Time.news “It’s back”
Organizers, DJs, establishment managers, night owls, observers… Every Wednesday, “Libé” gives voice to those who live for and through the night. Today, the author, singer, DJ and co-founder of the association Beyond the club.
With Beyond the Club, his “laboratory” founded in 2021, Sarah Gamrani, 27, seeks to imagine “the futures of the night” post Covid. Now, alongside Laure Togola, she questions the representation of minoritized artists in the programming or the architecture of festive spaces (among other subjects). This happens, for example, through a new fanzine Flashes, the first issue of which has just been released in mid-February, but also exhibitions and other creative projects. She has made nightlife a subject of research since her studies in urban planning in Bordeaux and Brussels. This gave rise to a self-published theoretical-poetic book, Beyond the club, sold to 600 copies. As a student, the feminist author, also a singer for the electronic duo Baraka and DJ under the pseudonym of Hawa Sarita, first rubbed shoulders with a version “classic” parties in the bars of Toulouse, the city from which she comes. Before discovering its alternative and militant dimension during his Latin American wanderings (in Mexico and Chile), then starting to mix on his return to France just before the pandemic.
Your definition of night
“It may be a little theoretical, but I would say that it is a separate space-time where everything is possible. The night is political, emancipatory and transformative, but it is also dual. It is both a space of freedom for bodies but also of constraints, of letting go but also of violence. That’s what makes it so captivating.”
Your first ride
“I grew up in Toulouse, so my first major outings and my introduction to electronic music were at the Bikini in Ramonville-Saint-Agne. The sound system is awesome. On the other hand, it is far from the center of Toulouse. You have to take the metro to the terminus, then walk fifteen minutes in the dark along the canal. It’s a place you have to earn. I must have been 17 or 18 and it became, for me, an unmissable event. I went out very carefree, I didn’t ask myself any questions and each time I took a musical slap. On the other hand, I had not yet integrated all the political or militant dimensions of a festive space. My prism was quite naive. It was quite beautiful.”
Previously on “It’s back”
Ta BO
“The remix of Big time sensuality by Björk by Fluke. We hear the singer’s voice and a very progressive instrumental that draws towards trance. It can kick off a festive mood. I’m also obsessed with Missing from Everything but the Girl, it’s really the sound representative of the nostalgia that there is in the night, this nostalgia for the day before and the next day and of not being there anymore.
your place
“It’s a secret place, a place where we organize a small festival at the beginning of the summer with Cristofeu, half of our Baraka duo. We only bring our close friends, we are usually a little over a hundred at most. Everything takes place in an old greenhouse of roses, fallow, half open and where nature takes back its rights. Next to that, there is a big river where you can swim. For me, it’s the very definition of partying, being with friends, people you love and who love you in the middle of nature where you can dance freely. It’s our little intergenerational summer utopia and it sets the tone for the coming season. I have never found these conditions elsewhere.”
your next weekend
“On Saturday, I will be at the Machine du Moulin-Rouge [club adossé au cabaret parisien dans le XVIIIe arrondissement, ndlr], where the Red Light Districts evening is organized. All the spaces of the club are open and this time it is a Barcelona collective, Maricas, who is invited. A friend, Hewan Aman, and my favorite artist, the Australian DJ Roza Terenzi, are also playing: it’s going to be a great evening to listen to quality music.