Lecken_21

The queer rave is not a space of consumption. It is a space of togetherness.

In a post-pandemic landscape where professional awareness work has become the customer service of the nightlife industry, we need to ask ourselves if this outsourcing of care is producing less aware ravers, ones less prepared for the physical stress and emotional intensity of a party, and less prepared to help out because a “pro” is there to step in and take over. This is not to say that ravers should always be expected to do the hard labor of emergency support that should be paid, but that we need to ask ourselves who is doing this labor and how to redistribute it so that awareness work does not become centered only as a job, as the babysitters of the party, but rather a model for being in a community, together, in the most radical sense.

How do we feel about the fact that it is primarily FLINTA and BIPOC folks doing the awareness jobs, often at parties that attract a crowd of majority cis men? And that very often it’s those cis men they’re taking care of? How do we live out a femme-to-the-front ethos, a solidaric, transfeminist, anti-patriarchal, antiracist ethos if not by redistributing care and making clear that it is everyone’s responsibility, all the time? How do we continue to reproduce a community of care and consent within the rave except by demanding a certain degree of awareness and participation from everyone who is present?

When we start to think about our party as a temporary community, we are all co-producers of the rave space, our personal pleasure entwined with the pleasure of others, attentive, accountable and open to one another. A great rave is a space of Ravers Aware Unite!

— Zoe Harris, “Awareness-Industrial Complex,” adapted from Lecken Zine: Community Standards #2 (2023)

Also for your pleasure, we have Paka's body care station to reset your body in the garden of sense(lessne)ss, and the official launch of Losers' Lunchbox serving healthy Asian eats to get you through the night.