We pushed back with linked arms to free a space twenty feet across. A lone dancer rushed in, bringing the crowd to a standstill as we watched his drops and twirls.
Another body took up the invitation and broke through and began to circle the other in playful competition. He pushed his feet off the grass as high as he could go, reaching his hands up as if to grab the soft Parisian sky. One by one, others began to skip around the circle. Sharing a mischievous glance with my friend, I pulled her into what was rapidly turning into a stampede. She tripped over and I barely managed to drag her away from the pounding feet, but not before getting elbowed in the ear.
Aside from hugs, petting strangers’ dogs and of course being back at Harvard, crowds are the one thing I’ve missed most from my pre-pandemic life. Organized groups of disorganization, and the music that often accompanies them, are a chance to connect with our immediate physicality in a world that often asks much of our brains and little of our bodies. So as we embraced zoom classes, zoom conferences, and zoom doctor’s appointments, I thought I’d at least try to get my fix at a zoom club.
While DJs have been posting their recorded sets on YouTube for years, Club Quarantäne “is something entirely different” says Ryan Miller, a London based event programmer who joined Club Quarantäne’s team in April after being furloughed.
The brainchild of two Berlin-based music managers, Club Quarantäne attempts to recapture the lost magic of the club in a live, virtual setting. The club has hosted three online “sessions” thus far, each incorporating over 20 DJs across the globe in 37-hour line-ups.
After connecting from Club Quarantäne’s website and going through “security” (where an amorphous colour changing light appears on the screen asking you to type in who you came to see), clubbers’ screens enter a panoramic subterranean vault pulsing with the resident DJs pre-recorded techno set. There’s a count for how many clubbers are logged in as well as a chat box to communicate with the other clubbers and the DJ.
Everything is anonymous, your alias is a color. Everyone is just a dot floating around in a post-structuralist abyss. “It’s just about kind of losing yourself in this sort of made up world, which most nightclubs are to some degree” says Miller. “We just did that but with a videogame engine.”
While there is an undeniable thrill of feeling lost in a crowd, clubbing is about getting lost together. When it came to creating a virtual club, “the most important thing,” says Miller, “is the interaction between the audience and themselves.” Beyond the club’s main page are eighteen “bathroom stall” chat rooms that can hold up to ten people for private group conversations.
In Stall 14, clubbers shared where they were tuning in from, bonded over their love of electronic music and, given the absence of anything else to talk about, started a string of fish puns. While this stall managed to have a conversation driven by their sheer determination, every other chat room I entered that night was silent.
“I think what everyone likes about clubbing is the social interaction with others” says Iris van Egten, a clubber tuning in from the Hague. “Dancing with others, talking with others, meeting new people – these are the main ingredients of a great club night.” However, Club Quarantäne currently has no video platform for clubbers to look at each other while dancing, in fact they actively discouraged clubbers from sending out invites to their personal zoom rooms on the main chat.
Club Quarantäne could “go further and actually provide the opportunity to make a digital identity so users can connect more,” says van Egten. “Not only is it fun to make friends online – for some of the members of the electronic music community, it might be a crucial contribution to their mental wellbeing in the current times.” Here, zoom clubbing falls badly short of in person clubbing. In a physical crowd, no one knows who you are if you don’t want them to, clubbing often happens in the dark and some venues even confiscate attendee’s phones so that nothing is leaked. The magic of crowds is that you are anonymous yet seen. You are one body in a formless mass but each time a sweaty arm brushes against you, you know you are not alone.
Given the adage ‘once it’s on the internet it’s there forever,’ it is understandable that Club Quarantäne has made the choice to value anonymity over conversation. “We’re not trying to replicate live experience,” says Miller, “because you can never do that.” Another drawback van Egten points out is that “it is impossible to immerse yourself in the music when you’re hearing this from your home audio installation rather than hearing this from the massive sound systems in venues.” Miller instead sees the Club Quarantäne team working together with its attendees. “We’re the digital club and they’re the physical club,” he says. “People are sending us photos of the sound system with a projector on and the lights are off.”
While dismantling the different aspects of the club is unsatisfying for many, it has allowed people to get involved who may not have had the chance before. After the second Club Quarantäne session, a disabled attendee reached out to the team “and said I’ve never had the full club experience for a number of different reasons and this was the closest I’ve felt where I’ve been sort of included in that” says Miller. “It wasn’t something that I had really thought about before, but [now] there’s a whole other section of people that can experience clubbing, in the sort of truest form, not the truest form but as close to it, with building relationships, interacting with people, listening to music, having fun, staying up way too long.”
Modifying the club for lockdown has shown that post-quarantine events which compartmentalize the elements of the club could not only be useful, but possible. “There could be a nightclub and [the DJ] is broadcasted from somewhere else so it could be cheaper for everyone, both the promoters and the attendees,” says Miller. “Maybe [the DJs] are doing it in one club and then broadcast to another club at the same time.” Think about how “festivals take a massive toll on the environment, given the miles travelled and the waste in the set up,” says Miller. “Maybe a DJ doesn’t need to be in a physical space for it to be considered a party.”
I find myself going back to Miller’s comment that zoom clubbing is “not the truest form but as close to it.” At the end of it all, I was drinking alone in my room with techno music on, but over the course of the evening I had engaged in conversations, albeit brief, with clubbers from around the world (some who had attended all three Club Quarantäne sessions). I had discovered new artists and I had learned about the black roots of House and Techno music from their resident DJ, curator and journalist Ash Lauryn. I miss crowds, chaos and mindlessly jumping up and down, but I hope that when we all meet in person again, we will have learned from this period of physical isolation so that we can give as many people the option to engage in whatever elements of clubbing they choose.
Image Credit: https://clubquarantaene.stream/