TECHNO DETROIT-BERLIN is a research project initiated by Gropius Bau, Berlin, and Michigan Central Art, Detroit, that will lead to exhibitions in Berlin and Detroit in 2028-29. TECHNO DETROIT-BERLIN reframes techno as a cultural movement shaped by industrial decline, sociopolitical shifts, and technological acceleration. Emerging in post-Fordist Detroit in the early 1980s, techno responded to automation and Black artistic ingenuity, creating a radical sonic futurism. Following the Berlin Wall’s fall, techno became the sonic architecture of post-reunification Berlin, reshaping collective experiences.

TECHNO DETROIT-BERLIN will examine, under the support of Kelly Kivland, Curatorial Consultant to Michigan Central Art, Detroit (and current Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at UMMA in Ann Arbor), Jenny Schlenzka, Director, and Patrizia Dander, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Gropius Bau, Berlin, the underexplored cultural, sonic, and socio-political foundations of the techno movement and its ramifications from the late 1970s to the present. Research will be led by an international advisory committee, led by the cultural researcher and author DeForrest Brown, Jr., the project will aim to expand techno’s discourse beyond music and to examine its impact on digital culture, labor, migration, subjectivity, and post-industrial economies. The research focus is centered on the movement’s marginalized and understudied Black and queer origins, and its development between Detroit and Berlin, two closely interlinked centers of the techno movement, but also explore its global ramifications beyond the transatlantic axis. The research will explore techno’s history through visual art, literature, film, music, and critical theory, with the aim of establishing an interdisciplinary platform. The starting point for the interdisciplinary research/exchange on the topic is a convening for TECHNO DETROIT-BERLIN, scheduled to take place in Detroit in spring 2027 with founding members of techno as well as musicians, visual artists, and theoreticians engaged with the above-mentioned subjects.