I just obtained The Wire (August) with the feature on the DEMF and while I was reading it I came across the editorial.
"In early July, an international jury at the Musik and Maschine Techno Congress, a techno trade fair run by Berlin's Tresor Club and Jeff Mills, named us Magazine of The Year..." It goes on to say how Kodwo Eschun was voted "Journalist of The Year". The Musik and Maschine Techno Congress sounds very interesting and could be great but I have been unable to find any info on it, let alone any reports about what happened at it. I have no problems with a techno secret society but I find it odd that they should claim to be "international" when they're not. I have yet to find any Australian who was involved in any way or invited to attend - in Melbourne alone there are promoters like Richie McNeill of Hardware Corp and Richard Maher of Gasp, who are very talented individuals who have both fostered different aspects of the techno scene in Melbourne (where techno is almost the dominant form of electronic music culture) and beyond, Bundy in Adelaide and Biz-E in Sydney, and others, and then there are DJs and producers, HMC and the Juice Crew in Adelaide, Voiteck, Southern Outpost, Kazu Kimura in Brisbane, etc, etc. Richie was actually in Europe at the time, too! His assistant is a friend of mine and she thinks Richie did not attend, or was not asked. Now I am not saying that Australia is necessarily important in the wider scheme of things, but it is one place where I can do some research and I figure if Australia wasn't represented, then it's likely that other countries with strong techno scenes were not represented. Now I guess if Detroit had put on one such event I would not have any qualms at all, it would have a different symbolic significance like the DEMF, but it's because it's a European outlet (I accept Tresor's place in the European/transatlantic history, so that's not the issue) claiming to be representative of the international scene. Did anyone from Detroit attend? It's this Euro-centrism again. Does anyone else find all this odd? Does this make sense?
