Jasna 1 became the first nightclub in Warsaw that I truly wanted to go to every weekend, whether coming in as a resident DJ, employee or as a regular visitor. The club became my home and it offers a shelter to many others, who are heavily involved in the city's scene.

The club is located at Jasna street in the very center of Warsaw, in the historic building “Pod Orłami”, which was built between 1912 and 1917 in an early modernism style. As many others, the building was half destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. It was rebuilt and extended in the late 50s and now houses the National Council of Cooperatives, the club’s neighbours, both guarded by impressive eagles sitting on the corners.

The people behind Warsaw's Jasna 1 are the initiatiors of our international cooperation and they are leaders of the project. Jędrzej Kowalczyk, club's art director and resident DJ, writes about the the club's backstory to break the ice. 

From the very beginning, we wanted to run a club that is based on and supports the local scene. The Polish electronic music has been going through a bit of a renaissance in the past few years and we wanted to promote and celebrate local artists, promoters and collectives. We truly believe that at the very core of our club are the resident DJs, all of whom treat Jasna as their home. They all contribute by taking an active part in selecting lineups and in developing and curating the space. The international success of several of our residents, such as VTSS, Olivia, Sept and others, makes us feel very proud and helps in amplifying Poland's music scene.

It is rewarding to be one of the residents, since everyone is very supportive to each other. We are all good friends, we hang out outside the club too and we complement each other stylistically in the DJ booth, which only contributes to the friendly and relaxed atmosphere of the club.

Jasna's music programming is very diverse. On a single weekend you can listen to all kinds of genres - from techno, electro and house to breakbeat and italo disco. It's also not unusual to come to Jasna on Sunday to lie down on the floor and listen to ambient music. The club's community is very open minded and is not limited to any single genre.

Among the several recurring nights happening at Jasna is Radar, a party run by Olivia, Chino and Kinzo Chrome, one of the hottest ebm, electro and acid nights in Poland. The night with the most diverse selection of music is K.O.D. (Disco Defence Committee) focused on everything from italo disco to acid house. The young super talented crew Syntetyk specializing in post-punk electronics and murky synthwave are having their nights at Jasna, and they also started a label of the same name.

It’s worth mentioning that while unfortunately homophobia is still a huge issue in Poland, Jasna takes a very strong stance in the fight against this unfortunate prejudice and works toward being a safe space for anyone who wants to express their sexuality and identity. We're very sensitive to any forms of discrimination of an minority groups. Since we stand strong behind the LGBTQIA+ community, we have been organizing official after parties of the Warsaw Pride Parades in the past few years.

We strongly believe we have a role to play in fighting prejudice and homophobia in Warsaw and the whole country - our club has always been open to everyone as long as they respect others. It's worth pointing out that Jasna 1's sister club Metropolis (which is just next door) is one of the very few Gay clubs in Poland. We often open the door between the two clubs, so that guests can freely mingle.

Now that we have been open for over three years, we are confident with our direction and the way it develops as we go on. We earned a strong trust from the electronic music community and we continue to set new standards in our country. Our work has been appreciated by a number of global artists and international agencies - helping us to cement a strong reputation on the international scene.

Having said all that, we still think we have a long way to get where we want to be. Jasna 1 still feels like a bit of an unfinished project - we recognise that we can still improve a number of things, including the interior design, sound system and programming.

The current pandemic has been tough on everyone, but particularly impacted the music industry. Having a strong local scene as well as a tightly knit roster of resident DJs is something we began to appreciate even more since then.

We keep learning how to develop our venue each month and we truly believe that the Gravity Project lets us achieve this goal - through sharing experiences and learnings with amazing crews from Ankali and Revier Südost. We're very happy to be a part of this project.

An introduction to Jasna 1

Many attempts were made to save the location, an extensive PR campaign was launched, which even made it into the New York Times, including a demonstration in front of the Neukölln Town Hall. But in the end, exactly a year ago, our club the Griessmuehle had to close abruptly. It became another victim in the wake of the constant gentrification disrupting Berlin’s club land.

Over the past eight years we were able to develop the area around Sonnenallee 221 in Berlin-Neukölln into a multifaceted subculture Mecca. Griessmuehle was located in an old warehouse and factory surrounded by a huge garden and a great stock of trees, an idyllic urban location between the S-Bahn tracks and the canal which was our playground and our living room. Seven days a week we could enjoy cinema evenings, art exhibitions, performances, workshops, markets and a varied music program that consisted of concerts and club evenings. We had a canteen attached and also a record shop. Together in one place, it was a cultural microcosm of sorts.

The beloved Griessmuehle had to close its doors in January 2020. Fortunately the club's restless team found a new venue and moved its operation to a new space called Revier Südost. The new club opened only for a very short time before being shut again by the second lockdown soon after. One of the club's employees, Jan Henschen, writes about the transition, about the new home and club's plans for a brighter future.

The program touched on all of Berlin's favorite sounds - house, techno, electro, wave, disco and also UK bass. The Cocktail D'Amore was a popular monthly weekender that rightly deserved its place as one of the best alternative LGBTQI+ parties in Berlin. Also, the participation on Christopher Street Day with our own truck in cooperation with Urban Nation was legendary. Both will stay in our minds forever.

Nevertheless, the end became inevitable and the last party happened on the last weekend of January 2020. Throughout the two wonderful final parties which lasted for over 6 days we were able to say goodbye to our beloved location for one last time. We have done so with many long-term colleagues and friends.

Without any break at all the fully booked Griessmuehle line up was rescheduled to an off location until Corona completely paralyzed cultural life in March last year. Then there were a few months of waiting and despite all the uncertainty, the new location "Revier Südost" opened in September during the pandemic. This time equipped with a long term contract, we found a new home on the site of the former Bärenquell brewery in the Niederschöneweide district.

Despite the fact that we haven’t been able to carry out our full program in our new home due to the ongoing pandemic yet, it is pretty clear that the new Revier Südost will fit in well with the previous club.

A colorful and varied musical mix should be on the offer again and established party series such as Cocktail d'Amore, Synoid or Mother Finest will continue to exist. The club will also continue to work with its foreign partners as well as expanding its collaborations through the Gravity project. Our vision is to become one of the most prominent future creative districts in Berlin and in addition to the already existing club and beer garden, we will open some spaces – the upcoming market for instance, that will enrich the cultural programme with a focus on discourse, networks and exchange.

Our goal was and still is to create a place for intercultural exchange, an urban playground that reflects the cosmopolitan life and enriches the city of Berlin. In spite of the current world events we look to the future with joy and excitement.

An introduction to Revier Südost

Ankali is situated in the peripheral and mostly industrial part of Vršovice, a quarter lying in safe distance away from the busy and touristy centre of Prague. The club is tucked away at the Lopuchová street, a place long-neglected by the local municipality. When approaching the club by car, one has to drive through a decaying road, which always must raise suspicion for the newcomers. When arriving by feet, one can take a narrow and unlit shortcut, also not a stairway to heaven. Besides its opening hours, the club doesn’t attract much attention either.

After the unappealing first sight, visitors enter a very different world, once the club opens.

In the next few years, Journal will be the main media channel of Gravity, bringing you news, announcements, features, interviews, podcasts and more. In the first round of articles, we introduce first three members of the Network. 

Since its opening, the club's programming has been progressing towards a wider and more diverse range of contemporary electronic music, but there’s no doubt that the first couple of months were heavily influenced by the background of the club's founders. One of them, Sanjin, has been involved in the production of the locally-infamous event series called Polygon, which brought foreign and local techno artists together under the roofs of unusual locations, including the much talked about event at Prague’s main railway station. Two other founders – Michal and Cyril – have been running a warehouse series titled nite vibes, which had similar focus and style and had thrown events in an underground bunker or a huge concrete water retention tank to name a few.

Their common vision drew from what they had seen and experienced outside Czech borders, but the idea to build a club was born from a need to create a permanent and mainly independent place for locals. The club resident roster has been established, the building of a former soap-factory-turned-printshop has been subtly renovated and the club opened to the public in May 2017, even though it wasn’t quite finished yet. Reminiscing pieces of ceiling fallen on Marco Shuttle’s record, missing toilet cubicles or the collapse of the cloakroom construction still brings a smile to many faces.

One of the most distinctive features of Ankali’s identity are its 

. Besides announcing the monthly programme, their conception is based on a collaboration with local illustrators, graphic designers, painters and photographers. The clever visual identity of the club allows for displaying a wide variety of media and visual styles and the poster series became an ongoing and evolving exhibition of local artists.

Visually, there is another factor at play which separates Ankali from other clubs and is partially a result of years of designing one-time warehouse events. The light and the use of it on the dance floor is of high importance and is treated with care. There are certain fixed elements which almost never change, but there is always something different each weekend, depending on the type of event and light designer’s idea.

Despite using digital technologies in the process, the resulting light effects are always based on analogue principles and devices, including simple incandescent light bulbs, fluorescent tubes, repurposed neons, PAR lights, color filters and a lot of smoke.

After the first couple of months of its existence, Ankali started making friends. Except for the club's programming own gradual heterogenization, it started collaborating with external promotional crews from different genres to diversify the monthly programmes even more.

Seminal local collectives like Endless Illusion or Rare offered their unique optics in building joint line-ups and younger or newly established groups like Wrong, Disco Církev or ONYX were given a space to grow. In the meanwhile, Ankali started working with foreign subjects like Herrensauna, Institut fuer Zukunft and Salon Des Amateurs along with many others.

If there has been one partner, which has imprinted itself on Ankali the most, it was definitely the Nachtdigital festival with its makers. The first joint event happened in the club's second year and what followed could be described as a short but intense romance. A memorable ‘Summer of Doom’, the warm up to the festival’s last edition in 2019, and the consequent Ankali’s stage programming in Olganitz, were a pinnacle of that relationship publicly, but has been maintained privately in many ways till today.

To define the club's sound after first years of existence, it’s worth taking a look at its programme which consists of several categories – nights which are marked with custom labels. 

#archiv_teknologi focuses on contemporary techno wizardry with a darker and industrial setting, and is similar to #yuggadus, which leans toward more hypnotic and tribal dances. 

#no_borders favors DJs who break boundaries within genres and their practice, while #soft_spot usually welcomes house djs and familiar faces. #heyday celebrates disco with its modern forms and #umami celebrates diversity in music and human identities. 

Two foreign Ankali residents have their special nights. Claudio PRC runs the techno focused #volumi_dinamici night and Phuong–Dan has inaugurated the #night_came_early series, which tries to mess with established structure of DJ events. Lastly, Ankali runs a series of listening-focused evenings with live ambient music called #shoes_off, which are conducted in a capacity limited and scenographically enhanced environment.

In its third year, it was clear that Ankali became an established institution of the European club land. But while preparing the 3rd anniversary celebration, spread of the coronavirus and the necessary lockdown put halt to everything.

With an unprecedented amount of free time on their hands, the club crew has decided to move forward with the already planned expansion. The relatively limited and pre-defined interior of Ankali has created a need for a different kind of space, in which different music and types of events can be presented. Luckily, there was a space for growth right next door. Second part of the building in which Ankali resides has been taken over and with its multifaceted space with several rooms, winter garden and a spacious backyard, it was perfect for inhabiting the envisioned idea.

A multifunctional cultural and community centre, or an endless playground of sorts, has been born – Planeta Za. A smaller and more intimate dancefloor with a wooden floor and a skylight has been built to accommodate exploratory approaches to sound and music presentation. The large yard allows for many other interesting things, like summer cinema with live music or flea markets.

Most importantly, Planeta Za is a shared space, so apart from introducing a new group of residents which are welcome to make their ideas happen, there are now several other entities using the space. Radio Laude has found a new home in the small room on a second floor and has been broadcasting a growing array of online shows since then. Few local artists have their studios there and new projects for the space are being worked on at the moment.

During a short summer with eased restrictions only a fragment of the potential of Planeta Za has been explored. The full-scale use of both spaces still lies in a distant future. However there are some things in the making, including the Gravity project, and an art exhibition, both of which are re-thinking usual structures and possibilities of club culture.

#club archive

An introduction to Jasna 1

An introduction to Revier Südost

An introduction to Ankali