The Fall of the Berlin Wall launched a wave of ecstatic raving and clubbing across Berlin. That wave\u2019s force has carried the city\u2019s clubbing scene right through to today\u2014although it has met an unforeseen break in this year of Covid restrictions. For thirty years, the thump of bass has never gone so silent. In this paper, I\u2019ll put my previous work on ecstasy and melancholy in Berlin around 1989 in dialogue with recent developments, as clubbers, DJs and producers contend with a moment in which collectives and crowds have become sites of anxiety. I\u2019ll consider the attempts to replicate the clubbing experience online, as well as the irrepressible raving energies that have seen illegal parties take place against stringent public health measures.<\/p>\n
Ben Gook is lecturer in cultural studies at the University of Melbourne. He was previously an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin and an associate investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotion in Melbourne. Relevant publications includeDivided Subjects, Invisible Borders: Re-unified Germany after 1989<\/em> (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015) and \u201cEcstatic Melancholic: Ambivalence, Electronic Music and Social Change around the Fall of the Berlin Wall\u201d in Emotions: History, Culture, Society<\/em> (2017). He also has a forthcoming book, Feeling Alienated: How Alienation Returned in Contemporary Capitalism<\/em>, which will be available in the Histories of Emotions and the Senses series with Cambridge University Press in 2021.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr Ben Gook (History, University of Melbourne) –<\/span><\/strong> Collectivity and Affect in Crisis Times: Dancing in Berlin, 1989-2020<\/b><\/p>\n