Techno-tourism and post-industrial neo-romanticism in Berlin’s electronic dance music scenes

Abstract

This article profiles the ‘techno-tourists’ of Berlin: music fans who return repeatedly to the city in order to participate in the local electronic dance music scenes. Based on interviews, this article sketches a profile of these music-minded voyagers, surveying their motivations, their attitudes, their patterns of travel and their strategies for making this mode of travel possible in terms of work and money. It also situates this recent wave of tourism within a broader history of tourism in Berlin, as well as considering its representation in local popular discourse. Local debates about the impact of tourism are reflected in interviewees’ ambivalence towards tourist identities, as they strive to describe the terms of their socio-cultural belonging within a sub-cultural scene that is spatially distant from house and home.

Acoustic Ecologies: Architecture, Nature, and Modernist Experimentation in West Berlin

“…The study of the city as an acoustic space has in large parts centered on the phenomenon of urban noise, both historically and in a contemporary context (see Bijsterveld 2008;Radovac 2015;Payer 2018). In many European cities, the increasing level of social conflicts over noise is not only caused by traffic, industry, and airport expansions, but also by the burgeoning nighttime economy and club culture in the postindustrial, tourist city (see Bader and Scharenberg 2010;Garcia 2016).…”

Traveling in the Footsteps of ABBA

“…For example, a study of European dance music (EDM) tourists in Berlin points out that the primary motive is being a fan of EDM rather than being attracted to traditional tourist attractions and experiences. Motives related to a sense of affinity with other fans, as well as the atmosphere and authenticity of the place and the experience, and performative participation in local daily life are very important (Garcia). Therefore, we argue that, in studies of music tourists, it is important to acknowledge both typical tourist motives as well as those specific to the study of fans.…”

Urban multiculture and xenophonophobia in London and Berlin

“…Kreuzberg and the adjacent district of Neukölln have been undergoing substantial changes in recent years – a type of gentrification Andrej Holm (2013) connects to an influx of ‘young, creative, and cosmopolitan people’ (p. 182). Across international media including mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times , as well as lifestyle and travel blogs, Kreuzberg and Neukölln are presented as perfect destinations for techno-tourists (Garcia, 2016), as well as artists and freelancers fleeing rising rents in cities like London, Tel Aviv and New York, but also, as one article quoted by Holm (2013) promises, for anyone ‘trying to escape work, or commitments, or the need to put on underwear before 3 pm’ (p. 182). These narratives of carefree living in an expat hipster paradise can be seen as part of the ongoing mythologization of Berlin as a ‘new promised land for the international arts’ (Hausdorf, 2015: n.p.…”