Written soon after the publication of the first and second issues of datacide, Praxis newsletter #12 (1997) states, “With the increased availability of technology that makes it easier than ever to create, produce and distribute independent material, new networks and mechanisms have started to operate in the last decade. We called it techno. But even the phuturistic rigidity of techno was not immune against the counter-strategies of the system. We need new strategies of underground resistance, the beats have to be broken the noises twisted, desires reinvented, the phuture manifesting itself in the present, breaking the rules of the past.” [1] This oppositional call for resistance is one of the myriad collective strategies that inform Praxis, the record label, and datacide, the magazine for noise and politics. Many comrades-in-arms, a million jackals, have explored in theory and practice the potentialities and failures of countercultural, resistant and oppositional currents in hard electronic dance music, culture and politics. What is at stake in making a claim for the possibilities of co-creating transnational countercultures, and is that even realizable in the current economic and political conditions?
Counterculture and subculture as conceptual and historical tools have been defined in often competing and contradictory ways, especially concerning the subversive, resistant and revolutionary potentials, leading to a lot of confusion and uncritical use of the terms in various electronic music scenes. [Read more →]
