At IMS Ibiza, a panel hosted by Burn featuring Theo Nasa, Bekefi, and Dr. Rubinstein circled around a quiet but persistent tension: what happens to a culture built on presence when everyone is busy documenting it?
It’s a strange question, because on the surface nothing seems wrong. Clubs are still there. DJs are still touring. The bass still hits you in the chest at 3 a.m. like it always has. And yet, something feels… thinner. Like the experience is happening one layer removed.
Do you remember the last time you went out and completely lost yourself in the music – mind and body, no separation?Neither do I.
When I try to locate that feeling, I end up in a memory: a sweaty room inside Trouw, a club that no longer exists in Amsterdam. It’s dark and humid, the air thick with heat and movement. The music is loud enough to erase your inner monologue. My body is moving without consulting me first, and for once, that feels exactly right.
Nobody is watching anyone. Nobody is performing. Some people are dancing alone, some in pairs, some in loose constellations. Someone is lying on the floor, fully committed to the moment. It’s chaotic, but also deeply calm. Free, in a way that feels almost radical now. There are no phones. No flashes. No accidental cameos in someone else’s memory archive. Just people dissolving into sound.
Back then, going out didn’t require a strategy. I lived nearby, so sometimes I’d drop in alone, sometimes with friends. It didn’t matter. The space absorbed you either way. Inclusion wasn’t a slogan – it was just how things worked.
Fast forward to now, and the dancefloor has acquired a new layer: the lens.
From the crowd’s perspective, the shift is subtle but constant. You become aware of yourself in fragments. A phone lifted nearby is enough to pull you out of whatever state you were in.
Suddenly you’re not just dancing – you’re potentially appearing. Archived. Shared. Seen out of context by people who weren’t there and don’t understand the moment. It’s not dramatic, but it is distracting. A small fracture in immersion.
From the DJ’s side, the effect is sharper. As Dr. Rubinstein pointed out, the presence of phones can quietly reshape decision-making. Risk becomes less attractive. A bold, strange track – or a fragile transition – might land perfectly in the room, but fail spectacularly in a 12-second clip online. And online is where things linger.
So the set tightens. It becomes safer. Cleaner. More defensible.
And it’s easy to forget, in all of this, that DJs are working. Not performing for a camera, but responding to a room. Flashlights in their face, phones inches from the booth – it’s hard to think of many other workplaces where that would feel normal.
Ironically, the very thing that makes a night special – its unpredictability – gets smoothed out for an audience that isn’t even there.
And somewhere along the way, the hierarchy flipped. DJs became focal points, almost deified. The booth turned into a stage. The crowd into spectators. But the real magic has never lived in the booth. It happens on the floor. Messy, collective, and impossible to replicate.
There’s also something more human at stake. As Dr. Rubinstein noted, the dancefloor can be one of the few spaces where people who don’t feel at ease in conventional social settings can fully belong. No small talk. No expectations. Just rhythm and presence. Music, at its best, is a form of release, sometimes even a form of healing. But that requires a certain kind of anonymity: a permission to disappear into the moment without being observed. Filming interrupts that contract.
Of course, there’s another side to this. Clubs need to survive. Promotion is part of the ecosystem now, and video is its currency. Highlight reels, artist clips, perfectly framed moments – these things bring people in. But they also shape expectations. They present a polished version of something that is, by nature, raw and unpredictable. And in doing so, they risk attracting people who are more interested in witnessing than participating.
During the panel, Theo Nasa put it simply, a sentiment all three speakers agreed on: build for your community, not for everyone. It’s almost unfashionable advice in an era of constant exposure, but it holds weight. Some of the most enduring spaces have thrived on a sense of mystery. You had to be there. And if you weren’t, well – that was kind of the point.
A 15-second clip has never done a night justice anyway.
There’s also a practical solution that keeps resurfacing: remove the phones altogether. Put them in lockers. Not as punishment, but as relief.
Because the truth is, documenting everything is exhausting. Not just for others, for yourself. When your attention is split between experiencing and capturing, neither fully lands. Some spaces understood this long before smartphones. There’s a reason places like Berghain famously avoid mirrors – you’re not there to look at yourself. And if your phone isn’t an option, something interesting happens. Your mind settles. Your body follows. You stop curating and start feeling.
Analogue cameras, interestingly, seem to exist in a different category. They’re slower, less intrusive. They don’t demand immediacy. They don’t pull you out of the moment – they skim its surface and move on. Maybe that’s the balance: documentation that doesn’t dominate.
Still, it’s worth asking a simple question: how often do you leave a night out wishing you had taken more videos?
Not many, if any.
What lingers instead are flashes: a track at the perfect moment, a shared glance with a stranger, the strange comfort of being alone together in a crowd. None of these translate particularly well to a screen.
The dancefloor didn’t die. It adapted, like everything else. But in the process, it picked up habits that don’t necessarily serve it. The good news is that culture isn’t fixed. It’s shaped by the people inside it – by small choices, repeated often enough to matter. Putting your phone away is one of them. Choosing to be present is another.
And maybe that’s where things start to shift back. Not to some idealized past, but toward a version of the dancefloor that remembers what it’s for.
Not to be seen, but to be felt.