M HKA Ensembles

Installation, Dimensions variable .

Collection: Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK.

The project Real Arcadia, 2003–ongoing, documents and responds to a series of illegal ‘cave raves’ that took place in the Lake District, a rural region of North West England, during the late 1980s into the early 1990s. Stokes developed his installation following conversations with the organisers of the free parties, the ‘Cave Crew’, bringing together different paraphernalia such as homemade mix-tapes and T-shirts, as well as reconstructing the sound system used. After attracting ever-increasing crowds of young people from the surrounding villages and eventually further afield, the raves inevitably caught the attention of the local authorities and media, who adopted the typically moralistic tone used by politicians and police nationally at that time. Lord Egremont, who owned the land, even looked to destroy the caves using dynamite. The installation also incorporates a clip from local television news, a ‘ZX Spectrum’ style wireframe animation of the cave, excerpts of transcribed accounts by participants of the raves, along with a series of original photographs subtitled Never Been to Belgium after the 1992 hardcore track by Manix. Real Arcadia opens up a valuable perspective on raves from those on the inside.