Rave Capital: Struggles over Space in Berlin’s Electronic Music Scene

This thesis examines the evolution and spatial manifestation of Berlin’s electronic music scene, particularly its techno and club subculture, as it struggles with the dominant culture of the city for space and the right to the city. Through a historical analysis of Berlin’s alternative subcultures, the rise of techno music and rave culture after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the recent changes in the techno scene, the thesis highlights the co-optation and commodification of techno and club subculture by neoliberal government interests and investors, as well as the resistance of the techno subculture to maintain spaces of freedom and self-liberation. By analyzing the dialectical relationship between the underground and the dominant culture, this work illuminates questions of the right to the city and the difficulty and determination involved in fighting against hegemony. The subculture’s power to create spaces of heterotopias and to contest mainstream culture offers a unique position in dreaming up alternative visions of the future. The thesis suggests that subcultural spaces should be recognized and preserved as resistance movements in providing alternative lenses and ways of being to envision alternate futures in urban spaces.