suspension

12/06/2020

marum

We were craving to join WHOLE - United Queer Festival this weekend and see these two playing along with many beloved ones, but the good news is that WHOLE managed to gather enough donations to pay this edition and keep running until next year!

OK - it's the tracklist post + time to rub salt into the wound!

Today I should have been somewhere. I probably would still be recovering from my debut in Ukraine last weekend and by now we all should have been arriving at the dystopian Ferropolis, set up our tents, and get ready to get sweaty and muddy. We were so energised for WHOLE - United Queer Festival we would have become the real perfect storm - electrified, loud, and above all wet!

Life took a turn and yet we ended up inside, bottling up energies, sheltered from the rain and the virus. But we did not stop: it’s been a moody ride in which we’ve proven to be our best support when the state fails (when does it not?). Collective action, emergency funds, mutual aid, isolation mixes and productions, protests, and loads of self-organised care!

Black Lives Matter, Ravelength, Berlin Collective Action, Karada House - these are just a few of the structures that have shown me the past months that womxn, trans, queer, black & POC people and all sorts of ratty ravers hold so much power and vitality.

I was so looking forward to playing along with my mina fam - BLEID, Violet, and Photonz - and would pass on the fire/decks to my dear Sentimental Rave. My beloved friends all the way from TAG Chengdu and MAMBA NEGRA traveling all the way for what would be an orgiastic event but above all a unique event to congregate all these incredible crews from around the globe.

WHOLE is not happen this year but with everyone’s help and donations, it managed to cover its expenses in hopes of another edition next year! S Ruston and I, as proud members of the promiscuous web of care warriors from mina, suspension, and Lecken, got the chance to do a b2b at HÖR for Whole and brought the energy we wanted for this festival: Loads of hard fun stomping, playing friends’ trax and classics, getting a real nasty blend that screams a serious longing for the dance floors.

07/05/2020

Check tomorrow's Disruption Network Lab's talk, joined by Pedro Marum (XenoEntities Network, mina, suspension), Mariana Cunha (Kosmicare), Mariana Vieira (Emotional CPR, Lecken, Rabbit Hole) and Rafi (TS Raver) to talk about harm reduction and self-organized structures of care among queer communities, focusing in the aftermath of COVID-19. We will present our joint project Ravelength that will go online this month.

For more details about the project and talk:

https://www.disruptionlab.org/fridays

Tune in tomorrow, Friday at 5pm (Berlin time), and reach out through the chatbox if you got any suggestions, concerns, or questions.

—

“RAVELENGTH”, is an upcoming collaborative to generate accessible tools for harm reduction, relief, and empowerment within the queerfeminist electronic music scene and raver communities. By organizing online discussions, workshops, and support groups in collaboration with artists, healthcare professionals, and local community organizers, we call for a culture of solidarity and mutual aid.

16/04/2020

Coronavirus, Drugs, And The Future Of Festivals - PopularResistance.Org

Really important read on how the pandemic affects music festivals (clubs and parties alike) highlighting the importance of harm reduction, awareness teams and all reproductive labor performed by the communities of ravers prior to the pandemic.
-What happens to all these communities that relied on these places of gathering?
-What happens to so many of us, that don't feel comfortable nor safe at home with their families?
-What happens to many that struggle with addiction and instead of understanding find prejudice and discrimination?
- What happens now that these small collective parties that historically have been self-organized projects that welcomed queers, trans, POC, neurodivergent, outcasts, and precarious people?

Party collectives for long have operated as alternative (and often illegal) structures that not only provide moments of revelry but also much-needed care and acceptance for many that often find in these communities their peers, their kin, forms of coping and resistance.
Many members of the party and rave scene have pivotal agents in the debates reading drug testing, harm reduction, decriminalization of drugs, radical connection enhanced by chemical aids and offering guidance and space for many psychonauts to explore inner worlds.

Where does all this energy and people go now? What happens to all the bottled-up anxieties and loneliness? Who looks after those whose needs have always been overlooked or repressed? What happens to all of us now that governments have (yet again) failed to protect and these communities have become defragmented under solation and even more precarious?

"As usual, it will be up to us."
---

Unfortunately, we had to stop our series of events and with them, our gatherings co-organized with Kosmicare in which we sought to offer a place to share of stories, experiences, and resources to many of us experimenting with drugs.
If you're struggling with addiction, please reach out to us. We will get back to you soon with more information on this project.

As the founder of DanceSafe, I have worked in public health for over twenty years. I’ve seen firsthand how public policy decisions directly affect people’s lives. Take drug prohibition, for example: Last year approximately 70,000 Americans died as a result of prohibition and the unsafe drug supp...

25/02/2020

Narcosexual, by S Ruston

We are proud to announce the release of S Ruston's EP 'Narcosexual'!

It's been a laborious process, starting in the talented and hardworking ear-brain of S Ruston, who materialized 'Narcosexual' into this powerful sounds.

"S Ruston's first EP, “Narcosexual,” is a celebration of breaks and high-rave pounding energy, led by vocals that seduce us with dirty-talk. Intuitive and multifaceted, the Lecken resident summons a vortex of experiences of addictive desire, advocating for a sensuous dance floor. Inspired by her active role in the sex-positive party scene, S Ruston invokes the collective euphoria of a sexually liberated club scene, superimposed with contrasting feelings; shame, stigma, fear, and prohibition. Borrowing screencaps from the chemsex-complex-app Grindr, the image-coding artist Olivia Jack creates a video-hole-trip of online-cruising echoes we might have once fallen into. Decoding the feelings of loneliness and desire that inhabit the drug-tech interface, Isabassi remixes the track that names the EP, slowing it down, filling it with glitches and weeping beats - this is how it must sound to embed bass with such feelings."

Needless to say that this wouldn't have been possible without the combined efforts of an entire team of tireless artists and collaborators: Isabassi who accepted our invitation to do a remix resulting in a 3rd powerful track with a very characteristic experimental signature, Olivia Jack who coded physchadelic visions into a music video, Mio Nordentoft who conceptualized this beautiful artwork and Daniel Filipe Pereira that designed it in many forms and shapes, Tim from Schnittstelle Studio Berlin and João Melo who did the mastering, Eric Baldwin for the additional mixing and Pete for contributing with his Grindr messages and that eventually would become a central element in the artistic process.

Thanks to Inverted Audio and XLR8R for pre-releasing the tracks and for all the support given.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone that has bought the music, played it all around and included them in their mixes, such as Violet, Miley Serious, Gigsta, La Fraicheur, Ananda, marum and BLEID.

Run to our Bandcamp and give them a proper listen:
https://suspensionx.bandcamp.com/

3 track album

25/02/2020

Banning GHB at Raves Is Dangerous

Filter - magazine wrote a long and insightful article on the current state of tactics adopted by clubs and parties to control the consumption of GHB/GBL. It is a long read but absolutely worth the time.

Thank you for highlighting ours and mina's efforts to dynamize a culture of harm reduction in our scene in Lisbon, along with other collectives who are also taking action in their local scenes, such our sisters DisCakes.

This has been a recurring issue we have been debating within our community and peers from other collectives. The consumption of G is causing deaths and it is particularly affecting many people from the queer community. Shared anxieties regarding our bodies, sexuality, and intimacy might be behind the affinity. Working as a social and sexual lubricant, while taming (temporarily) anxiety and enabling sex encounter to unfold, G became known as liquid ecstasy. Yet, the consequences of abuse with G have proven to way direr than ecstasy.

It is a very serious issue and must take responsibility for protecting our community. A wave of demonization and prohibitionism that is taking over clubs and parties. We believe in the power of harm reduction, the sharing of scientific knowledge, the sharing of these experiences within the community and, care practices that extend outside of the parties and clubs.

For this, we have been vocal and actively working on how to tackle this issue - in our events, working with a team of awareness and closely collaborating with the team of Kosmicare, but also by sharing our experience, tools, and resources with the community outside of party, organizing talks and workshops on harm reduction.

If you would like to join these conversations please get in touch with us.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please feel free to get in touch with us.
We are also here to help out.

PS: It is also important to mention that G abuse is a collective problem and every queer party is struggling to find their own path in how to deal with substance abuse within their communities, and the political context in which these parties exist needs to be taken into consideration. The article (wrongly) mentions the name of the promoters of Unter and L a r g e M a r g e (they have different promoters and different policies) in a tone that might come across as judgmental while failing to acknowledge the contextual differences between parties in EUA, where drug-related crimes, such as possession, hold much bigger consequences than in Portugal. Naming the promoters also exposes them to a scrutiny that is both undesirable and unproductive, especially because we're talking about illegal queer parties that already face many obstacles and challenges in order to operate.

21/02/2020

S Ruston Next on Lisbon's Suspension Label | XLR8R

The A-Side to S Ruston's "Narcosexual" is now here for you to listen!
Head over to XLR8R to enjoy this banger accompanied by Olivia Jack's video-art done specifically for this track 💓

Release comes out on the 25th February with a remix from our dear Isabassi and you can pre-order it on bandcamp:
https://suspensionx.bandcamp.com/

'Narcosexual' EP is out digitally on February 25.

14/02/2020

On Our Radar: February

Thank you, Beatport for putting S Ruston's EP Narcosexual on the radar for this month!

"For DJ/producer Sophie Ruston (AKA S Ruston), it’s all about speed. As a champion of the sex-positive party scene, and a resident of Lecken — the Berlin-based collective shaped by queer-feminist principles — S Ruston’s radical sound is bringing innovative ideas to the world of breaks and bass. (...) The demand for her knockout DJ sets has only skyrocketed since, as she returns to the studio as S Ruston and gears up to provide us with a new EP titled Narcosexual. Packed with brooding atmospherics, thrilling breaks, and razor-sharp spoken word, it’s a sexy kick to the gut that won’t leave you disappointed."

Pre-order the EP including with a remix by Isabassi:
https://suspensionx.bandcamp.com/

We take a closer look at five up-and-coming artists who are on our radar for February 2020: Otik, S Ruston, Jad & The, EFFY and OK Williams.

24/01/2020

We just announced S Ruston release - 'Narcosexual' - inspired by the collective euphoria of our sexually liberated club scene, superimposed with contrasting feelings; shame, stigma, fear, and prohibition. At our events we've been quite vocal about pressing urgencies in our scene, including the affinity of queer club culture with narcotics and voluntary-collective intoxication. This ancestral practice comes with great wows and woes - both chemical enhancement of intimate togetherness and self-medication tools for a deeply damaged community of queers.

Many of you manifested interest in the drug-testing services of Kosmicare so we are happy to let everyone know that they will be doing a workshop on today at Galeria Zé dos Bois followed by a debate just before we hand in the night into Authentically Plastic, , marum and BLEID.

This will be the first one of a series of debates, screenings, and exchanges, relating to harm reduction and party-after-care. This time we will focus on GHB/GBL, a drug that is causing stir among the communities of queer ravers due to its easily overdosed nature of consumptions - often mentioned as “collapse” -, knit-tight with sex practices and yet shrouded in myths and confusion.

The workshop starts at 5pm and is followed by a conversation at 7pm.

For those who would like to participate, please do the RSVP as soon as possible given that it's already tomorrow and we have limited spots:
https://forms.gle/JSGGeeFfHDgo4Y7w7

If you have any question, don hesitate to ask.
If you go to parties, if you consume or have friends that consume, please consider coming - it's important to not assume we know everything about it!

See you later in Lisbon, and tomorrow in Porto!

23/01/2020

Still standing after the madness that took over Säule - Berghain last Thursday!

It's been an amazingly wild ride doing this thanks to the efforts of so many kindred spirits. We wouldn't be standing here without the big family that supports us!

It was a pleasure to share this release-night with you, from Lou Drago's mesmerizing opening ambient set, through Odete and BLEID's shattering lives, ending in an eternal celebration of movement and bliss dancing to S Ruston (have you already heard her 'Narcosexual' at suspension?!) and marum's whimsical closings. It was a tremendous joy to close the night with a dancefloor still full of fiery dancers - we owe you everything for being there with us!

Now we fly back to Portugal to continue our release tour.

Friday - suspension | ZDB
Tomorrow at Galeria Zé dos Bois in Lisbon where our hosts marum and BLEID will be welcoming Lecken resident S Ruston coming from Berlin and Authentically Plastic coming from Uganda. We will start the afternoon at 5pm with an important workshop and talk on harm reduction with the Kosmicare team which will focus on GHB/GBL - the first of a series featuring panels, film screenings and community gatherings.

Saturday - suspension | Passos Manuel
On Saturday going over to Porto's Passos Manuel for the first time, we’ll meet Kosmicare’s Porto team and the night will follow with BLEID, marum and S Ruston.

Come through!

16/01/2020

Premiere: S Ruston - Eternal Merciless Hum - Inverted Audio

Announcing S Ruston's first release 'Narcossexual' on our label, we're sharing this premiere on Inverted Audio of the B-side Eternal Merciless Hum.

S Ruston's first EP, “Narcosexual,” is a celebration of breaks and high-rave pounding energy, led by vocals that seduce us with dirty-talk. Intuitive and multifaceted, the Lecken resident summons a vortex of experiences of addictive desire, advocating for a sensuous dance floor. Inspired by her active role in the sex-positive party scene, S Ruston invokes the collective euphoria of a sexually liberated club scene, superimposed with contrasting feelings; shame, stigma, fear, and prohibition. Borrowing screencaps from the chemsex-complex-app Grindr, the image-coding artist Olivia Jack creates a video-hole-trip of online-cruising echoes we might have once fallen into. Decoding the feelings of loneliness and desire that inhabit the drug-tech interface, Isabassi remixes the track that names the EP, slowing it down, filling it with glitches and weeping beats - this is how it must sound to embed bass with such feelings.

“Witch hunts did nothing more than conceal the criminalisation of practices of ‘voluntary intoxication’ and sexual and hallucinogenic self-experimentation”

Paul B. Preciado in
Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

You can now pre-order via our Bandcamp:
https://suspensionx.bandcamp.com/album/narcosexual

Lecken resident S Ruston enters the fray with a cut from her 'Narcosexual' EP on Suspension, entitled "Eternal Merciless Hum".