Finding Space, Making Place

Description

Independent music venues are important hubs of social activity and cultural
production around which local punk scenes are both physically and conceptually
organized. Through interactions with participants over extended periods of time, these
spaces become meaningful places that are imbued with the energy, history and memories
of local music scenes. When a venue is shut down, local punk scenes experience a
temporary disruption as participants struggle to begin the process of re-establishing a new
autonomous social space free from outsider interference. Therefore, moving from the
local, to the national, to the international, from the small and personal to the vast and
global, as well as from the physical to the virtual, this dissertation illustrates the actual,
everyday practices of local scenes across Canada, addressing the larger issue of the loss
of alternative music venues occurring on a global scale and the resulting impact on punk
scene participants. Through the use of ethnographic research methods such as participant
observation, photographic documentation, interviews and surveys, this dissertation
engages with contemporary punk scene participants in order to give voice to those often
ignored in grand narratives of punk history. As such, traditional concepts of punk as a
utopic countercultural space are challenged to reveal the complexity and diversity that
exists within contemporary local punk scenes, where participants often experience equal
amounts of cooperation, competition, tension and struggle. By choosing to engage with
contemporary experiences and interpretations of punk culture, this research addresses the
changing landscape of local scenes, as punk participants attempt to carve out spaces of
representation for themselves in an exceedingly mediated world.
Author Keywords: Canada, music venues, punk, scene, social space, subculture