For 8 years, our hard-boiled parties have socialized the burdens of life and proselytized the rave sublime. Suckling the teet of Homopatik’s gayravesexcomplex, we were born under the same moon (June 2016) and shared kindred mandates. Buttons called on all freaks_social bottoms_bisexual sluts_Marxists_homos_poz_Lacanians_Italians, while Lecken rallied hivesex_nomadic fetishisms_decolonized masculinity_feminist whores_desire without a subject_comfortable alienation.
New girl on the block, Lecken, made waves right from the start by opening up FKN3000’s darkroom for the ultimate coalition of the 99%-—dykes, trannies and fags. Inspired by Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Theory for femme rulers of the night, they innovated awareness work as self-organized party care, by ravers for ravers, without drug demonology or punitive feminism.
Both our raves set up playgrounds for egalitarian protagonism, ateliers for permanent education, rooted in Berlin junkie family life, broke but with elevated cultural tastes. Over the years, we gathered a rich legacy of shared controversies: we perfected the art of cruising and stranger sexuality; explored consent for better sex, not just safer sex; wrote about the psychoanalysis of junkiness; said queer as in Free Palestine (bye aboutblank); survived cancel culture and outlived identity reductionism; worked trauma-informed but never as a justification for violence; understood queer as a universal horizon, not personal property; and remained committed to principles before personalities.
And here goes our ball once more. When you look out onto the Leck My Buttons dancefloor, at sunset hour, you can see all that we are: there are those that return, those we have conflict with, those who got lost, those who never come back, those we barely know, and all those we want to grow old with. An accelerated community circus. Live, love, and nowhere else to go but this beautiful temporary home.
Explode gender, fragment the family, cultivate community, practice solidarity.
Read the room but also read books.
De-escalate but also intensify.
Do it together, even when we’re no longer around. <3