Ravers arriving in Detroit for Movement Music Festival this weekend should keep an eye out for thought-provoking techno billboards around the city, posted by Jeff Mills’ Axis Records.
With the three-day festival back in techno’s Motor City birthplace for Memorial Day weekend, the billboards, each depicting a pair of images adorned with the words, “THIS IS TECHNO” popped up in four locations around Detroit last week.
In a press statement, Mills wrote that the billboards are meant to incite discussion about the genre and “sharpen our sense to detect what is Techno and what is not.”
The Detroit techno pioneer and foundational label founder also likened their imagery to the Rorschach test, which famously examines subjects based on what their minds recognize from inkblots.
“These two comparable images are often at different angles of the same experience, both are elements that point to an unseen answer, a third image, which can only lie inside your imagination,” Mills wrote.
He continued: “The imagination tries to understand their relationship and thus, stretches the possibilities. A stretched imagination is the goal. Images are not taken literally but indirectly, like parts of a puzzle. This is Techno requires you to use your sense to know, to build something.”
Mills further explained that this deciphering of meaning is done “without verbal or textual context—illusive to Technology and the ways we commonly use to communicate.”
The billboards arrive following several months of Mills’ posting similar images to Instagram, each with the same caption, “This Is Techno.”
Mills will headline Movement this Saturday, replacing Carl Cox, who in February announced he would postpone his appearance until 2026. Further performers at the event, which returns to Hart Plaza from May 25-27, include Charlotte de Witte, John Summit, Sara Landry, Mau P, Sammy Virji, Nina Kraviz, The Blessed Madonna, FJAAK, Sama’ Abdulhadi, and more.
The Axis Records billboards can be found at the following locations:
Woodward Ave. & West Canfield St.
East Jefferson Ave. & Orleans St.
Woodward Ave & Burroughs St.
Gratiot Ave. and Jay St.
View this post on Instagram
Featured image courtesy: Jeff Mills.
