The Teknival, high mass of techno music, began this Thursday in a small village of the Indre called Villegongis. This meeting took place every year in France in a different place until the Covid-19 pandemic stopped. According to Jean-Marc Sevault, mayor of the village of a hundred inhabitants located north of Châteauroux, the first vehicles arrived during the night in the town, where no one had been warned.
Dozens of cars, vans and even semi-trailers, some registered abroad, flocked to Villegongis en masse on Thursday, disrupting traffic on the surrounding small roads, with queues of several kilometers. At midday, the prefecture of Indre, which had banned any gathering of this kind for the long weekend of Ascension, estimated "at about 10,000 the number of teknivaliers".
#teknival On the night of May 17 to 18, a large number of vehicles gathered in the agglomeration of Châteauroux before joining the locality of Fouillereau in the town of Villegongis to organize a "teknival"pic.twitter.com/BGwlThpesj
— Prefect of Indre (@Prefet36) May 18, 2023
According to the statement from the prefecture, the Teknival "could be held throughout the end of this week". A source close to the organizers said he expected about 30,000 participants at the height of the event, which coincides with the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Teknival by rave party enthusiasts.
"Now that it's launched, there's nothing more to do"
The festival settled "on a private domain, a plot of land that is not cultivated" and whose owner was not warned, said AFP Jean-Marc Sevault. "We were presented with a fait accompli, like everyone, including the gendarmes" who are on site to supervise the event, said the mayor.
In the Indre as in many neighboring departments, the prefecture had taken this week orders to prohibit "the illegal installation of any temporary festive gathering of a musical nature", apparently in vain. "Now that it's launched, there is nothing more to do except make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible, in good conditions and without incident," said Jean-Marc Sevault.
"The organization of this teknival was done without prior declaration, nor therefore consultation with the services of the State, which nevertheless mobilize with the local authorities of the Indre to guarantee the tranquility of the inhabitants and the safety, including health, of the participants," says the prefecture, which has activated a departmental operational center.
Several other prefectures had announced that they had issued orders prohibiting any rave-party or teknival type event this week, such as the prefecture of the Territory of Belfort, Haute-Saône, Jura or neighboring Indre-et-Loire.
A safety and emergency system put in place
A security and rescue device is being deployed on the ground, she adds, recommending "strongly" to avoid the sector, where controls are carried out by the police on the basis of prefectural orders. Eleven associations from various regions of France said they had deployed on the Teknival site itself a health system mobilizing 130 volunteers to provide care and advice to participants (alcohol, drugs, sexual health, etc.).
According to photos and videos posted on social networks by participants, the first walls of loudspeakers had begun at midday to play their electronic music on this vast tree-lined meadow.
The first sound systems are in action at the Teknival in Villegongis in the #Indre. The party is to last the whole weekend of Ascension. Tens of thousands of people from all over Europe are expected pic.twitter.com/gtvF0UiTD4
— France Blue Berry (@FB_Berry) May 18, 2023
Renowned throughout Europe, the last "official" Teknival took place in May 2019 on the Millevaches plateau, in the Creuse, suffering particularly harsh weather conditions for the season, including snowfall.