If you want to start looking for clues about the role of Black people, POC or queer people in German club culture and the techno scene, you can start researching in archives and libraries that preserve sources from and about pop and subculture.
Magazines and fanzines, flyers and posters, photos and video recordings are some of the materials that can be used. Many of the sources from the 1980s and 1990s are only available in analogue form and can rarely be found online. Music magazines such as magazines from the techno scene like Frontpage and Groove or “black music” and “dance” magazines document much of what happened in the techno scene and club culture. City magazines like Berlin’s Zitty can also be a good source.
But even here there are gaps and not everything that happened was reported. Many protagonists or even whole communities remain invisible. Some magazines also contain racist, sexist and homophobic content.
The Archive of Youth Cultures is an information and competence center for youth cultures. Since 1998, it has been collecting, researching and communicating knowledge about youth cultures and their lifeworlds. In doing so, it pursues the goal of enabling a critical and differentiated examination of youth cultures and scenes that is free of value judgments.
To this end, the Archiv der Jugendkulturen operates a reference library in Berlin, publishes on youth cultures, advises ministries and other organizations, holds workshops with members of the scene for children and young people on music, art, dance or fashion, and devotes itself intensively to the political and cultural education of disadvantaged young people.
