WARK, McKenzie
Raving

BACK IN STOCK ; ) I’m interested in people for whom raving is a collaborative practice that makes it possible to endure this life. There’s a lot of metaphors I could throw at this: rave as addiction, ritual, performance, catharsis, sublimity, grace, resistance. Let’s not assume too much about it before we get there. Let’s have some concepts of raving emerge out of some participation and observation. I’m going to take you out raving.

What is an art of life for what feels like the end of a world? In Raving McKenzie Wark takes readers into the undisclosed locations of New York’s thriving underground queer and trans rave scene. Techno, first and always a Black music, invites fresh sonic and temporal possibilities for this era of diminishing futures. Raving to techno is an art and a technique at which queer and trans bodies might be particularly adept but which is for anyone who lets the beat seduce them. Extending the rave’s sensations, situations, fog, lasers, drugs, and pounding sound systems onto the page, Wark invokes a trans practice of raving as a timely aesthetic for dancing in the ruins of this collapsing capital. [publishers’ note]

This book is the first in the “Practices” series edited by Margret Grebowicz, and it even comprises some color photographs. To say that it was much expected is an understatement.

Published by Duke University Press, 2023
Design by A. Mattsson Gallagher
Queer Culture / Scenes / Music & Sound / Dance