stop us from celebrating our existence.

A community is open — not to everyone, of course, but to the initiates sworn to a bond of love. A community is a horizontal pattern of complicity, alliance and affinities. Through shared experiences we make changes by building a common history together. Let’s reinvent how we love each other and remember that community is love, solidarity is love, collaboration is love — collective love, where we look out for each other.

GEGEN Community is an ode to the power found among our partners in crime and love.

concept courtesy of Sir Rita & Flo Heiden
photo courtesy of Florian Hetz
graphics & logo by Enrico Bardin