Party Vibe

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At a flat in Dalston, east London, Natalie talks with passion, enthusiasm and intelligence for an hour and a half, showing me photos, cuttings, articles, pamphlets – a very ordered documentation of protest and parties. Playing with her dreads, pulling at her lip ring, she tells me about squatting and dodging police, about the lack of faith she has in the British government, in British society, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because with her friends she has found everything she needs outside it. As with most of the people I speak with, the government represents a distant, irrelevant force. She doesn’t vote, and doesn’t know many people who do. (“Why would we want to vote for them? It’s like going into a shop and there’s loads of stuff to buy, but you don’t want any of it.”) So, in the absence of a democracy, you might as well go somewhere where you are represented, somewhere you do have a voice, where someone listens to you. For Natalie, those places are parties. She talks about rigs and parties and protests. Names like Manik. Panik. Random. Headfuk. They do free parties. Which is all about taking over a space and making it yours. With your laws. And your people.

“It was when I first moved into London and my flatmate took me to a rave. He kept going on about these parties, saying you have to come to these parties. And I didn’t know what he was talking about because I’d never been to a rave before or anything like that, and so I just went along. It was in this theatre and I remember the guy on the door had a hardcore face, and he asked for donations and so I subbed him a few quid, and he pulled aside this black curtain and just got in there, and there was just people running about, selling their shit, it was just people doing exactly what they wanted, just partying exactly how they wanted, and my first thoughts were: I’ve found my people. I always knew there was this sort of group out there. And I never looked back.”

Breaking the law is part of the fun and the point of the party. “Breaking into somewhere to set up a rig is a real buzz. You find somewhere maybe the night before, break the lock, or get through a window, and then lock the door again from the inside. When you’ve got a nice place like a cinema, it’s wicked, you just sit in the seats and watch the rig go up and dance a bit. And there’s no trouble when you’re there. Leave us alone and there’s no trouble. It’s only when the police come and try to break it up or move you on that it can get nasty.”

From Natalie, there is the strong belief that these apparently lawless groups of people are able to behave perfectly sensibly outside the law, as long as they are left alone. They are self-regulating and have their own codes of behaviour. “It’s safer to get drugs in there than in clubs. I’d buy drugs off anyone at a party. Because you know who you’re buying off. Or someone knows them. And if they sold you shit, then people would find out. It’s not about the money or ripping people off. You can get most drugs – pills, ketamine, crack, heroin – if you want, but there’s not much of a scene. It goes up and down. There was a crack scene for a bit and then some rude boys came in, and then more violence and some guns, and the parties were more moody. So they were less publicised, it became word of mouth, you’d get told by a mate, and so on.”

Parties conform to different rules, exist in different times and take place in different zones. Natalie talks with enthusiasm about their disconnection from normality. “When you have a good party, you don’t even think about anything bad that might have happened. You feel like you’re one up on the world. They’re all tucked up in bed or they’re all doing such normal shit and you’re breaking into a building on a massive high. Anyone’s welcome, it’s never more than about three quid. If it’s a big party and there’s a lot of rigs there, it might be a fiver. If the pigs turn up, it’s just like, right, quick, everyone in, close the doors. They won’t do anything. I haven’t been to a party that’s been busted for ages.”

The party scene is driven by passion and the pull of a tight-knit social group. You versus the rest of the world.

“You got so many hundreds of people coming from everywhere, on their phones waiting for the address. It’s a bit like cat and mouse. We’re just having a laugh, though. You feel like a kid again. But it’s all safe, it’s wicked. It’s about community. I go to any party, here or in Europe, and I always know someone. Or bump into someone. Or sort something out.”

Accompanying her hedonism is a sense that there is injustice in the UK and an interest in doing something about it. “The criminal justice bill really made things feel different: the British government seemed to ban everything that you liked.”

And for all the focus on the party, there’s a nod to more serious theory. Natalie tells me about Temporary Autonomous Art Exhibitions that go on, which refer to Hakim Bey’s work on Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs) and Pirate Utopias: spaces where, for a short time, normal rules are ignored and a more playful, less hierarchical set of behaviours can take place. As she puts it, “We have to take spaces because we’re not given them.”

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