The Turner Prize-winner explores the political context of the rave scene from 1984-1993 in a new film.
Jeremy Deller’s documentary Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1993 will be shown on BBC Four next Friday (2 August). The film, which came out in 2018, has previously only been screened at film festivals and on select platforms. You can watch the trailer in the player above.
Everybody in the Place is written and directed by the Turner Prize-winning artist. It explores a social history of the UK with a focus on the participants of rave culture, free parties and illegal warehouse raves during the height of the acid house scene. The documentary was screened last October at the Frieze Art Fair and apparently, “upturns popular notions of rave and acid house, situating them at the very centre of the seismic social changes reshaping 1980s Britain.”
The film moves from the hedonism of the 80s and Thatcherite politics to the rise of neoliberalism and even Brexit. Rare and unseen archive materials trace a history of protest movements and the reaction to the period’s political angst via the dancefloor. According to Frieze the film shows us “how rave culture owes as much to the Battle of Orgreave as it does to the gay clubs of Chicago or the discovery of ecstasy: not merely a cultural gesture, but the fulcrum for a generational shift in British identity, linking industrial histories and radical action to the wider expanses of a post-industrial century.”
The film was originally part of Second Summer of Love – a four-part film series in collaboration with Frieze and Gucci, exploring the cultural impact and influence of the acid house and rave movement.
Jeremy Deller is currently showing work at Saatchi Gallery’s Sweet Harmony: Rave | Today exhibition. Revisit our interview with Turner Prize-winning artist here.
Everybody in The Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 airs on BBC Four next Friday (August 2). Watch the trailer in the player above.
