Transatlantic Techno Myths: The 1994 Arica Eclipse Rave as an Example of the History and Historiography of Electronic Dance Music between Chile and Germany

Abstract

This article focuses on one of the earliest truly international Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festivals: the Eclipse Rave in Arica, in the Chilean Atacama Desert in November 1994. As a collaboration of mainly German and Chilean individuals, the event was confronted with a multitude of organizational obstacles and problems of intercultural understanding. Nevertheless, the event has now achieved a kind of cult status and is mythologized as the breakthrough moment of EDM culture in South America. Drawing on German and Chilean sources, the article sheds light on the background and impact of the festival and discusses the important role of Chilean-German exiles as interpreters and cultural mediators within EDM scenes. This contribution questions the types of sources that festivals and similar events generate, and consequently asks how an international history of the event-based and present- and history-obsessed EDM culture could be written at all.