A green octopus in a window, a bus full of DJs and a float never seen here before: Łódź gave up its street for three days

On the last weekend of August the centre of Łódź did without turnstiles: from the 28th to the 30th the city’s main street, Piotrkowska, spent three days as a free electronic music festival. The whole thing is called Parada Wolności (the Freedom Parade), and the word “freedom” in the name is not there for decoration.

It is run by the Fundacja Parada Wolności, which traces the movement back to 1997.

The basic unit here is not a stage but a float: a truck loaded with speakers, a mobile stage rolled out by a single collective, club, soundsystem or promoter. Every float is a world of its own with its own taste, and together they turn the street into a moving map of the Polish club scene.

A float never seen here before

For the first time in the Parade’s history, a float was put out by a crew from abroad — the Hungarian PRIMATE. Until now every float had been Polish, which is exactly why this single line on the bill carries more weight than the names printed under it.

The organisers make no secret of the reason. Independent culture and the club scene in Hungary have in recent years been working in ever more difficult political and institutional conditions, and the idea of inviting PRIMATE was born precisely as a gesture of solidarity with the scene there, as the Polish outlet Muno writes.

“Three days in which Łódź becomes Central Europe’s biggest celebration of freedom, self-expression and electronic music” — that is how the foundation describes the Parade on its own website.

Saturday’s main stage went to Berlin’s BCCO — a collective, a label and a float that over the past few years has become one of the most recognisable names in new European electronic music. Playing under its banner in Łódź were AFEM SYKO, AEREA, FUTURE.666, MIJA, ØTTA, SOUTHSTAR and Poland’s own SEPT, who also helped put the programme together.

Sunday was closed by the Palestinian DJ Sama' Abdulhadi with a two-hour set on the main stage, the last of the entire festival. Before her that day came ZUZKA, Duszne Granie, Lulu Malina and Plus2.

The bus where the party starts early

On Saturday an old red Ikarus took to the streets of Łódź, carrying people to the Parade for free. It was no ordinary service: DJs stood behind the decks inside the bus the whole way. The route started on Kusocińskiego Street and had eight stops, and the idea behind it came from two Łódź collectives, TechVibes and TMOS.

There was a purely visual side to it as well. A huge green octopus hung from the windows of the building at Piotrkowska 102 — an installation under which the crowd gathered in costumes made especially for these three days.

The main thing, though, has not changed since the nineties: admission. At a time when a ticket to a big electronic music event in Poland can cost several hundred złoty, the Parade keeps going without tickets and without fences to separate those taking part from the city. The foundation also runs a separate strand, Archiwum Wolności (the Freedom Archive), collecting the voices of the pioneers of Polish electronic music, rescuing cassettes and documenting what would otherwise disappear along with the people themselves.

Earlier we wrote about how an industrial complex on Modlińska in Warsaw is being turned into a club — another way in which the Polish scene is claiming city space for itself.