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Interview and photography by Andrew Gallimore
Goth seems to be a constant trend. Do you think it will ever go away?
Well the reason that you are looking at this [pictures from Kashpoint fashion show] as quite gothic is because it’s pale face dark lips and dark eyes, which could easily be silent film. For me it’s just graphic, it’s about strength.
When people are trying to communicate strength of one form or another, they quite frequently go back to graphics, especially in make-up terms. If you were going to communicate softness, which was the natural look in the 90s, they used medium tones and soft features.
Goths in general have used black and white because they’re trying to make a strong ‘children of the night’ kind of statement.
Goth first appeared in the late 70s at the Blitz [night club]. It was the Blitz look that turned into the Goth look, in the way that we know it now, in the punk sense of Goth-ness. That look has always been there as an alternative to the mainstream. If you look at what Goth has now become, it’s the new metal look, which is a softened down version of the Goth look. It’s a fusion of skater and Goth-ness.
Old school Goths wore fishnets on their arms, black lipstick, pierced lips, crimped black hair and those big Camden Buffalo boots. A lot of kids are drawn towards Goth because it’s an established alternative. Goth is the establishment; it’s the establishment of the alternative. It’s like Marilyn Manson.
Do you think it’s an easy way of following a sub-cultural trend?
Exactly! Alternative sub-cultural trends ... it’s easy to be a Goth.
There seems to be various ingredients, like dye your hair black, wear a Marilyn Manson T-shirt…
Yeah exactly. The Goth scene also crosses over into the fetish scene so part of Goth uniform has become leather and rubber. You have a lot of people in all these scenes trying to escape the Goth look. For instance a lot of the more mature fetish people are moving into the Burlesque look, the much more corseted and Victorian Burlesque. New-metal kids are escaping the Goth look by toning it down with denim and other colours. There is always that standard Goth look, the Goth from the crypt as we call it, which is the classic and it all disseminates from there.
I think it’s a mistake to see what is happening now in alternative sub-cultures as being gothic. I think the reason why you could call these other looks gothic is because it refers to the same influential points of German expressionism at the turn of the 19th century. It’s an extreme statement against uniformity however I believe that the statements the kids these days are making against uniformity is a similar statement to that of Goths in the late 70s.
Goth has become uniformity. Kids these days are trying to break with it but it would be a shame to think that the fact they’re ending up looking a bit Goth is sad. I personally don’t think they [the Kashpoint club kids pictured] do look that gothic. I think there are streams of influences that you can map through all cultures especially through western culture. A lot of my older friends say to me about Kashpoint that, “Oh, they’re just trying to do what we did in the 80s,” and I don’t think that’s true.
Whenever I’ve been to Kashpoint the people there just look like they’re dressing how they want to, alternatively but not with a blatant look back to the 80s.
No I don’t think it is a blatant look back at the 80s. It’s natural for young people and the aesthetics of the new generation to be influenced and inspired by the aesthetics of their youth. The 80s were influenced by the 50s, the 90s was influence by the 60s and now we’re influenced by the 80s.
Whatever excites you as a child, naturally resurfaces when you come to creative maturity, so for me, looking around my house there’s obviously a late 60s to mid-70s influence. That’s because my dad was an interior designer, doing orange and purple houses in the late 60s early 70s.
People plunder from the past and I think that’s exactly how it should be, they always have. The Romantic Movement in the 19th century was plundering from the sort of romantic ideals of the centuries earlier. It’s natural for new art to make reference to old movements.
Where else are you going to find references from if you don’t look to the past?
You can say that Modernism, Cubism and Surrealism and all the sort of early ‘isms of the 20th century were a completely new approach to creativity and aesthetics. They weren’t. So much of it was actually based on primitive art. So the past always resurfaces in the present and forges into the future.
Progress is an illusion. Technology seems like progress in the West because we’ve never had mobile phones before and we’ve never had aircraft like we have, so it gives the illusion of progress when in fact it’s not progress at all.
If you look at what technology is actually doing to the world it’s causing regression because technology seems to have been invented to stop people from thinking.
It used to be that human thought was progress and this is where we get mixed up with this idea of newness. Everybody wants newness. Newness by its nature has disregarded tradition. Tradition is now seen as something which is a prevention to progress – that’s the way it’s perceived, when in fact tradition is progress. It’s tradition, which cycles through the years; it’s tradition that hands down lessons of history. We’ve happily thrown away all our traditions because we’ve got this idea of novel newness. New, new, new! New means nothing without tradition. So when people say in condescending tones that the aesthetics of modern youth are based upon the past then what they are doing is undermining the importance of tradition.
There are aesthetic traditions as well as cultural traditions and there is an aesthetic tradition of ‘otherness’. Unfortunately when that tradition becomes so imbedded, it becomes uniform. So one has to seek alternative ways of expressing otherness, which always involves looking back to the past. Society is continually re-assessing itself by people on the fringes and people on the extremes trying to express notions of otherness.
What I also wanted to ask you, because i-shadow.net is a make-up based website…
Sorry! I’ve just been going on about philosophy!
No! No! As we started talking about Goths making a statement, I wanted to ask you how you treat make-up. Whenever I see you at Kashpoint your make-up is always making a statement. It isn’t about enhancement, you don’t just pencil your eyebrows in. It’s always a statement, like it’s an important accessory.
Make-up is never an accessory. Make-up is an intrinsic part of the statement, part of the look, which is why it’s a bit of a shame that [Boy] George decided to change some of the make-up in Leigh’s [Bowery] outfits when he made Taboo [the stage play].
Leigh’s make-up was designed with the outfit. You can’t change it. The make-up is a part of the look. You can’t do a Biba look and do Goth make-up, do you know what I mean? Make-up is not an add-on because it’s the face that communicates the idea. It’s always the eyes and the mouth that communicate to humanity, so it is the face, which is the most important part of communication. You can’t look at make-up as being an accessory to the outfit or to the statement. It’s almost like the rest of the outfit builds out from the face. The silhouette enforces what the face is communicating.
So do you think about what make-up you will wear and then choose an outfit around that?
I think it can go both ways. The silhouette can inform the face, the garment can inform the make-up. They’re intrinsically linked. Make-up is the most important part of the garment. I very much believe that. It’s something that Leigh [Bowery] and I discussed a lot because when we wear extreme make-up and clothing they become inseparable.
For me appearance is one of the most fundamental and effective ways of communicating ‘otherness’ from society. Our society is more conformist now than it has ever been in recent history. When one is communicating a sense of true estrangement from the political, and philosophical and aesthetic perceptions of mainstream society, one uses shock in many ways to communicate that. I think that shock is still a very useful tool. I’ve changed my mind about this recently. I was very anti-shock value for a very long time. I thought it was a bit boring. But make-up and appearance, by making yourself look intentionally ‘other’ and different and ‘unattractive’ to the majority …is shocking. Why would you want to do that? The very notion makes people wonder and question their own identity.
There’s a big difference in seeing one of those big outfits on the catwalk and seeing it close in real-life. It takes an incredible amount of courage and it takes an incredible amount of dedication and strength of character. By making yourself so different you’re actually saying, “I have the bottle to stand against the tide,” and that terrifies people because they know, especially in the modern world, that we are like lemmings heading towards the cliff of oblivion.
You must remember that to conform in this day and age means conformity to suicide and people know it! We try and avoid it by buying into consumerism. By presenting an alternative appearance, you are saying, “I will stand up, I am other, and I am a mirror to the absurdity of society. I am a mirror to this insanity. I embrace the insanity, for I accept, I am looking into the eye of this insanity.” That at the moment is the most terrifying thing to present society with.
Even teenagers are so conformist. Teenagers are the front line of consumerism, and it is consumerism that is blinding, consumerism is the diversion. Everyone is so busy watching TV, that they are not going to notice the world falling apart.
As soon as you stand against society, you are saying to people, “I have the guts to face the insanity of this world, and reflect it.” That is why the reaction is so strong. That is why people are picked on, bullied, beaten up and that is why people are ultimately killed, for presenting an alternative, because the alternative to the insanity is realisation of our hopeless situation, but it’s not hopeless because the individual has to take responsibility.
Dressing up is not just showing off. You’re not just seeking attention - because you’re getting such negative attention - it’s much more about an expression, a fury, it’s the expression of incredulity.
Make-up is war paint. It’s an intrinsic part of dissidence. We can use appearance as a communication of disgust and I think in a political situation, if you can’t be heard, be seen!
Is this what you’re trying to do at Kashpoint?
I think what we have been doing at Kashpoint and what people have been doing all over the country is the very beginnings of a new approach to appearance and I think it is going to include plastic surgery. I think it’s going to include all sorts of macabre and surreal, expressionistic forms of appearance, because it’s all that is left. Democracy doesn’t work, people will vote for what makes them feel comfortable and what makes them feel comfortable in this life will torture their children in the next.
This isn’t a new thing. Hippies used their appearance to stand against emerging consumerism. We are just getting to the hysterical point of it. The Bloomsbury set used their appearance to stand against this, the surrealists in some way used their appearance and the punks are one of the most powerful examples of using appearance. Also the New Romantics with the emancipation of male sexuality. The strongest people that I know, the strongest characters I’ve ever met, are the men who are prepared to embrace their effeminacy: the drag queens, the make-ups and the dress-ups.
How do you do it, walking down the street day-to-day dressed up like that?
It takes real guts! And there are only a few that do it, but they’re growing more and more in number, and I have to say that I’m not a 24-hour a day dress-up anymore. I think you just get to an age when the fight on the street just gets too much. Quentin Crisp carried on doing it all his life and became an icon, Leigh [Bowery] carried on doing it to a certain degree. I think my work is elsewhere. My frontline has changed. I’m still a night-time dress-up, a part-time dress-up. I just hate it when people think that we’re just all about fashion. I hate fashion. Fashion’s all about following and we’re about leading!