Over the past few months, a sidewalk in London’s Islington borough has been cloaked in a growing collection of flower bouquets. Passersby solemnly place their offerings at the entrance to a four-story building, opposite Smithfield Meat Market. It’s the site of London’s iconic nightclub, Fabric, which has been closed this year after having its operating license withdrawn.
‘R.I.P. Fabric’, read one of the notes. ‘You’ve gone to join The End, Bogleys, SE1, Turnmills and The Fridge in the big club in the sky. Thank you for all the good times and for the amazing music. P.S. Please don’t become a Tesco [Supermarket] Metro’.
While visiting London this month, I learnt that more than half the city’s nightclubs, and around 40 percent of its music venues, had closed within the past 8 years. A skyrocketing property market, and escalating rents, had resulted in many club owners being bought out by property developers. Compounding this, local councils had been enforcing stringent regulations to limit noise, confine opening hours, and increase security. Meanwhile, shutting down nightclubs had been positioned as the answer to a series of drug-related deaths, including at Fabric. The crack-down on nightclub cultures in London has given rise to a series of fierce contestations around the cultural value of nightlife for artists, partygoers and tourists, and what effects this might have on people’s collective right to the city.
The new urgency around protecting nightclub cultures in Europe is acutely felt in nocturnal hubs like Berlin, a city where night-time socialities are given serious nurturing and attention. At the end of November this year, Berlin played host to the first installment of the NIGHTS conference. Urban planners, artists, DJ’s, festival-planners, club owners, bouncers, sex workers, researchers, music journalists, and drug policy experts gathered to discuss a kaleidoscope of questions related to nocturnal city culture.
Also present at the conference were Night Mayors from across Europe. The Night Mayor initiative began in Amsterdam in 2014 as a strategy to address prevalent nyctaphobia (fear of the night) among public officials and city planners. Too often, night-time in the city is viewed with suspicion and resentment, where darkness is believed to bring with it various pollutions — sex, crime, noise, intoxication and criminality. Night Mayors are intended to be alive to the night, while many of the city’s public officers are fast asleep. In doing so, they connect night businesses, night workers, revelers and residents, with City Hall. The concept has since been taken up in Paris, Toulouse, Zurich, Berlin and London.
Staged at two nightclubs overlooking the River Spree, attendees at the NIGHTS conference explored the social possibilities and challenges of nightclub culture, set to a backdrop of LED lighting. We discussed ableism in nightclubs and the inaccessibility of night venues for those with disabilities. Indeed, inclusivity was a key concern across the three-day conference as speakers explored questions related to the integration of refugee musicians, as well as how to address racism, sexual harassment, homophobia and violence on the dancefloor. Contributors further discussed new technologies of the night: sound, lighting, and virtual reality, as well as their various impacts on the environment.
Those of us in the night-time industry often express the value of nocturnal cultures in Utopian terms. Unsurprisingly, the NIGHTS conference was awash with conversations about night-time as a space of freedom, love, integration, transgression and release. Many spoke about the possibilities of the night for fostering social cohesion and belonging in the city.
But of course, the night is also a source of contestation and conflict. Attendees interrogated norms related to ‘Who gets to have fun?’ For whom is ‘fun’ economically accessible? Who’s ‘fun’ is valued and whose is classed as degenerate? Many discussed the competing claims to the city at night. Is the night a place for work? Leisure? Consumption? Sleep? Which forms of ‘night life’ are desirable and undesirable? While consumers at a nightclub might be one thing, those walking the streets or creating roadside parties are treated quite separately. How can residents and nightclub cultures co-exist? What forms of regulation do we want at night and for whose protection? Many thoughtful discussions were had about ‘harm reduction’ policies that seek to reduce the risks of drug-use by researching which drugs are entering the club scene, offering emergency services to drug users, and increasing awareness about safer drug use practices.
Both Berlin and Johannesburg are cities that have undergone immense social change and upheaval in the past 25 years. As the Berlin Wall came down, clubs sprang up in abandoned buildings and warehouses as young people ‘took back the city’. In Johannesburg, young people’s relationship to the city is also continually in flux as nightclub hubs relocate, and new claims are made to nocturnal spaces. Yet conversations about Johannesburg’s night-time — as a site of artistic expression, economic innovation, social contestation and identity — have yet to truly begin. Our city’s population is younger than that of both London and Berlin. For Johannesburg’s youth, night is not only a function of time, but also of place. The night is a unique place, in which young people predominate, and new forms of social access and exclusion become apparent. More so, young artists, event promoters, DJ’s, musicians, designers and creatives are making and sustaining a vibrant and complex night industry in the city. Perhaps it’s time we take this seriously — as a social, cultural and economic resource. Perhaps it’s time for our own NIGHTS conference.
