Music

Making a stink: an interview with Terre Thaemlitz

29. Juli 2016
Skunk's not dead – it's just taking a long nap on Terre's bosom. Photo © Comatonse Recordings

Also known as DJ Sprinkles, the outspoken writer and musician answered a few questions before coming to Berlin

Aug. 2, 2016 – Continuing a 25-year career, Japanese critical theorist and music producer Terre Thaemlitz (a.k.a. DJ Sprinkles) is a champion of cultural resistance. Her latest publication, Nuisance, collects articles, essays, lecture transcripts and other texts spanning 1995 to 2015. In anticipation of his outdoor DJ set at about blank on August 7, we asked him a few questions

You've spoken out against the changes in Japan’s nightlife morality law that took effect this year. What’s the deal with all of that? This morality code began in 1947. Post-war dancehalls fell under its jurisdiction because they were places to meet sex workers. The Japanese government recently approved revisions that lifted the ban on dancing after 1 a.m. in big clubs with dancehall permits. But small clubs still do not qualify for the permits in the first place, so they remain illegal for dancing at any time.
Frighteningly, the police can now define what constitutes "moral entertainment". Also, areas for drinking and smoking must now be brightly lit. The atmosphere is totally destroyed. For people who think Facebook is great and shit like that, I can imagine the eradication of dark nooks and crannies in clubs is no big deal, because "not being seen" is minor to their cultural visions – including sexuality and gender. But hiding is a defensive skill, and Queers are losing that. Sadly, lobbyists have insisted clubgoers are "decent folk" who should never have been grouped with "immoral sex workers to begin with. It has destroyed alliances with those remaining under the morality code. The result is a sexless and heteronormative club culture,  over-illuminated and devoid of subversion.

Here in "permissive" Berlin, you are playing at a club with leftist and Antideutsche leanings – it's been criticized for banning the keffiyeh, the Middle-Eastern headscarf. I am admittedly uninformed about Antideutsche movements. Am I right if I say they usually coincide with a pro-Israel stance? Although I don't know if that always translates into pro-Zionism? In which case, is it actually a kind of “rightist-leftism“? It's all very confusing to me.
Dress codes and exclusion have always been a huge part of club cultures. The idea of clubs as havens for openness is – like all stereotypes – a fraud that cloaks other power dynamics. If they truly were spaces of freedom and love, I doubt we'd need so many vocals endlessly hammering those messages into our heads. It's true that sometimes door policies protect subcultures, as Berghain insists. But of course, this echoes exclusions encountered in dominant culture generally, as well as in many religious institutions. After religions, the music industry is the biggest cultural producer of spiritual rhetoric. So we can see how the exclusions of club culture mirror those in society at large. And this should disturb people. It certainly disturbs me.

The word "genderqueer" has entered the mainstream, thanks to figures like Miley Cyrus and Jaden Smith. Is that something to be optimistic about? Yeah, and I just read some statement from Caitlyn Jenner about being a proud Republican leading the charge for other LGBT Republicans in the fight for equality, and I think that's just super!
No, I mean, come on. Mainstream media preaching a world of equality and opportunity for all is just propaganda meant to numb us to cultural violence and injustice. It's a sign that things are still going wrong. A female German chancellor didn't end sexism, an African-American president didn't end racism, and Miley and Jaden are sure as hell not ending any of my gender issues. You know what? Fuck you for even implying that's something to possibly be optimistic about! [Laughs]

Interview: Joey Hansom

Terre Thaemlitz
Nuisance: Writings on Identity Jamming & Digital Audio Production
Verlag Zaglossus, 386 pp., 19,95 EUR

Blank Generation
Aug. 6-7, about blank,
w/ DJ Sprinkles, Reka, Christian Wünsch, Roi Perez, Samuel Gieben et al.

www.comatonse.com

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