Splendid Isolation

This was due to be presented at the Club Transmediale in Berlin on 12th January, but they cancelled the conference due to lack of funding.....

Knowhere:
In the space between the city and the countryside exists a “terrain vague” a term that denotes emptiness, absence, but also promise, the space of the possible, of expectation. It is in these regions that the tension between rural idyll and perceived urban disorder is most strongly experienced.

Conventionally sites such as ring roads, motorways, service stations, industrial parks and out-of-town shopping centres are characterised by a lack of community and recognised as places of social isolation. They inhabit the territory in-between, existing not in their own right, but as parasitical zones, marginalized by both the city and the countryside.
In the1980’s and early 1990’s in England a sub-cultural phenomenon emerged where groups claimed these spaces and created temporary networked communities. The acid house scene invited people to take to the roads, primarily the M25 orbital motorway on the outskirts of London, but also numerous other roads, which led them to huge parties in diverse out-of-town venues.

Technology was the fundamental enabler of the gatherings. Mobile phones, pagers and pirate radio transmissions were all used either alone or in combination to distribute venue details during a generally short period of time. Typically organisers would prepare the secret venue during the day and in the evening, via a mobile phone, would dial a computer that would record their spoken directions to a special meeting point, which was often on the M25 orbital motorway. Secrecy was required, since the early events were illegal, although the sheer numbers of people descending upon the site would often prevent the police from stopping the Rave.

These events were models for how networking in the ‘in-between’ territories could be extremely powerful communication tool; it wasn’t uncommon for thirty or forty thousand people to gather at a party.