Revisiting Zurichs 90s Techno Scene In Pictures
Zurich quickly embraced techno, and by the time the music reached its peak in the 1990s, the city had become the genre's leading destination in Europe. Techno parties started as one-off events in basements and warehouses before developing into a regular club scene with a regular program of events.
The Swiss city's techno scene was shaped by the Street Parade, launched in 1992 as a "demonstration of freedom of love, generosity and tolerance". Starting with fewer than 1,000 attendees, they have grown steadily to attract more than a million visitors each year, three times the city's population.
Photographer Jules Spinach photographed individuals and small groups at fashion shows in the mid-1990s, often on the fringes of moving crowds.
Spinach says, “This film was about people finding their lost individuality among people. Because even many black people go gray as a mass from afar. This isolation stops time, removes some of the flow of movement, and creates air and distance from the action.
The current installation of the photographer's works is conceived as a parade of images and personalities in the form of a multi-channel slide show.
"The photos were taken at a time when many things were changing, and not just in Zurich. Once the Cold War was over, boring Zurich became a festival city: livelier, louder, more international, more dense. The parade the street was its expression and had a political dimension.
“[The councils] preached peace and tolerance and spread it with fun, hedonism and lightness, not ideologically, unlike today. But what is protest and celebration? How much is activism or escapism worth?
“I had the wonderful feeling of participating in something new. But at the same time I was no longer interested in photographing the protests, nor the crowd as a dance floor, nor the power of the political movement in the photo. On the sidelines of the event, who embodied these ideas with their presence and style.
after promoting the ballot
“Often the person I was photographing looked at the camera at the same time, but the facial expression had not yet responded to me to capture an unexpected look, a look that would surprise me and the person I was photographing.
"Today, almost 30 years later, it seems that people look to the future with an uncertain image of the past, which we visitors to the exhibition know and do not yet know. At the same time, we look back at time, in front of their faces, as if we are trying to answer their questions. In this way we establish contact with our past. Reconnect with your past.
“The first year I was taking photos, it seemed like everyone was dancing on or around the cars. From 1996 to 1997, when the number of visitors went from 150,000 to 475,000, I felt a clear change. The parade turned into a spectacle, with spectators watching the love machines pass by, dividing participants into spectators and activists.
«This transition from politics to entertainment was perhaps the prerequisite for the Street Parade and Zurich's technoculture to become part of the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. And in 2017 the Federal Ministry of Culture included it in the list of living Swiss traditions.
"One might ask: which Swiss tradition is this, that of the neutral spectator or that of the participant?
