“Being a DJ is My Form of Resistance”

The Dance Floor As a Safer Space for Queer-Feminist Communities in Vienna

Abstract

Vienna based queer-feminist networks, DJ collectives and event formats such as female:pressure, Dishes, Unsafe+Sounds and Hyperreality provide a platform for exploration of a radical, uncompromising queer-feminist approach in institutionalized spaces. The dance floor becomes a safer space for nonconformism, as well as a platform for time-limited utopias and subcultures in an institutional framework. As subcultural spaces, these collectives create events that form intensive, multi-layered and progressive line-ups and advocate for greater visibility and representation of marginalized groups on the dance floor.

This paper explores the potentials and limitations of queer-feminist DJs and DJ-collectives, music producers and club organizers that make use of social spaces such as the dance floor to create safer spaces for queer dance music communities. I suggest that queer-feminist DJing and its contexts are shaped by ideas of fourth-wave feminism, queer-feminist networks as well as by the use of social media to provide spaces for cultural production and political activism.