Chris Liebing Statement On Love Parade 2010
I thought I'd post this, as I just got it through on my email:
Chris Liebing on Love Parade 2010
5 days after the tragic events at the Love Parade in Duisburg / Germany, I would like to share my thoughts in a more detailed statement. First of all I want to again express my sincere compassion for all the relatives and friends of the victims, as well as for the injured and traumatized who will have hard times to recover from what they experienced. I am still shocked about what I have seen and heard so far.
The Love Parade has been developing throughout the 90s, parallel to what I would call the “Techno Movement”. More precisely speaking, the Love Parade has been an expression of this movement. It has been a movement beyond any profit or image seeking ideas, which developed completely self-sufficient out of the underground. It was all about celebrating, dancing and having fun together.
Over the years, the numbers of attendants have been rising, and so have the financial needs. The costs were rising (city cleaning, etc.) and so has the profit (for the community and the others involved), and suddenly there was a certain “image” attached, which brands could use to increase their value.
Looking back, it is actually a logical consequence and maybe also easy to recognize, that an event like this would eventually fall into the hands of people who see “celebrating, dancing and having fun together” not as the main reason to host a Love Parade. This would actually still be tolerable, as long as human life would not be endangered, but what happened here is beyond anything one would have ever imagined.
It is absolutely appalling and shocking that the responsible organizers of the Love Parade and the city council in Duisburg have misused the “Techno Movement” with those fatal results. In their striving for image and profit, they have disregarded all measures of control and security and put people who really just wanted to celebrate, dance and have fun together in a situation in which 21 innocent persons had to die and countless have been injured and traumatized.
I hope that it will be possible to entirely clear up what has happened and that the guilty persons will be held responsible and punished as soon as possible.
But even this will not lessen the caused pain.
The least we owe to those who have died and those who got injured, is that we make sure that something like this won´t happen again in the future. New laws and rules won´t really help. We have seen that we can´t even trust those who should make sure that those rules are getting observed.
To really change something, we have to start with ourselves. We as DJs, we have to be even more sure about the “Who” we are playing for and the “Where” we are playing at – only like this, the fans can get a better orientation of where it is worth going and where it is save to celebrate. Basically everybody can change a lot with his or her behaviour in this world. The more alert we go through life, the more conscious we can make choices between good and bad products, services, events or other things. Like this we minimize the scope of action for cold-blooded profiteers.
In memory of the victims of the Love Parade in Duisburg 2010,
Chris Liebing
It does not have to be this way
I kinda hear what you are saying DTD, but here you have local government and promoters doing business and I might not go as far as Chris L. to say that these promoters are money hungry gluttons, but what they have done is instigated the death and injury of people, which I believe could have been avoided. Ok, now I understand that there are going to be random fatalities here and there, but a promoter cannot control what people subject themselves to or monitor whether they are healthy enough for the sex, drugs, and techno they are about to endure if any! But it is up to the local Government and Promoters to provide a safe venue so that people are not in danger of suffocating or being trampled by a mob (There was only one way in and one way out right?). Are there no fire codes, building codes, zoning laws in Germany? I believe those people died as a result of poor planning and neglect for people's safety, and it's crazy that the government did not even have local authorities inspect the venue before attempting to let a million people in, (The fire marshalls in the US would have cock blocked so hard, and would have cost the promoters so much money, they don’t play around in the US). I do not think this had anything to do with a “get rich quick” scheme @ the expense of innocent lives. Quite simple it was poor planning, which can be construed as negligence, which is involuntary manslaughter, which is/can be punishable by a prison sentence and I will put money on it that the Mayor of Duisburg is not going to serve any jail time. Hopefully, this is a lessoned learned and not a, “I told you raves and techno are dangerous and should be banned”.
Needless to say there is new generation of party kids(which may sound absurd, but could have played a big role in what happened), which in my opinion are just really going to party and get wasted; they could give a damn about who is playing, what they are playing, and how they are playing it. These big festivals are big commercial concerts basically and quite frankly I am not into them myself(I was at this years’ Detroit Electronic Music Festival aka Movement and when Richie Hawtin came on I noticed kids becoming aggressive, pushing, elbowing, it was ridiculous!!) the music is limp at best and all the DJs sound the same. Used to back in the day I could tell you who were playing without looking at the DJ or line up, you just knew because you could pick out mixing styles and a lot of DJs back then had their own sound, I.E. Dave the Drummer, you just know it’s him J!!!!!
To those that passed, their families and friends, I do not know you, I am thousands of miles away, but I will keep you my heart and may we all take the time to be thankful for life and not take a moment from here on for granted.
