DAVE – Dresden Audio Visual Experience

DAVE stands for Dresden Audio Visual Experience. The festival of club culture will take place from October 22nd untill 26th 2014 in Dresden and hosts more than 20 parties, concerts, workshops, panel discussions and cinema screening. You can see artitst such as Addison Groove, Portable, Ébo Taylor, Senking, Dataline, Ulf Langheinrich, Rodelius alongside many of Dresden`s finest artists.

The roots of the festival goes back to a tragic moment in 2012. A fire on the 4th of April 2012 in the Fat Fenders record store shocked Dresdens electronic music scene. Shortly after, an unequalled wave of support could be seen, when many people helped to rebuild one of the most important hubs of the electronic music scene in Dresden. This commitment led to an event called „Musikfreunde“, which took place on the 2nd of June 2012 at Sektor Evolution. More than 50 local DJ’s and Live Acts gave up their fee to help raise money.

For the initiators of this event, it’s been clear that this event will not be the last of its kind. The aim is to create a sustainable project, where everyone can get involved with their own ideas, musically and visually – DAVE was born.

D(resden) A(udio) V(isual) E(xperience)

1. „Club“ vs. „Location“: the special situation of Dresdens electronic music culture

A change could be seen in the electronic music scene during the past few years. The production of electronic music has been accepted as an aesthetic practice. Electronic sounds and digital arts have been omnipresent ever since. Especially in urban areas, they are significant for media as well as for the creative and music industry. Centre of all this is the club. It also ties local potencials together and attracts international artists. Clubs in bigger cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Leipzig even cause economic and cultural income. Dresden has a pretty similar situation, but what the local scene is missing is the one club that forms this exact centre. In fact, the scene is spread across many small locations. Though there is a great demand for one club, it is, due to the constant growth of population and the economic exploitation of free space, nearly impossible to establish a club like this. Regarding these problems, DAVE ties Dresdens potential to create a constant institution despite the lack of space. Moreover, our aim is to create an urban festival of the electronic music culture with various activities, taking place in autumn this year. DAVE brings up-and-coming and established artists, labels, producers, record sellers, party crews, hosts and bookers together using spacial resources of all the locations and institutions that are convinced of this initiative, even if they superficially don’t belong to the scene. DAVE is to be understood as an Open Source initiative. Therefore, cooperations with other genres and formats are always welcome. DAVE stands for Dresden Audio Visual Experience. Although the initiative originates from the electronic music scene, it doesn’t focus on one genre. Hearing and seeing are the centre of this festival, as well as subcultural arts appealing these senses.

2. Visual music culture

The initiators think that music is not only experienced aurally, but also visually. What is a record without its cover artwork? Every event is promoted with visual concepts such as leaflets, posters and/or videos. Even the event itself appeals to our senses through decorations, light effects and electronic visualisations. DAVE wants to honour the aesthetic visualisation of music with programmes such as a VJ-contest, a leaflet museum, an exhibition of record covers, movies etc. Apart from classic forms of  music – parties, DJ sets, Laptop Battle and concerts – this is another experience DAVE carries in itself.

3. Crossing frontiers: experience and discourse of the electronic music culture

The experience the initiative wants to offer consists of two parts. On one hand, the festival not only allows aural and visual experiences in urban areas, but also focuses on trends and developments in the field of digital culture and music as multifaceted phenomenon. Electronic music is well qualified for this, as it enables us to learn about technical, aesthetical, economic, social and medial relations in the pop culture. DAVE wants to picture these relations with various events: whilst workshops about digital and analogue music productions enable insights into technics, lectures and discussions teach about music as an economic phenomenon. Artists, consumers and interested people may thus experience music as an interface between technology, discourse, aesthetic, realisation and entertainment. DAVE follows the aim to create transsectoral relationships and to initiate and accompany new projects and alliances between sub and socio-cultures, media and creative economies. However, all this can’t be ensured by a festival itself. Therefore, DAVE is not temporally defined. The other side of this festival is to permanently tighten experiences and relationships. It is important to establish the festival’s various formats in the citie’s cultual life beyond the annual festival. Thereby DAVE seeks a sustainability, that will design the diversity of cultural life in the long run.

4. The three columns of sustainability

To reach this sustainability, different concepts need to be realised. This initative’s sustainability is based on three columns. The first column is the festival’s local, national and global presentation. A website shall therefore file and document events and, at the same time, be a communication platform for national and international hosts, artists and interested people. The primary goal though, is to boost the local potential and the perception of media, musical and creative economy. The second column of sustainability is the continuity of work between the festivals. During the months before the next festival, public events such as discussions, workshops, lectures etc should make DAVE a solid part of Dresdens cultural life. During this time it is important to accompany established projects and develop new projects and cooperations to introduce them to the next festival’s programme.
The third column is supporting offspring. The initiative wants to bring the facets of electronic music closer to children and adolescents and to broaden their musical skills and knowledge. In cooperation with schools, youth clubs and musical schools, young people will be familiarised with the aesthetical and technical side of music through workshops about Djing, digital and analogue music production and synthesisers. The results of these projects shall be integrated into the next festival.

For more information and the line-up head to the official website (in german only):
http://www.dave-dresden.net

Follow DAVE on facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/dresdenavexperience