Cultural Private Partnerships and Commodification in the Context of Club Cultures

Abstract

The premise of this working paper is an examination of prevalent industrial online media platforms which are indicated by club cultural actors as being without any (socio-economic) alternative in club cultures, and the impact of cultural private partnerships on club culture structures in general: With the advancement of digitization and the demise of special interest print media, emerging platform capitalist online media and social media became the most relevant channels and socio-economic structures to generate visibility and attention for actors in the club cultures - a contemporary club cultural affordance. While emancipatory positions increasingly express their critical views and bring attention to structural problems within the club cultures, a blind spot remains in spite of the widespread use of social media and it’s inherent problematic logic of representative inequality. The reluctance of such platforms to effectively address issues of, e.g. right-wing populism and hate speech, bullying, as well as refraining from manipulative design practices and capitalizing upon private user data, remarkably contradicts the historically grounded and prevailing self-perception of values and norms in club cultures. From the second half of the 1990s onwards, the inner colonization of club cultures accelerated along the rise of long-term cultural private partnerships which not only shaped the production and reception of club culture historiography, but also form careers and enhance the visibility of club cultural actors. The impact of commissioned contributions to value chains of club cultures is questionable, and their economic circumstances seem to at least promote undifferentiated opinions - on an industrial level and scale. New club cultural generations socialise with the naturalised expectation of cultural content always being free of charge, of cultural work and efforts as ubiquitous commodities. This comes at a price as it transforms the credibility of club cultures‘ key values and norms, furthermore eroding its independent structures and socio-economic conditions. Not only did the pandemic years prove that the economic system of club culture, in particular that of electronic club music, is in a structural crisis. From grassroots to key players: actors jumping off this bandwagon are rare, as dependency, opportunism and impotence seem to proliferate a narrative of a system without alternatives. This working paper offers to reflect upon the use of problematic platforms by and the impact of cultural private partnerships on club culture structures. In this context, capitalist realism is being used as a concept to describe a status quo and the process of commodification, to discern processes bearing down on the socio-economic structures of house and techno music as a particular example. Finally, this paper suggests to unlearn the mediated images of a parasitic, exploitative industry and instead get inspired by the emancipatory project, that the club cultures of house and techno music in particular had once been, as a driving force for sustainable socio-economic transformation processes in club cultures.