everybody in the place
in august 2019 the bbc broadcast jeremy deller’s documentary 'everybody in the place: an incomplete history of britain 1984-1992'. it takes the form of a lecture delivered to a class of a-level politics students and deller uses archive footage to contextualise the rave movement within the social upheavals of 1980s britain.
he traces the birth of house and techno, it's introduction to britain via british-caribbean soundsystem culture, the moral panic as the rave scene goes overground and the states heavy handed response to it. the conservative government had given the police free reign in the war against the miners, a pivotal moment in the middle of the decade, and their treatment of the ravers and the traveller community is a clear continuation of that.
deller talks about ravers dancing in the empty factories and warehouses of industrial towns and cities, the same spaces where the previous generations had laboured, an inversion of work and pleasure. he calls the raves 'a death ritual to mark the transition of britain from an industrial to a service economy'.
that maybe makes it sounds like heavy going but i've watched this multiple times now as it such a beautiful celebration of this brief moment of joyful abandon. throughout there are scenes of togetherness, communality and living in the moment that all hit a little bit harder after nearly a year of lockdown.
everybody in the place: an incomplete history of britain 1984-1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thr8PUAQuag