TECHNO HERITAGE NETWORK

A collaborative platform connecting research, archives, and initiatives dedicated to the heritage and memory of techno and electronic dance music

Techno and electronic dance music have evolved from underground scenes into a global cultural formation that has shaped artistic practices, social relations, and urban life for over four decades. Despite growing public recognition – including the listing of Berlin techno and French electronic music as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage – research on techno and its heritage remains weakly institutionalised and marginal within academia, education, and cultural policy. A wide range of initiatives worldwide – academic, artistic, and scene-based – are already engaged in documenting, archiving, and reflecting on techno cultures, yet their work is often fragmented, unevenly visible, and poorly connected across institutional and national boundaries.

The Techno Heritage Network responds to this situation by offering a collaborative, modular platform that maps, links, and makes visible these initiatives and their relationships. It strengthens exchange and coordination across local, national, and transnational contexts and helps to consolidate techno heritage as a recognised field of research and cultural memory, while supporting long-term sustainability through shared visibility and interconnected documentation.

Hosted by the Berlin University of the Arts and the Department of Musicology at Heidelberg University, the platform is designed to grow with the initiatives it connects and to reflect the organisational principles of techno and EDM cultures themselves: decentralised, networked, and practice-based. By making the field’s scale, diversity, and societal relevance legible to funding bodies, cultural policy makers, and research institutions, the Techno Heritage Network also serves as a strategic reference point for future investment, institutionalisation, and lasting support for techno heritage initiatives.

The initiators are: Prof. Dr. Matthias Pasdzierny (Berlin), Prof. Dr. Christiane Wiesenfeldt (Heidelberg), Dr. Esther Dubke (Heidelberg), Gabriela Losada Diaz (Berlin)

For questions and information, please contact: info@technoheritage.com