TEKNO NOMADS

2000-03 #photography

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“There is only one concrete reality and that is the one that you find yourself in right now.”

— Network 23, 2001.

“But what if - over the course of a few days - you slip in and out of Many Different Realities.

What if - your perception of what you consider normal and acceptable - becomes as flexible as a flexi-flex - mutable even as mutating mutants.”

— Network 23, 2001.

This photo essay seeks to capture the spirit of a movement that sought freedom through music and community. Its roots lie in the United Kingdom of the 1980s and 1990s, when travellers, sound system collectives, and rave culture gave birth to the first free parties and teknivals. These gatherings stood outside the mainstream: improvised, autonomous, and ephemeral, where techno was more than rhythm—it was language, trance, and resistance.

The parties were communal acts. Some built sound systems, others painted or cooked, everyone helped to clean the space. Abandoned factories, hidden fields, or open beaches became temples of sound, where no ticket was needed and no hierarchy ruled. The uncertainty was part of the magic: each event was a lottery, a fragile and powerful act of collective creation.

In Spain, and especially in Catalonia, this movement found new soil between 2000 and 2005.

Visiting sound systems such as Desert Storm left their mark, while local crews like Muskaria, TMK, Zapatilla, and Narkolepsia nurtured an underground scene of smaller gatherings.

Through less monumental than the teknivals of France or the UK, they carried the same essence: an alternative way of life, self-organised and borderless, where every beat was both a celebration and a refusal.

NETWORK 23 is a non-existent but supremely powerful co-ordination force of all things tekno-spiral-psychoactive-teknoirradiated and all that.