A Satirical Postcard of Berlin Sent Out to the World Steven Warwick

That was a play I did in Cafe OTO last September [2015], when I did this two-day residency. On the second day I wanted to do something different so we did this [pointing at the chalkboard wall]. It’s about a bunch of superfoods [Chorella & Spirulina] that become animated and wander around Fortress Europe. There’s a lot of references to transforming a body via substances. They want to go to Berlin to a place called Club Nutri. One of them has also written a piece about people who stay in Berlin, called staylienz, which is a neologism which I came up with. They get in and then they realize that it’s actually a detention camp for Jeremy Corbyn supporters. It’s a kind of offshore floating republic and the supporters are carrying out the menial jobs. There’s this scene in the darkroom when they find out that it’s actually a prison. They devise a plan to escape by applying some testo gel which makes them suddenly grow really large beards. Then someone orders some banjos from Ultra Prime Amazon and they pretend to be Appalachian buskers. They find a bespoke vape which lulls everyone into a deep sleep and that’s how they escape. And once they escape they go to Club Nutri. It takes forever to get in, but because they eventually do get in, they decide that it can’t be that interesting and leave.

There were some people reading it from their phones. It was quite minimal lighting and people were just walking around talking to each other. I wanted it to have that visual aspect. There was music in the background and I was behind the scenes and would sometimes announce if there was a scene or play some music. When I did it for the show, I thought it’s too lame to perform a play in a gallery. So I wanted this idea of an absent play that you have to read, preferably while lying on the bed. [Turning around] This room is more the negative room—you’ve got this bed as well which is quite self-explanatory. I deliberately wanted it to be an air bed to keep it in the Airbnb context—the collapsing of space.

Oh yes, that’s how it should be, we just have to refrigerate it [laughs]. I was in the supermarket and thought it looked like a pillow.

Yes it does. You have this superfood reference as the club is called Club Nutri, after that NutriBullet. You could use any mixer, but that is a specifically branded one. It’s about self-improvement, but it’s so overloaded that you just retreat. There’s the whole argument of things speeding up or things slowing down, but if you slow something down it’s actually the ultimate acceleration. That’s the product of it.

I wrote an article in The Wire about him, the one where you have to pick your favorite sleeve. The front cover is this kind of neutral image, like a stock image. For me, for something so bland it’s very striking. So I wrote this article about the time period when that record came out. It was a very interesting era at the end of the 90s. There was this hedonism and hysteria, and a bubble before 9/11. The only other major trauma of the 90s was maybe the death of Princess Diana. I was interested in that bookend in those two and I thought that he encapsulates it. It was so omnipresent when the record came out. It’s a very mundane, unassuming image that I wanted to frame at first. It looks almost like a religious image, a classic Renaissance. I just find it really captivating. It’s interesting with Craig David—he was the first “urban” popstar, but before that, UK Garage and everything was viewed by the establishment as kind of dangerous. I think it’s very interesting how he was presented to the mainstream. [Steven walks to the other room, where he places a big potted plant between the doors.] This is the bouncer of Club Nutri, he’s quite stringent, you have to dress punk.

A bit before that. I think at the time I moved here, there was this positive use of space. It felt more open, a lot more sparse. It wasn’t as expensive, so you could go somewhere for a longer time. Because of the economy you could just do your work. I don’t think I would have made something like Extended Play [Heatsick performance installation series which would last 3+ hours involving a LED light grid also emitting heat] if I hadn’t lived in Berlin.

When I show the scarf I’m interested in the branding. I’m interested in how Berlin is marketed to people outside of Berlin. This edgy squaller, the “poor and sexy” thing—you know. It’s like how graffiti changes a place [pointing at the font on the wall]—Poopsy Club was an existing club in Berlin for a while and Woof has got several references. If you go into Soho House you see this “SOHO HAUS BERLIN” spray paint—that semiotic of edginess even if it is in a very luxurious and aspirational place. I’m very interested in playing with all of these signs and with how one relates to them and what they mean in different places. It has got a lot of humor.

[Laughs] I was just very fed up with middle-aged people who came of age in the 90s. I think that was one of the last moments when this notion of different jobs and careers were much more stable and they benefitted from the collapse of the Cold War before everything got hyper-privatized. I meet people who are in their mid-forties and say, “you know I bought my house in Bethnal Green in ‘93 and can just work part-time” and they’re still these children. And people who are twenty are growing up in this crisis and you’re not going to be able to buy a house unless you’re clearing something like a hundred grand—no one can do that. That’s why young people have to professionalize and really be on top of it. I was just fed up with having these conversations with older people. I feel like they have a real privilege which isn’t given to people. It’s very hard to grow up right now.

I think right now we are in an incredibly scary moment of time in the world. With my experience on this earth it’s definitely the darkest period. I find it terrifying. I’m actually wondering where it’s heading. I read an interview with Noel Gallagher. He was talking about how people benefitted from the Thatcher government because it meant that they wanted to go out and work a job, whereas now people just want to be on Twitter. I thought, “wow, of all the people, you are praising Thatcher, as the man who was the poster boy for Tony Blair and New Labour.” I just felt like this story personified a moment. It sums up that thing of the 90s.

When I play music I’m interested in creating an environment, and it’s normally time-based—it’s somewhat disorienting and it transports you into a different mood. This I occupy in the space, something which transforms it out of something else, what was happening before. I guess I’m very interested in music with transformative quality of time and space. Especially when you’re looping something, playing with time, creating this very simple thing which repeats. This makes you think differently, it becomes something else which has a sculptural quality to it. With something like Extended Play, you have these visual cues. But if you do it in a club space, it also gets associated with partying. Then I thought, what if I don’t have sound and just show the works?

I think about components—sound, scent, or temperature. All of these sensual qualities work together. I think about how sound is going to work together in that way, because if the sound doesn’t work with the other components, the whole thing is not going to work. I think it’s interesting to flip it the other way around now and just show work. And that’s who I hang out with—I hang with visual people. I feel more comfortable. I have friends who work in music but that’s not really how I think.

No, I studied fine arts. I started out making films, but when they closed the faculty I went into a fine art context. No one else in my class has been trained to do all these 16mm and 8mm loops. I had the advantage of knowing how to do it so I made a lot of short films. Then I started combining the film with a sculpture or the film with a sculpture and a performance. You get these installations. That’s where a lot of my work comes from, work I did when I was studying. If I talk about a club space in this exhibition it’s not just because I’m active in it but because it’s a comment on Berlin. It’s not a self-portrait, it’s a portrait of Berlin and a portrait of the world right now. A satirical postcard of Berlin sent out to the world.

Yeah, yeah. I did the photograph for the cover of my record. It’s a playful comment about these surfaces. So when I did this exhibition I just thought, “why don’t I just do that?” It’s a cheeky reference to repurpose your own record into this Carl Andre catwalk [laughs].

[We leave the gallery and walk to a nearby restaurant. While walking, we start talking about the Breadwoman project.]

This is the first time it’s ever been performed. I always thought it had been performed before, but it was just a studio project. [Addendum by Steven via email: “I realized I made a mistake—Anna has performed in the Breadwoman costume, it’s just the first time a dancer who isn’t her is involved.”] It’s a bit of pressure, but it’s fine [laughs].

Oh, the other Steve is teaching so he can’t tour. I think some people just proposed it to me. Anna knows Villa Aurora [a place for artists’ residencies in Los Angeles] because some friends of hers did a residency there.

I did one as well, so she thought there was a connection; we also have some mutual friends. We then spoke on the phone, and as we already have some common ground I just thought, “yeah.”

Well, it’s the first concert, and we’re not trying to play the record live. Also, as I’m a different person, it would feel kind of pointless. Anna’s background is in improv, so she isn’t interested in that. We’ll still play one or two songs off of the record, but in our way, we’re just going to make some music together. And we’re going to have this Japanese Butoh dancer [Natsuko Kono] as the Breadwoman, so we’re a trio together.

This is the place [pointing to the restaurant]. I think I find it fascinating. When I was in Los Angeles I felt I got a lot of this appearance, but in reality. You’re at the center of this film industry and it’s a very detached city. There’s a lot of myth-making and links to esoterica and Scientology, and people have travelled from New York or something. You’ve got this sense of dread, in a weird way. It’s a very new city, so you have a lot of different aspects. That’s also how the city was first marketed in the 30s. I guess I’m just fascinated with how cities are marketed and presented, and I want to look at why that is and how it’s created.

I try to have some time off when I play because I like travelling.

[At the restaurant we talk about the menu for a while. Once decisions are made, the conversation continues.]

Oh wow—a blast from the past.

It was very much of the time. I didn’t even have a computer until I moved to Berlin. I didn’t really download music or anything. Where I was living in England it was still very normal. It was still possible to get CD-Rs and cassettes, and it was normal to just self-release things. I mean, I called it a label but it was essentially me giving a release to a friend. I didn’t sell them. I made like thirty or fifty maximum and would just give them to friends and sell maybe five or ten. It was more a way to show my music to people. What I liked about it was that it was empowering to say, “this is a release.” Even if it was cheap and not official.

Yeah, I did a lot.

It was just me. It’s been reported that it was both of us, but it was actually just me. Also when playing [as Birds Of Delay], we never rehearsed. We just played and we recorded what we played—this kind of mentality.

Exactly. You just want to show people what you’re doing at the moment. Maybe like SoundCloud but ten years ago [laughs].

No—I don’t have an interest in it because I don’t like cassettes. You don’t need them now.

I couldn’t afford it back then.

I don’t know if I would really want to call it Alcoholic Narcolepsy because it was also a very nihilistic time in my life. It was when I was hanging in this incredibly straight noise scene which was terribly nihilistic. I was probably one of a handful of non-straight people in the scene. I was just not very happy [laughs]. Actually.

Definitely! I wouldn’t really want to reactivate it. I would happily start a new label or imprint, but it is in the past. I did it because I had to.

[Laughs] I mean, it’s there—it just has to be released. I think it’s becoming a lost record which will get dug up at some point. Maybe it will get released a thousand years in the future.

We met going out to see music.

He’s from London and I used to go to London a lot. I’m the only one in my family not born in London so I had a very strong connection to it. I would go to shows there when I was around seventeen. When I met Luke he was about fourteen or fifteen. We’ve just known each other for a very long time, and we lived together for a bit. He’s just a very old friend of mine.

I think we would be up for it, but we’re just both so busy with our own work. It’s not like we split up. I wonder how we would do it… never say never. There was a lot of activity for a reason. I’m still happy to hang out with Luke, and that’s basically just what that band was: us hanging out and making music. It was very easy—it wasn’t forced. We didn’t have to talk about the music we did—it just happened, and I miss that aspect sometimes. It’s funny now because people are asking us about Birds Of Delay.

I understand why I get asked about it. It’s just funny for me, because when I did all this stuff on that label I didn’t anticipate talking about it seven years later. It was very of the moment, like putting a video up on YouTube. You don’t really think about it.

I mean, on the releases we did I don’t think we played any instruments. We were this anti-band for a while.

That was the first band, and even more of an anti-band. I wanted people to not have any musical talent. I have zero interest in hardcore punk, but that was the easiest way to play a show. Even then everyone hated it because it was just a mess. It was coming out of an extremely non-musical tradition. Birds Of Delay actually happened because we couldn’t play any gigs since the band had seven or eight members. So the two of us just played electronics. We felt quite alienated because we were going to these noise shows where everyone was in their mid-forties and we were twenty. Everyone was looking at us like “who are you?”

I think it just happened. I would hear music on the radio, really weird music, so I thought it was possible. I was always into lots of different music. I think I was lucky growing up in the UK because you’d just hear so much different music on the radio.

My dad can play the piano but he would never play in front of me. And my mom just listened to the radio.

Zero. My dad would sing when he made a cup of tea. I had to discover all the music on my own.

It was probably a guitar when I was ten. But then very quickly I started to make tape music—which I didn’t know was tape music—when I was thirteen. I had these two tape decks on a stereo with a microphone input, so I plugged the guitar straight in and started looping music before I knew what it was. When I discovered music history later, it was like an affirmation: “Ok, I’m not alone.”

Records stores—second hand ones as well—fanzines, radio. I discovered this fanzine culture by accident when I was a teenager. I don’t even know how—I just did. I also went to the library. In the place I studied there was still a music library, and I would just go there. I think music was a bit more accessible, somehow. I could also find very obscure music by just asking people. I think I was actually more curious about music before the internet. Now I’m just lazy.

I agree. People would send me cassettes from this post-punk label called Fuck Off Records, an edition of one hundred, maybe, and I was wondering, “how am I getting access to this?” I was just curious.

Pretty much when I moved to Berlin.

Yes, but then I stopped. I only really did the label for a year or two, from 2005 until 2007. Then I just stopped because I couldn’t be bothered. I spent a year in Berlin not doing any music—I just quit. I felt like I needed a way out. I was very bored with how stagnant the experimental scene was. I cut myself off. Then I wanted to do more dance stuff.

Yes, Intersex was a document of the start of this new phase. “Vom Andern Ufer” was from when I wanted to address something, and “Taxi Zum No” is just a film loop. It’s very much about Berlin, in a weird way, and about me dealing with being gay.

I hadn’t considered it to be an important part of my personality before. Then I realized, maybe I’m just not dealing with it because I’ve been in a context in which I haven’t really been allowed to talk about it.

I grew up like that, so I felt it was normal. It has also to do with moving here. It’s a lot more queer, of course, but you also just meet people. They don’t have to be gay or queer people, they just happen to be. Going to a gay bar or something became less of a… need? You don’t have to go there to pull someone—you just go there and actually feel comfortable.

Exactly, it’s just a bar, ultimately. And the other thing is that the club scene here is very sexually diverse, so I think it’s normal that playing that kind of music suddenly became more appealing, or that I felt more comfortable doing it. Because when I was a teenager growing up in the middle of nowhere, I remember with, say, drum and bass: even if I liked the music, a lot of the people who I saw listening to it were totally horrible [laughs]. They were these alpha bros who would beat up women and hate gays. Why would I want to hang with those people? But then I would see that in various music scenes. I think that year off was essential. That’s why I find it so funny when I started doing my weird take on house music or whatever you call it—not long afterwards it became the thing and I was like, “shit, this is exactly what I wanted to escape from.” It annoyed me in a way. I felt like no one else was particularly queer—it was still very straight, in every sense of the term. And I thought, “why do you have to ruin everything?”