Hell is Rising, Blessed are the Fallen: An Interview of Golpe Civil’s Loucifer

Jacket: Lou de Bètoly


photography by Joseph Kadow
photography assistance by Oskar Ott
styling by Hakan Solak
hair & makeup by Lee Hyangsoon
talent Anarchist Sound System
interview by Janna Shaw

In an exclusive interview and photoshoot for Autre, Anarchist Sound System a.k.a. Lou Desamaison-Cognet, musician and founder of Golpe Civil, unveils the complexities of modern society, critiquing a world immersed in electroslavery. Lou a.k.a. Loucifer shares insights into his own psyche as well as inspirations for his collective: from his collection of Nietzsche texts and the occult, to the visceral impact of recent love, loss, and sobriety.

 

Jacket: Lou de Bètoly

 

It was a rather mysterious assignment: could I interview a Satanic musician, producer, multi-disciplinarian artist and activist railing against a new world order? “His name is Louicifer, he’s into blood, pain, and beauty.” It was an immediate “Yes” from me. From our first correspondence, I knew Lou was a character from up my own winding back alley. It wasn’t so much the initial introductory greeting, it was the introductory email’s sign-off. Instead of the normal accolades, salutations, or questionable bisous, it was a pointed manifesto of meat: elegantly and adamantly, unabashedly transcribed, coming from not one place above, rather emanating from deep below:

“In a society governed by judgment and the elimination of acceptance, GOLPE CIVIL aims to reveal the most hidden secrets and flaws of this dirty, hypocritical, self-centered system.… We are the underworld: opponents who preach a new world, free of submission; clarity, culture for all, and rebellion. We are not only a record label, we are an experimental project created to fight corruption, false doctrines, and global manipulation.”

Who is Golpe Civil? It’s an Anarchist Sound System. It’s hell’s privately broadcast radio station. It’s a collective group of artists, primarily musicians, railing together to express their insides, no matter how unsettling it may be to the inhabitants of our planetary purgatory. But for the residents who find themselves living in their own version of hell, the rather frightening sounds of Anarchist Sound System may come across as rather benevolent.

Back to Loucifer (or Loucy as they endearingly allow their friends and demon-empathizers to summon them): the music they are creating for A.S.S. is not all electronic manipulation with high intensity BPM. Satan incarnate has side projects, of course. BLASPHEMIA is an experimental noise project based upon an apotheosis mindset, created alongside their girlfriend Darken (more on that dynamic later). NO INJURIES navigates a more delicate soundscape, featuring grand pianos with lots of Amen breaks. Satan has style and a flair for the dramatic, no surprise there.

One late & rainy night in Berlin, we exchange Telegram handles. Fallen angels prefer not to be cellularly traced, but at least they’re open to written communication. I half expect our interview to be conducted through bloody ciphers, of which, with Lou, I was admittedly not necessarily all that opposed...

Full Look: Vintage Levi’s

JANNA SHAW: Good evening Liege Loucy, you’ve been expecting me. I write to you from a very rainy, very dark Berlin. I’m listening to BLASPHEMIA, getting acquainted with you. What are you up to?

LOUCIFER: I imagine Berlin exactly the way you just described it. That’s the Berlin I love so much. The melancholy reflects onto the city during this time of year. There’s a cold, mysterious atmosphere, which I find very inspiring. Every day I am missing Berlin. My family came into Sao Paulo today, so I spent the day with them. They just left.

SHAW: I much prefer Berlin when it’s cold and grey. The Brutalist architecture makes more sense, and so does the general German attitude. Summer is too hot and happy. No one knows what to do with it. How was time with your family? Do they listen to your music?

LOUCIFER: Time with my family was very nice. We went to a restaurant and talked about how things will become December as I will leave Sao Paulo. In February, I am planning to move back to Berlin, so I have a lot of things to organize. My mother hates my music—she simply doesn’t understand it—but my father loved my music. He was always very atypical about his world perception. He pushed me hard in my music experimentation journey. Both of my parents have, actually. They are very nerdy, philosophy lovers. They understand the unconventional as long as it’s harmless. I admire them for unplugging me from a strict, basic vision.

SHAW: What do you think you’ll miss about Sao Paulo? I hear there’s a good underground scene. With your move to Berlin, you’ll be going from one underground to the next. Which do you prefer?

LOUCIFER: The scene in Brazil is really another dimension. It feels like it’s stuck in the ’90s, but in a very good way. There aren’t many clubs here—especially not techno clubs. The scene is all about illegal raves, finding the best abandoned warehouse, placing huge sound systems, and just destroying people’s minds. Berlin is a very structured scene. The underground has been feeding the city for years and years, attracting millions of tourists every day creating evolution for itself. Berlin is an established home for independent artists, businesses, clubs, agencies, etc., while Brazil is a newborn baby in comparison. It still has its innocence, but also a boldness to explore what has not been. It’s a wild country, and Sao Paulo is the center of it.

SHAW: What else is on your mind?

LOUCIFER: Tonight, I’m working on BLASPHEMIA music videos. We are going to release the project at the start of December. It’s a lot of work, but we are super happy with how it’s going. My girlfriend Darken (my BLASPHEMIA counterpart) and I broke up recently, but BLASPHEMIA is our baby, and we will continue to work on this project. Our love is infinite, but the reality is we need to split in different ways to finally meet and be together again. We are not at the same checkpoints, and we want to follow up on some of our own personal goals and projects independently.

SHAW: From the snippets I’ve seen of your project together, the Dark Arts are most certainly at play in BLASPHEMIA...

LOUCIFER: Yes, for the visual inspiration, the source comes from our BDSM background. Darken and I are both tattoo artists and art lovers. She brings the elegance and the sharpness, and I bring the raw, maniacal support to the visuals. We love to think as one, and we managed to fuse into BLASPHEMIA together instantly. We do everything together. It’s the first time in my life I’m editing/cutting videos, playing around with VFX, syncing... I’m in love with it. It’s exactly like Ableton: a bunch of rectangular clips and automations, a lot of time structure, visual guidances and so on. It’s a plug-and-play intuition. I am neurodivergent and when I get excited about something, I have an unstoppable necessity to understand every single detail of anything in the realm of my new chosen interest.

SHAW: Were there certain books, movies, artists, characters that led you to explore the notion of Satanism?

LOUCIFER: I first got into Satanism because of my name and birthday: I was born 09/06/96, my name is Lou Desamaison-Cognet, which translates to “Lou from the Broken House.” I lost my father when I was 21 years old, and my world felt apart. We had a really horrible time. He was diagnosed with bulbar sclerosis, the hardest one. I flew from Berlin to Zurich to help my mother care for him. He was a difficult man, but a warrior that refused to be defeated by anything. This led him to refuse help from the hospital until the last few days of his life. At that point, he had to, because of the euthanasia process. Watching someone you truly admire for four months, dying rapidly... This was his worst nightmare, being a prisoner of his own body. After watching that closely, everything changed for me. I had always been the kid with “no filter” but when this happened, filters quite literally did not exist. Nothing existed for me, except my creative bursts. Growing up, Nietzsche was everywhere in my life. Spinoza was my father’s favorite and Sartre is my mom’s crush. So, I had the privilege of growing up out of the box and experiencing life in my way. My friends always called me the Devil, because of my hyperactivity. But one day, I looked up Satanism on Google and found the [The Eleven Satanic] Rules of the Earth. I read them and identified with everything written in it. I live my life according to them. The interest grew bigger and bigger. I began to reread all my Nietzsche and Machiavelli books, and found an author called Michael W. Ford, which complemented the ‘Self’ section of my brain. My favorite artist of all time is a genius, Satanist, and huge AIDS activist: Diamanda Galás. She was and is ahead of any generation, in terms of music and artistic talent. She has had the most important impact on my actual music vision.

Full Look: No Faith Studios

SHAW: I find that we are currently in a world devoid of all ritual, sacrifice, and purpose. I think Diamanda would agree that we are collectively straying from religion, yet I think a lot of our human experience is lost when we totally ignore our desire and need for some kind of worship.

LOUCIFER: I can’t disagree with you. Today’s world has become a very lost civilization. The electroslavery is getting out of control. People are struggling to believe in their own lives; they’re choking from it. How can we be satisfied if everything created these days is made to keep us exactly where we are? Today’s worship is Instagram, TikTok, and all that bullshit. It’s far easier to create an online avatar than craft every day a new, expanded version of yourself. Everything is accessible by sight. Too many options to choose from. We have created a void that is very hard to fulfill.

SHAW: What led you to create the Golpe Civil collective?

LOUCIFER: I’ve been three times to rehab, back and forth. I had to lose so much to finally be where I am today. Sober and satisfied with my life, I’m giving every particle of my being to myself and my art. I realized that nobody will give a shit about you, let alone love, trust, or respect you if you can’t first do that for yourself. I wrote my Rehab EP in rehab, and created Golpe Civil there too.

SHAW: In your Rehab EP, you penned it as a call to dismantle the notion that drug usage is liberation. What does the reality of sobriety feel like for you?

LOUCIFER: Being sober gives me indescribable access into my own database. It is the most beautiful gift I could have given myself. When enslaved by substance abuse, you tend to settle for the convenient. Even if just subconsciously, you look for every alternative: excuses you can find to justify poor decisions, dismal behaviors, lack of goodwill, and a limitless amount of self-destructive patterns. You eventually accept this, and it is tattooed in your brain as truth. I’ve lived amongst the agonizing torture of that which is habit constantly fighting to take over flesh and bones.

When you explore your consciousness with the bias of a certain molecule creating new neuronal connections, firing up certain parts of your brain and enhancing perception, touch, sensibility, performance, and all of the other aspects and allures of drugs, sooner or later, you will still be faced with yourself. And that self will reclaim every single bit of time that you took from it.

At a certain glimpse of the past, I chose to only see as far as my shadow would go. I leaned into it and left myself in disorder. I am an artist. My aim is to craft my essence, allow my soul to project frustrations, my hate, my passions, my broken heart, my analysis of what I represent and feel onto my sound canvases. And for that I have to live life fully. Art is discipline.

Full Look: GmbH

SHAW: Is it more inspiring for you to dream of & reflect on the past, or do you garner more by following forward motion?

LOUCIFER: I dream constantly. I feel like a clock’s needle bouncing between left and right. I would rather live in a limbo between both illusions of time. I implement nostalgia in my tracks. I myself am often in need of that. But nostalgic fragments are always submerged by the novelty experienced during my creative process. I am a Past romanticizer who finds counterbalance in passion for endless wave-shapes of the future.

SHAW: What is tattooed upon your eyes?

LOUCIFER: Golpe Civil. A civilian coup d’état.

 

Jacket: No Faith Studios

 

Transmundane Economies: An Interview Of Theodoulos Polyviou By Carlos Kong

 
 

interview by Carlos Kong
portraits by Burak Isseven
styling by Hakan Solak (all looks GmbH)

Theodoulos Polyviou is an artist whose practice explores the multilayered spaces where queerness, spirituality, and cultural heritage overlap across physical and digital worlds. Often utilizing virtual reality (VR) technology, Theo’s work also features architectural and sculptural elements, text, and sound, resulting in installations that are at once intellectually deep and sensuous to experience. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and residencies throughout Europe, and has a forthcoming project in Lecce, Italy, later this year. I met Theo on the occasion of his recent exhibition Transmundane Economies at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, where he has pursued a long-term artist residency. As an art critic, I’m usually hesitant and skeptical regarding the experience of art in virtual reality. But I found how Theo uses VR in Transmundane Economies to construct a “ritual space” that conjoins queerness, religion, and Cypriot cultural heritage to be profound and compelling. So I’ve met with him again to find out more.

CARLOS KONG: How would you describe yourself? Who is the real Theo?!

THEODOULOS POLYVIOU: I am inherently lost, or maybe by choice—I don’t know. But for me, being lost allows me to dig into subversive and irrational ways of navigating life, and this informs my practice. It gives me the freedom to partake in rituals of collective disorientation and becoming.


KONG: We met at your recent exhibition Transmundane Economies at Künstlerhaus, Bethanien in Berlin, where you’ve been an artist-in-residence since December 2020. Tell us a bit about your show.

POLYVIOU: My latest exhibition is one of many chapters that constitute Transmundane Economies, an ongoing project that deals with Cypriot cultural heritage in relation to virtual reality. It explores the complexity of immersive media—its experiential, epistemic, social, and economic dimensions—in relation to cultural, historical, and educational practices. I investigate how media-augmented renderings of history encounter the physical premises of museums and institutions. The figurations between cultural heritage and virtual reality generate information through their clashes and compatibilities.

 
 

KONG: In Transmundane Economies, you use virtual reality (VR) to digitally reconstruct Bellapais Abbey, the ruin of a 13th-century monastery in present-day Northern Cyprus. What drew you to this site?

POLYVIOU: Bellapais Abbey is a relic of many lives. Following the different colonial periods of Cyprus, the monastery went through various architectural and cultural changes, which continually altered its organization and operation. Transmundane Economies takes Bellapais Abbey as a site of inquiry. In collaboration with the architect Dakis Panayiotou, we’ve recreated part of the monastery using virtual reality and transposed it within the premises of Künstlerhaus Bethanien, extending its long-lasting and shape-shifting history. By immersing physical bodies in our virtually-invented trajectories, the project proposes alternative ways of inhabiting the monastery’s ruins. The project’s virtual orientation system disrupts the traces of previous ways of navigating the site left behind by former colonial interventions.

KONG: In both your latest exhibition and throughout your practice, you’ve recreated specific architectures in virtual reality. How have you come to use VR, and what are its advantages?

POLYVIOU: VR allows me to create spaces of ephemeral nature. Using VR, I construct temporary spaces, free from usual structures. I think of them as ludic social spaces or as secular chapels. They are nonetheless reminiscent of actual chapels I’ve seen in Cyprus, which connect segregated communities and towns of deregulated planning on the island. The psychological dimensions of the spaces I create become ‘materialized’ through VR, and the immersive experiences of VR are a participatory process. In doing so, VR allows me to extrapolate how the practices and ceremonial expressions born in my work could potentially acquire social meaning in the future.

KONG: When I experienced your exhibition Transmundane Economies, I couldn’t help but think of the act of queer cruising—the back-and-forth energy of potential erotic encounters—as I circled through the dim corners of Bellapais Abbey in virtual reality. Some would view queer spaces as the opposite of religious spaces, but you’ve mentioned to me that both are structured by rituals. What interests you most about “ritual spaces”? How are queerness, religion, and cultural heritage connected in the context of Cyprus and within your work?

POLYVIOU: Indeed, my work addresses spaces of ritual, but it departs from museological approaches to religion that are bound to material objects. Instead, I use virtual reality to address the limits of storing religious objects within museums, opening new potentials for spirituality to be designed and experienced in the digital age. I’m most interested in ritualized performances as a social strategy; the construction of memory and space through both queer rituals like cruising, as well as religious rituals; and the emergence of new social identities and queer spaces through digital collectivity. The new identities produced in ritual spaces provide access to history, ancestry, and spirituality in ways that challenge the distribution of material wealth and the status of borders and territories. With regards to queerness and religion, institutionalized religion has had a strong influence on the political affairs of Cyprus by instrumentalizing a sense of national collectivity. The queer community on the whole island is not only subjected to marginalization based on their sexuality but also due to number of processes of identity formation and discrimination. My work is an offer to discuss mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, and to consider how any place can transcend its own physicality to escape its embodied, ideological power.

 
 

KONG: Many of your works are made through collaboration. You produced Transmundane Economies with the architect Dakis Panayiotou, who you have been collaborating with since 2018 and with whom you contributed work to the Cyprus Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennial in 2021 as part of the group exhibition anachoresis: upon inhabiting distance. How do you work with your collaborators?

POLYVIOU: My work is of a collaborative nature indeed. Amalgamating different voices in my practice removes the focus from individual creativity and provides an opportunity to devise a ‘hybridic’ mode of production. I employ processes of dialogue and collaboration across different disciplines, including spatial design, architecture, sound, and even scent-making. My long-lasting friendship with Dakis Panayiotou has stretched out a collaboration that has traversed projects and residencies over the past four years. I believe the two of us find harmony in contradiction. Our differences complement each other and our collaborations become mechanisms to explore the potential dynamics of collective failure. I’m also interested in engaging with open forms of audience participation. This too is a form of collaboration, crucial to the completion of the work. The process of consciously involving visitors transmutes the exhibition space into a place of ritual, where they can connect with the transcendental world in a process of self-identification as spiritual beings.

KONG: You will soon be an artist-in-residence at Kora Contemporary Arts Center in Lecce, Italy. What will you be working on there? What’s next for you?

POLYVIOU: I was invited for an artist residency at Kora Contemporary Arts Center in Lecce, Italy, where I’ll be working site-specifically during April and May in Il Palazzo Baronale de Gualtieris, a 13th - century castle in the town Castrignano de’ Greci. The work will be then presented as part of a group show running from July 2022 through June 2023. From May 10-14, 2022, Akademie Schloss Solitude will organize the festival “Fragile Solidarity/Fragile Connections,” where I’ll give a talk in conversation with writer Jazmina Figueora. I’ll also be premiering a video on Kunst-tv, curated by Daniela Arriado and Vanina Saracino later this spring. More to come after September, but I can’t disclose the specifics :)

Transmundane Economies, Theodoulos Polyviou and Dakis Panayiotou, Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

longsleeve: Theo’s own, trousers & boots: GmbH

Bedtime Stories in a Mental Asylum: In Bed with Tobias Spichtig


interview by Janna Shaw
photographs courtesy the artist


When was the last time you stood up on a mattress, off-kiltered, aware of your balance, or lack thereof?  When was the last time you jumped on a bed with friends? When was the last time you jumped on a bed with strangers?  When was the last time you played childhood games? Cuddled in a group clad in coats and cloaks? Watched a couple kissing horizontally? Were read a bedtime story late into the evening, with snow falling gently outside?  

The KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin is hosting Die Matratzen, a week-long exhibit by Tobias Spichtig, with a nightly changing cast of poets and text-based artists reading their works aloud to an audience perched upon mattresses and sheets, sourced from friends and various collaborators of the artist.

Over the course of Spichtig’s installation, the mattresses are lived in and take on new forms, shifting from their original placement, absorbing the shapes and sounds of their dwellers and run-uponers. In one corner of a mattress, a tiny faded blood stain. Next to it, a rip from a Balenciaga heel, courtesy of that evening’s impromptu game of Tag. The sheets themselves have a collective abstract quality to them, marred with scuffs, prints, and static marks of movement. On view from above, the blocks of foam and springs morph into a perfectly assembled jigsaw puzzle, spanning the full space in its entirety, corner to corner. From here, one can clearly see that the work does not consist of objects in a room, it is the presence and experience of the guests that are on top of them that complete the work. It is an interactive performance.

Janna Shaw spoke with Tobias Spichtig on his opening night of Die Matratzen after a kickoff reading with Karl Holmqvist. 

JANNA SHAW: I say this with a sense of peculiar intrigue: you seem a bit of a hoarder. Other exhibits of yours have also included immense amounts of furniture and appliances: tables, fridges, empty bottles of beer, etc. Is this habit of collecting (and later presenting) a form of personal sentimentality, or is it a questioning of use, and of our own existential placement? 

TOBIAS SPICHTIG: I like images and objects. I would love to be both them all the time myself. The mattresses in particular are quite loaded and empty at the same time. It’s really abstract and it’s not at the same time. It’s always something more personal than any abstract level can translate. This is what I think objects have as their unique quality. 

SHAW: What led you to the concept of archiving objects of rest, rather than curtains of privacy, or cigarette butts of habit? 

SPICHTIG: These assemblages kind of stem from wandering through my own apartment during sleepless nights. When I get up and go to the fridge. When I sit at the desk. When I go back to the couch. The places I go when I’m thinking about things. 

SHAW: You are a painter as well as a conceptual artist. How would this installation translate onto your canvas? What might that look like?

SPICHTIG: I think all painting is conceptual, and I think works of art are sooner or later about painting. The mattresses are something in between painting and sculpture. It looks like a painting once one looks at it from above or once it is photographed. There is a parallel that runs between objects in real life and painted objects—that parallel is quite abstract, but also where one imagines things. I recently did a series of paintings depicting sunglasses, and now I am working on abstract oil paintings that look a bit like ornaments. I am also doing some portraits.

SHAW: What else are you painting these days?

I recently did a series of paintings depicting sunglasses, and now I am working on abstract oil paintings that look a bit like ornaments. I am also doing some portraits.

SHAW: Do you place importance on sleep and dreaming, or is it simply a necessary function? What is your ideal bed situation? I’m talking look, feel, time, place, activities, smells…

SPICHTIG: I don’t like to go to bed. But then, I also hate getting up. I dream a lot. Sometimes I even sing during sleeping. Is there a medical term for this?

SHAW: There is a whiff here to the opening paragraph of Guy Debord’s 1967 The Society of the Spectacle:

“The whole life of a society in which modern conditions of production prevail, presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacle. All that was directly lived has become mere representation. Commodities are now all that there is to see.”


There is something rather rebellious to the constructed situation of various mattresses on the ground, placed there for the simple purpose of observing others deriving pleasure. Do you think our society has lost touch with its primal pleasures in our pursuit of greater accumulation and distraction? Or does this world of influx only make us crave our instinctual joys more? 

SPICHTIG: To be present with both body and mind, to be more without a screen than with, has become a huge luxury. I love that. I guess everyone craves to be IRL more and more. Reality is the biggest spectacle.

Click here to learn more about Die Matratzen, including it’s late night accompanied live reading program. https://www.kw-berlin.de/en/pause-tobias-spichtig/

Installation images courtesy the artist and Jan Kaps, Cologne; Photos: Tobias Spichtig

AKEEM SMITH: No Gyal Can Test

interview KATJA HORVAT
images courtesy AKEEM SMITH
originally published in Autre’s Doppelgänger Issue (Spring 2021)

Akeem Smith maintains a pivotal role in preserving and archiving the visual aspect of dancehall culture. Smith, a Kingston-born, New York-based stylist, designer, consultant, and artist, is the scion, godson, and nephew of Paula Ouch, founder of House of Ouch—one of the most infamous and respected designers inside and outside the dancehall community. Smith started researching and documenting the depths of dancehall roughly fifteen years ago. His interest is primarily the role of women within the culture, and how their contributions stand at the very center of the movement’s legacy. Compiling a vast selection of images, combining documentary footage, found footage, flyers, garments, architectural artifacts, Smith created No Gyal Can Test, an ongoing project of exhibitions, installations, sculpture, photography and videos that unite his observations. They explore past and present representations of the community, issues of racism, political oppression, and gender identity. Smith often says this show/research project is made for the future; for other generations to tap into the legacy of dancehall. Akeem Smith's first European solo show, Queens Street opens November 18th, 2021 at Heidi, Kurfürstenstraße 145, Berlin.

KATJA HORVAT: Let’s just go in right away. My first recollection of "No Gyal Can Test" goes way back to 2012, I can't fully remember what it was, was it a party? But I do know Shayne [Oliver, founder and creative director of Hood By Air] DJed.

AKEEM SMITH: It was Shayne, yes, and Venus X, and DJ Physical Therapy. That was my first and only fundraiser. I just needed some money to go to Jamaica and start collecting the materials.

HORVAT: Buy your way in! 

SMITH: Jamaica is very economically driven. Even though I didn't make that much money that time, I made enough, and I wanted the people to see the value in their archive—that I wasn't trying to swindle them, and that I thought what they had and their story was worth a lot. On the Island, they're constantly reminded that dancehall is sort of this negative thing.

HORVAT: Even after all these years?

SMITH: Even after all these years, for sure. A hundred thousand percent, even more now, to be honest. 

HORVAT: It’s insane that it has had such an indelible influence on music and culture at large, but where it actually comes from, its legacy goes unappreciated.

SMITH: I think dancehall has given the country a lot of cultural currency that's allowed them to be respected globally—other than the Olympics. It's just a shame that it's still seen as a negative thing, but in my art and practice it is not my mission to sway anyone’s points of view.

HORVAT: Do you think religion and let’s say some socially “acceptable” norms have anything to do with it? 

SMITH: Yes and no. Dancehall is a nocturnal economy, so it's become a scapegoat for certain arguments.

HORVAT: Portrayal of women is also a sensitive topic when it comes to dancehall—not necessarily on the ground but more so when it comes to what others think of it: a whole degrading debacle. 

SMITH: Globalization is a thing, and some site specific culture customs aren't for everyone. I think it's super relative. People on the outside make assumptions. I see the dancehall space as this primal space, equivalent to nature, some behaviors are a mating call. The video piece in Soursop  honors that. The women in the videos are performing acts, self-caressing; they are appreciating their bodies.

HORVAT: You've been working on this project for fifteen years now? Has researching dancehall, the women in it, fashion, etc., influenced the way you work as a stylist and a designer? 

SMITH: I've never tried to bring dancehall to fashion or anything like that, so no. 

HORVAT: Okay, a lot has been written about where the name [of the show] comes from, but I want to know why you even went with it in the first place? 

SMITH: The name/saying was written behind a photo that my dad had. It was just a normal photo of one of his ex-lovers sitting in her bed. As to why this name, it was not even my idea to go with it, to be honest, it was Shayne’s, and this goes back to 2009. I liked No Gyal Can Test, but I wasn't confident in it. And he was like, Oh my god girl, you should just name it this, it's like already here. My motto, though, has always been to not look too hard for inspiration. I think it's always right in front of you. I don't feel you have to dig too hard to be inspired.

HORVAT: A big thread through No Gyal is House of Ouch. You grew up with them, Paula [Ouch] is your aunt and godmother, did their/her world shape yours?   

SMITH: Not in a way you would think. What did shape me was how they came up with ideas. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a broadcaster. Dancehall, for me at that time, I thought it was cool, but I never thought it was something I wanted to do. With some dancehall people, you would see them and they would look like a million bucks at a party, and then you see them like two days later, you wouldn't believe that it's that same person. So, it always felt like a mirage, and I wanted something more, something that felt like real wealth.

HORVAT: That reminds me of drag balls; the ball fit versus real life. 

SMITH: I guess you can draw the comparison but I would compare it more to RuPaul's Drag Race. And I'm talking about men and women. They made such an effort. I think it had a countereffect on me, because now I want to look like a bum, but a bum with money. That's how dancehall affected me, it shaped my taste but not my world. It also shaped how I view women. 

HORVAT: Has it shaped how you dress women?

SMITH: No. When I do styling work, I think, what would I dress like if I looked like you. That's more of how I like to approach styling. Like, what would I wear if I had your body?

HORVAT: So, to go back to dancehall. Who was more celebrated in this on the ground, men or women? Because through the research that I was doing, I could find a bunch of stuff on people like Bogle or Colo Colo but not so much on women specifically. I mean, there are Queens like Carlene or Patra, Lady Saw, etc., but the representation just somehow lingers more on the man's side. 

SMITH: I don't know the exact answer for that but I assume that it's just so patriarchal here. I think men acted more as the spokesperson for dancehall back then, but maybe that's going to change. Let's see.

HORVAT: You think there's still time?

SMITH: Well maybe, a lot of the men that used to party in dancehall in the era that I highlight have transitioned [died]. Maybe something changes as far as knowing who was giving these unknown subjects of Black history a space. Whenever there's an opportunity for the dancehall patrons to speak, I give them that opportunity—to talk about how they feel, to be seen. I’d rather continue having them be a part of the speaking engagements.

HORVAT: Everything is always better when it comes from the source. 

SMITH: Exactly. It's better if it comes from them, rather than me saying how this is affecting me, or them, or whoever that may be. And I'm also not the dancehall academia like that—I like the anthropological part most. 

HORVAT: What about the whole anthropological system of it interests you the most?

SMITH: You know, we always look at old pictures, especially working as a design consultant/stylist. You're always researching images of people, places, things and a part of the job is world-building, so our imaginations run wild. There aren't a lot of first-person narratives when it comes to Black history and that is really important to me. It is about direct representation, not a representation of a representation. 

HORVAT: It can get tricky, though, as you don't always have the privilege to access the source. So, when it comes to that, you are holding onto a narrative that comes from some other narrative. I studied cultural anthropology and there were moments when I wanted to cover something, but I felt like an imposter, as it was not my story to tell, or even touch sometimes. 

SMITH: I get that, but you also gotta let it go. I don't mind looking like an imposter. With the dancehall stuff, people have wondered how I've gotten all this stuff and information; people have indirectly asked me if I'm code switching, it's been really funny. In translation, some think I'm acting straight, because dancehall is so homophobic, to acquire things...But I would never, ever do that. 

HORVAT: Homophobia and the macho perception in dancehall, dominance, what males should be, etc., is a whole other conversation. One would think things would change over time, but no. 

SMITH: Nothing has really changed. It is all so deeply rooted in the political system. It is not just that, though. Dancehall is also used profoundly as an excuse for any violence happening. With COVID right now, in Jamaica—there's been more than a hundred murders since January this year—and they don't have dancehall to blame it on, as there are no events obviously. 

HORVAT: In the ‘90’s your godmother [Paula Ouch], also moved to NYC because of all the violence and looting she experienced, right!? 

SMITH: Correct. Basically, the mafia started to tax their business. If you want to continue operating your business in Jamaica, you need to pay for your own protection. 

HORVAT: Was that post or pre-Belly (1998)? 

SMITH: Pre-Belly.

HORVAT: And then for Belly, she came back to Jamaica. What was her role exactly? 

SMITH: She played Chiquita, who was an assassin.

HORVAT: So apart from fashion being pivotal in No Gyal Can Test through Ouch, you also brought a fresh element in collaboration with Grace Wales Bonner. You guys worked on the uniforms for the staff. How did that come about? 

SMITH: With Grace, we always wanted to do something together, but there was never a right moment until now. Apart from her being absolutely right for this collaboration on its own, she is also personally connected to Jamaica; her mom is English and her dad is Jamaican. So her trajectory and story are a big part of the investigation into the Caribbean diaspora that's taking place inside No Gyal, not her family specifically, but many like it. 

HORVAT: There are a lot of moving parts to this show and everything is very well rounded. From the uniforms with Grace, to the mannequin collaboration with Jessi Reaves, to the mock-up housing that was built from the stuff you collected on the island. That said, the videos are really central. 

SMITH: The two main videos are, Social Cohesiveness and Memory. Then there was the Reconstruction Act, that's embedded in the sculpture, and then there is Influenza. Then, one was called Queen Street… 

HORVAT: Is the latter the one that feels like a dream? 

SMITH Queen Street documents the first fashion show that I went to—it was my family's fashion show. The way it’s edited is sort of how I remember it. It's one of my first memories. So, it's a little bit hazy, and yes, can feel like a dream. You know, memory in general is something very weird because I feel like half of it is what actually happened and then the other half is made up in your head, and I mean that in regards to just about anything, not just this show. 

HORVAT Walk me through the editing process. 

SMITH To be completely honest, editing came from the curatorial team. I am the maker, that said, there were elements I specifically wanted to highlight, to show the duality of the dancehall world. I wanted to accentuate, to some extent, how the Eurocentric version of beauty is still very much present and is so specifically dancehall; the blonde hair, the blue contacts…. So I was more on that, but the show was brought together and mapped out by curators. 

HORVAT So one show is behind you, one is about to open. To think about the story you are trying to tell, what is one thing you want people to get out of it? 

SMITH I hope they can somehow connect what they are seeing to something in their lives. You don't have to come from this world to connect or feel things. I would love for people to see value in something that maybe they didn't deem as valuable before.

HORVAT I think you are onto something. It’s definitely not the type of show that leaves you dry. Anyhow, if you could pick one song that would serve as the soundtrack to your life, which one would it be?

SMITH Oh, Peaches "Fuck The Pain Away."

HORVAT If you could be any character from a film or a TV series, which one would you be?

SMITH I think Scooby Doo because he never actually spoke. He hasn't said a word yet he is still such an icon. 

HORVAT He's a mute protagonist. [laughs] 

SMITH Doesn't say a word yet he leads it all. Everyone seems to like this character for a reason they don't actually know. And I see myself in that way. I think people like me for reasons they don't even know.

HORVAT If you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

SMITH If I could just continue watching dancehall parties from the ‘70s to now, that would be good.

HORVAT What's your favorite memory as a child from Jamaica?

SMITH In my family, we're all part of different socioeconomic pockets, and I used to love being in the ghetto because that's where all the excitement was. There was always something going on. You never had a moment to yourself, but I loved that. I miss when that didn't bother me. Now, it kind of does, but there was a point in time when all the drama was fun.

HORVAT What's your favorite memory from New York?

SMITH I haven't had it yet. It's coming.

HORVAT What do you want to be twenty years from now? Where do you see yourself?

SMITH Hopefully just healthy and still working.

HORVAT Do you want to live in Jamaica, New York, or do you see yourself somewhere else?

SMITH  No, hell no. I don't know where I'm going to live, but hopefully I'm not bound to a place.

HORVAT What's your favorite flavor?

SMITH I like Great Nut Ice Cream.

HORVAT What's your favorite song from Lee "Scratch" Perry?

SMITH  Anything that he claims Bob Marley has ripped off.

HORVAT What do you fear?

SMITH  I fear being older, and reminiscing, and regretting not having as much fun as I would like.

HORVAT Where do you get your energy for work and for life?

SMITH Reality television.

HORVAT What's the best life advice that someone has ever given to you?

SMITH I don't know—keep on going. Don't stop.

HORVAT Do you ever want to retire?

SMITH No, I'm going to be like Cicely Tyson for sure. Like a thousand percent. She died three or four days after she did the Kelly Ripa interview. Still dolled up. Two weeks prior she was on set filming something. Yeah, that's my hope. Oh, I guess my goal is also to not be jaded.

Katja Horvat:  Are you scared of that?

SMITH Yeah, I'm scared of being jaded. I don't think I'm gonna be, though because I make an effort to not be.

originally published in Autre’s Doppelgänger (Spring 2021) with an accompanying conversation between Akeem Smith and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Purchase here. Akeem Smith “Queen Street” opens at Heidi Gallery in Berlin on November 18.

Will Sheldon: My Small Super Star

Untitled (Red Eyes) 2021 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 55 inches (182.88 x 139.7 cm)

by Katja Horvat

Imagery Courtesy of Will Sheldon and Heidi 
Photos of paintings Thomas Müller



“I will be whatever you want me to be,” kind of sums up the ‘My Small Super Star’ series and the first European solo exhibition by artist Will Sheldon. Sheldon’s latest work takes on ball-jointed dolls and brings them, or more so, strips them of any preconception one could have, allowing the viewer to perceive the dolls in a completely authentic way. 

Sheldon’s inspiration for this series is a full circle moment over his obsession with German artist Hans Bellmer, who built a mannequin back in 1933 using ball joints, and used her as a model for his photography. Bellmer’s doll was completely manipulated and perversely grotesque. His work, and the dolls, at the time, were not well received by the Nazi’s, which prompted Bellmer’s move to Paris, where surrealists completely embraced him. Later on he published a book of over 100 BJD photographs that he took between the years 1936 to 1938, a book that started a whole (sub)culture of collecting and making dolls, with its biggest craze coming from Japan. 

These days, a website called legenddoll.net is what got Sheldon’s attention and inspired the series the most. Legend Doll is a retailer where you can buy a completely set up doll or you could do a build-up, in which case joints are sold separately. The latter is where Sheldon got his inspiration for ‘My Small Super Star,’ as his dolls mostly have no hair, no eyes and appear with very visible joints. The eyes caught Sheldon’s attention the most as the empty socket mixed with the lightning used to photograph the dolls creates an empty yet radiating gaze, which is something Sheldon brings to notice in his paintings.  

The dolls range in set up as much as they range in what they trigger and mean to people. From Agalmatophilia (sexual attraction to dolls) to Pediophobia (fear of dolls). From complete comfort to discomfort, and anxiety. Dolls simply cannot exist in a neutral middle and the same goes for Sheldon’s paintings. ‘My Small Super Star’ will definitely make you feel something, but it’s up to your psyche to determine where on the spectrum you are, and what you end up getting out of it. 

KATJA HORVAT: Let’s start at the beginning. Why BJD? 

WILL SHELDON: It all clicked when I started to go through a website that sells them. I was looking through these images and how people that are selling these dolls take pictures of them… It all really reminded me of being in college and doing still life in drawing classes—dolls were lit in the same way. I don’t know, there was just something about it that felt different, and also these dolls are basically the dolls that Hans Bellmer helped create. It all comes from him and I’ve been a big fan of his since I can remember; he is a big inspiration for how I draw and what I draw. 

There is so much to the dolls, and it has been explored before—it’s not new, but I just became completely enamoured by the photos that people were taking of the dolls, to the point I ended up buying it and now painting it. 

HORVAT: Show is called “My Small Super Star” which in a way already has a sexual innuendo on its own, but then the dolls itself could also easily be perceived as sexual very fast. Is there more to this or is it just the human perception and how we were almost taught to think and parcel things?

SHELDON: I think that the dolls can represent many things; one of them is perfection, and that specifically can be controversial for a lot of reasons. And also, simply put, people do sexualize perfection. That being said, when I look at them, I don’t think of them as sexual beings. I just like painting them. If they were real people, it would have been totally different. 

There is this documentary I watched, “Married to the Eiffel Tower” where the protagonist, as said in the title, marries the tower. And I don’t know, through that doc you see there is an array of people who get more from the objects that we could ever think of. They just establish a different type of connection, and I think this whole thing is really interesting to see and tap into. 

Also, what I found through following people that collect these specific BJDs I am drawing, is that they give them power and help them overcome certain issues. People place their own imagination through them and project their wishes onto them; for some it’s sexual but for many it’s just emotional connection and sense of comfort and care.

HORVAT: Dolls itself are not an easy subject, and people are usually very opinionated when it comes to them. Prior to making the work, did you ever think about the narrative it will be placed in? 

SHELDON: I think some people will like it and some people really won’t, as the work is rather specific. There is a whole different range of emotions that paintings and the dolls can exude but that’s the point, that’s basically what the dolls are, they are a vessel that makes you feel a very specific way which connects to your own personal sense of being. 

And as long as my work is a jumping off point and a lens for people to feel a certain way, good or bad, that’s great! However, people want to read into them, it's basically what the dolls should be doing. 

Also, collecting real or BJD dolls is mostly deemed anti-social behavior, and that is a scary thing to many, not the doll itself, but more so what it represents and who these collectors supposedly are. There is a norm and then there are people projecting these normative ideals onto anything and everything. 

Untitled (Blue Corner) 2021 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 55 inches (182.88 x 139.7cm)

HORVAT: Correct. To me the doll collecting most heavily connects to loneliness, which is a disease. Obviously the obsession ranges, but at the end of the day, all these people who are collecting either dolls or whatever type of objects, they are filling up a certain void, a certain pain in their life. 

SHELDON: Exactly, and the more you feel lonely, the more you alienate yourself, unconsciously almost, but you are just so in your head that you go into this vortex that is really hard to get out of. And I would think it’s easier to fill a void with something that comes to you blank, with no real emotions and personality, as that gives you the freedom to project and make up whatever you need and are feeling at that moment. 

HORVAT: One thing I really like is that most of your dolls are not named—paintings are untitled. As soon as you put a name on something, you create a certain narrative, and I think it’s very smart to leave that door open so each viewer can create a story that works for them. 

SHELDON: I usually have a lot of fun naming my work, and at first I wanted to name them, but then I just thought that would take too much away from them, and it would bring too much of me into them. I want other people to feel any way that they want to about them, and if they had a name, they would immediately give the audience direction to go in.  

HORVAT: The dolls tap into the hyperreality of this world. They exist in fantasy as much as they do exist in real life. It is hard to explain as there is this realism to them, but then again, the projection and how we place them and what they represent is more so a fantasy. Where do these Stars live in your world? 

SHELDON: I think they live right where you placed them too—somewhere between fantasy and reality. I feel like the perfection ideals and how these dolls look creates a certain murkiness around them...

I mean, at the end of the day, the dolls are a fantasy. They are a vessel for your imagination to go wild. But they are also a lens, whether dark or not, a lens for something that exists in reality and it’s part of us now. 

HORVAT: When making work, do you ever think about where the work may end up and who is the person who will live with it? 

SHELDON: I do, but I try to keep that notion of where and how as open as possible, so I don’t put any expectations on myself or work. I would like to think that if you collect the dolls, you can also collect my paintings—I hope they speak to the same audience in some sort of way. 

That being said, I don’t have a specific way I would want them to live or travel. I try to think that whatever happens will be the best for them. I kind of make things and figure the rest of the stuff later. I have a basic idea as to why I am interested in these things, but most of my work I truly only get years after I do it. 

HORVAT: I mean, it’s just like everything else in life. Time is perspective—we act on impulse and then, after some time, it really hits you how some things were perceived or communicated. 

SHELDON: Spot on! And I do get the interest thing and why I tap into a specific element or react in a certain way or maybe how I go about it, but sometimes it just takes me months or years to realize what a specific work actually represents for me/about me, and why it came out when it did. 

HORVAT: The more you try to make it make sense, the more you get caught up in it. It is what it is, and sometimes that’s good enough. For the most part, it’s just hard to realize that when you are in it. 

SHELDON: It used to scare me to not have the immediate understanding or trajectory, but now I just accepted the fact that it will probably take years for me to realize why I am doing it, so for the moment, my emotions are what’s guiding me and the reasoning part will come when it comes. 

HORVAT: Most people know you as a tattoo artist. Does the work feel different when you are putting it on canvas versus putting in on a body? Would you tattoo someone with the doll imagery? 

SHELDON: I would if someone asked, but it’s also not something I thought much about. But to me, everything I do stems from pure excitement, so somewhere along the way the two meet and there is not much difference to where the imagery is being placed. I am so excited that tattooing exists and we can stain our bodies. I am so excited that the dolls exist and people can make up for what they mean. So yeah, to bring it back, no to the first part, yes to the last. (laughs) 

HORVAT: Lasty, what were you into as a kid? What do you think shaped your taste the most? 

SHELDON: I think one of the main things for me as a kid, and what was most inspiring are the Guinea Pig films, which all feel like they were done by artists as they are just so creative and imaginative. The special effects and prosthetics used in the films are beyond, so much so that Charlie Sheen got Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood banned in America. He was given a copy, and after he watched it, he was convinced it was a snuff film and totally real. He called the FBI, who then investigated the movie and the story behind it. The investigation was dropped once they saw a documentary about how the movie was made. But yeah, I would watch these movies all the time, and my mom would pass the TV and I would turn it off, and when she left, turn it back on, as you know, those movies are just something you can only do/have for yourself.  

My Small Super Star is on view at Heidi, Kurfürstenstraße 145, Berlin until October 30, 2021. 

WILL SHELDON 
Artist 
Born 1990, Hong Kong 
Lives and works in New York, NY 

Untitled (Pink) 2021Acrylic on canvas 28x22inches (71 x56cm)