VII. Interview with… Sweætshops®
When I think of artists, varicoloured and raw, none come to mind as vividly as Sweætshops. Bringing the undeniable energy of a high doom, coupled with whipping wit, strafing satire, multimodal knowledge, and seemingly insuperable courage, Sweætshops' praxis always rings loud and rings true. It's everywhere there in their brilliant disruption of the pretensions of performativity and the pageantry of humiliation/reward in their piece "Impress (at X-Factor audition)", it's in the surreal aesthetic and sound design of the Brexit fable titled "The Research Chymical *******", and it's undeniable in the passionate anti-national para-parable titled "The Scottish Deformation".
Having had the privilege of sharing a bill with their former band sheep (who harrowed the building with style, aplomb, and a facility that had me both thoroughly admiring and nervous), I knew even then that that was not the full remit of the Sweætshops' work. The attention I paid was non-negotiable but gladly given. I sheepishly came to learn that said work and its underlying melange of interests — from the occult to capitalism, music to performance — were not only deeply relatable but endlessly fascinating.
In conversation with The Empty Set below, which has been lightly edited and condensed, Sweætshops discusses the significance of these themes and concepts in themselves, how they impel/impale their performance, as well as their relation to their praxis more broadly.
While I spoke privately with Sweætshops about their exciting upcoming interactive project launching on 1 May, details must remain opaque at this juncture for legal reasons. However, participation therein is both open and welcomed. If you're curious, contact them through their website (swetxshops.io), Instagram (@swetxshops), or their YouTube channel.
- Kwasu Tembo.
A broad opener, but what three things do you find folk misunderstand about capitalism at current?
That depends on the person, to pick three generalisations:
That capitalism is something that can be tackled in our individual choices - we are interchangeable and nothing is separate from its mechanics.
That capitalism rewards hard work, most who claim it is are lying, the rest are deluded.
That capitalism is a default setting for civilisation rather than one that has actively destroyed concepts that allow us to imagine other systems.
In what three ways do you think Covid has either exacerbated ignorance/edification in this way?
Covid has forced most of our interaction into online discussion. We lack the tools/concepts to think outside capitalism anyway and the open platform of the internet has caused us to confuse online activity with real-world democracy.
As public health is a state issue we separate it from our government’s idealogy of privatisation and confuse lockdown policy with policy for a centralised state. The claps for the NHS here in the UK have given people the impression that our healthcare system a timeless institution rather than a recent relic of post-WW2 thinking that our government is ideologically opposed to. Our few social freedoms are fragile.
The nature of lockdown means we are even more removed from the reality of our supply-chain than we have been. We already exist unconcerned with which child in what factory stitched our clothes, now you don’t even have to interact with anyone in the chosen outlet of your chosen conglomerate to purchase your chosen item. Just click. Like magic.
What three things has capitalism suffered/gained as a result of Covid?
Covid has only increased preexisting wealth inequality. It is no surprise that the first recorded trillionaires appeared during lockdown. Any effective capitalist knows that disaster equals opportunity.
The cultural sphere has just been reduced to forms of retail turning most activities into more blatant forms of consumption. While individual businesses and organisations have been hit I don’t think Covid has upset the broader mechanics of capitalism.
If death rates keep going then we could see an increase in rights and wages for workers. This happened in the years following the Black Death. That doesn’t affect capitalism much but it makes the society a bit fairer for a spell. However most workers had a skill then, most of us do not have that bargaining power in the 21st century.
From Sabrina to Constantine to Joey Badass to Aster to Eggers, the Occult, broadly speaking, appears more popularly mainstream and accepted than ever. What three things do folk get most wrong about the Occult, in your view?
There is no way to get the occult wrong, it’s just a personal belief system but there are some systems we are fundamentally opposed to...
Individualist new age thought - you can draw a fairly clear line in thinking from Crowley to Trump that encompasses most new age and economic systems if seen in terms of social concepts - LaVeyan satanism is pretty much just free-market economics in capes. Likewise seeing the “I” as something solid is just a replacement for old notions of the soul. As a result, living becomes a process of distinguishing your “self”, via consumption, vocation, opinion, family, etc. You get your dream funeral instead of your place in the afterlife.
“Shadow work” - it is all shadow work. So many movements place the onus on the individual for positivity as a true picture of the world. If you see everything as love and light you’re in denial, by keeping unpleasant issues in the dark you let them fester.
There are no distinct “masculine” and “feminine” energies. These are broad generalisations and binary reductions of the idea of complementary opposites. They should be viewed as fundamentally unhelpful outdated terminologies. (01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 ...)
What three things do you find to be the most powerful aspects of your own Occult praxis?
I don’t kiss and tell.
What three texts on the Occult would you recommend to the curious?
Without giving away our secret recipes...
The Dao de Ching - it will read like common sense “When a fool hears about the Dao, they laugh at the very idea. If it were not for that laugh, it would not be the Dao.”
The Tibetan Book of the Dead - translation dependent but a great tool for confronting mortality. Death is one of the last real taboos that society needs to break. Whether you’re reading the King James Bible or The God Delusion death is the only certainty. We have made strides to dismantle the taboos of sex we have built, we can do the same with death. Even if you don’t get laid you get a hole in the ground.
[redacted]
Who is your favourite occultist and why?
Lao Tzu. Write a hit then disappear.
What are your three favourite Occult films and why?
I don’t really watch fiction and find it difficult to watch films, non-fiction wise:
The century of the Self - Adam Curtis can leap to assumptions but The Century of the Self is a pretty solid dissection of the social conditioning that has lead to the social atomisation we are living in.
Mondo Elvis - a documentary about the cult of Elvis Presley fans/devotees. A new religion.
America’s Got Talent S12E07 Jokgu of Flockstars audition - the summation and peak of the last 100 years of popular culture. Decapitate the chicken.
In what three ways does the Occult influence your broader praxis?
All creative praxis is inherently magical so it depends on the project. In terms of our wider praxis, the occult has useful tools/concepts to navigate reality.
Daoism, which views everything as inherently paradoxical (and therefore not), helps address fundamental difficulties we have with understanding reality. Basically dialectic. Sweætshops is meant to represent the inescapable contradictory poverty/luxury stranglehold of the 21st-century survival lottery.
If we view concepts as thought-forms or entities we are in a better place to summon and/or banish them.
As a dirt-poor artist, the occult is probably a huge influence because witchcraft is always popular with the powerless.
What do you think is the most beautiful and potent aspect of performance?
That it is the most direct way to witness “otherness” in a way that allows people to perceive plurality. The performer can be simultaneously an idiot and a prophet, sexy and repulsive, threatening and comforting. Audiences draw their comfortability from the perceived safety of a situation, be that fear of social embarrassment to fear of genuine mental and physical harm. Performance allows you to play with those energies in a very particular succinct way. Ultimately it is playing with our experience of awareness. Performer, audience, God, Santa, the venue’s CCTV are all watching.
How has Covid altered this/what new openings and closures now exist to be navigated?
Covid has relegated creativity to the digital sphere. What (if anything) separates art in that context from content creation is tricky. The old ways were never sustainable and a move to murkier waters is not necessarily the worst thing. Contemporary art has largely existed cut-off from wider pop culture for a while, it is probably about time the floodgates were opened up. How that will look and feel waits to be seen.
At present, the forecast is not so good. There has been a complete social devaluation of culture over the last 20 years - how many people pay for media outside a monthly subscription? We don’t even do that. There’s also a big discrepancy between the resources going to the arts and what reaches the artists. Downturns in resources always lead to preexisting nepotism doubling down and hits to the vulnerable. Everything is trapped in a business framework regardless of what the capital is anyway; monetary, status, productivity, accolades, etc. There are always legal grey areas that could be toyed with in fun ways though. We’ve been doing some questionable online interaction and radio broadcasts.
What three things make a good audience/bad audience, in your view?
We don’t see audience in that way as we don’t see any clear distinction between the audience and performer - it’s just who the attention is on within that moment. After all, everyone is a performance artist from the moment they get dressed, that’s maybe why we generally perform naked.
There have been violent reactions from audience members - heckling, hitting, throwing bottles etc but that’s not a bad audience. There’s been generous reactions like being offered gifts, drugs and all kinds of sexual favours on stage and that’s not necessarily a good audience. The only audience we could frame as “bad” would be one that doesn’t react at all and generally is not the fault of the audience. Performance art and experimental music can carry such elitist connotations that by their very natures they often attract audiences more concerned with how they are perceived by their fellow audience members than directly engaging with the show. It’s down to the show to grab somebody’s attention and jolt them awake. Literally or figuratively. As long as there’s a reaction then it’s a good audience.
We Eagerly Await your Complete Submission
Photo credit: Tiu Makkonen
What are three of the worst/best moments of your praxis you can recall right now?
Worst:
By far the worst was the death of our collaborator Ruaridh in sheep, someone I feel deeply blessed to have encountered here on this rock. This is followed by fundraising website PledgeMusic liquidating and running off with all the money that had been donated by family, friends and fans to release his album.
Significantly less “worst” was almost severing our thumb off on broken glass during a show - we didn’t notice it was hanging almost completely off because we had been throwing hair gel at the audience which had worked as a kind of binding glue. I thought the audience was running away from me because people tend to, I didn’t notice that blood was squirting everywhere. I distinctly remember waiting in A&E deliriously fixated on an information board for in-patients which read: “WHY AM I HERE?”.
The most unpleasant experience involved wearing a nappy, baby. The most physically strenuous is tied between fracturing my tailbone and being waterboarded.
There has been no best yet but some significant moments include...
The last night of We Eagerly Await Your Complete Submission synchronistically landing on the day the UK government closed their inquiry into the well-being of reality TV contestants. The whole project began a year before the inquiry was launched and was inspired by the high number of reality TV contestants that have committed suicide.
Some of the unexpected bits in public disruption - getting the main street in Scotland’s capital city closed by the royal military police is up there.
Staring at 100+ people wearing my face as I wore my face on my face, while covered in my face. Look forward to that flashing before my eyes when I pass.
To many, noise occupies a strange liminal space between installation art and music. What three things do you think most important for people to know about noise, whether veterans or neophytes?
Nothing to know, just make some.
Sacrificing
Repeating
Recycling
In terms of producing a piece, what three things are essential in your approach?
A feeling in the head.
A feeling in the pit of the stomach.
Realising it.
The Research Chymical ******* - a legally binding simultaneous marriage/divorce for Brexit
Photo credit: Rich Dyson
In what ways are rites likes shows/shows like rites for you, if at all?
The words “rites” and “rituals” are thrown around a lot. Anything we consciously subject ourselves to could be a “rite” and behaviour we demonstrate a “ritual”. It’s all on a scale of intent. A lot of culture ignores intent in favour of irony, which is socially safer. Our shows are more like mystery plays, they involve ritual but its using ritual as a means to convey allegory as opposed to allegory as a means to convey ritual. To an extent, it goes both ways though I suppose.
Many people might be wary or uncertain about disruption, its goals, targets, actants. What three things are most important to you when it comes to disruption?
The goal is always an actant. Set and setting are key...
Channelling a certain mindset in a certain setting, an entity/persona/spokesperson to embody a concept.
The target is always coincidental to the setting or the same thing and takes place on a date of historic significance. The Scottish Deformation landed on the anniversary of the formalisation of the Scottish Reformation and took place on the Royal Mile - a whole street of tartantry shops connecting the Scottish Parliament to Edinburgh Castle. The disruption was as much about the interplay between the spirit of capitalism and the production of national identity as it was about the connection between parliament and the crown. In The Scottish Deformation mindset, time and space were all interlinked. I was born inbred in Scotland, brought up in whisky country and worked nightshifts in a shortbread factory so we could relocate to a city. We wouldn’t disrupt unless we related.
Punch up. Remember you are them. Disruption can definitely be seen as fucking with people but when we disrupt it is generally from an initial point of compassion to highlight a bigger cruelty. When we successfully got an X-Factor audition with the details of a humiliated contestant who had killed themselves the most surprising things were how bleak the audition process was (a bare concrete room) and how similar we were to the hopefuls there - our practise is just more left field. When our disruptions have been a bit more impersonal we make sure to anonymise - “this may be recorded for training purposes”.
What do you think cannot be disrupted?
Entropy.
What absolutely needs to be disrupted, in your view?
Pretty much every area of 21st century life, we live under so many layers of disconnect. Disruption is only being startled by change. It’s all OK.
Drifting with Debord? Temporarily Autonomous and in the Zone with Bey? Fully Automated and Luxurious with Bastani? Your views?
Never read Bey or Bastani so can’t give any views on those.
Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord was one of the first non-occult/religious philosophy books I read. Some old guy on a forum recommended it to me when I was 15. It was really formative from our first punk band onwards. Everyone should read it, most advertisers have. It can be a supplement third occult text to that earlier question.
In the minds of many, pop culture is a largely egalitarian space with avenues aplenty for the voicing of a range of opinions and counter-views. For others, its little more than a quagmire of the status quo, a vein of vitriol and vindictiveness, a crucible of cruelty and conformity-in-anonymity, a racetrack-rat-trap of rancour, racism, and resentiment, a sluice house of schematized schisms and so on. What is pop culture at its best/worst, in your view?
Pop culture can’t be framed in best/worst because that’s the scale it operates on. It is a strange beast. Ideally, it allows the egalitarianism you mentioned but copyright prevents a lot of that. Since we are saturated with it we have a right, if not a duty, to use it and alter it. People are beginning to open up to this, making their own reconfigurations and uploading/sharing. But that is still under constant threat of legal action. We have had some small legal battles over copyright claims with a few multinationals.
A positive thing about pop culture is it gifts us easily accessible signifiers, a fairer symbol system - you can use something “low-brow” to convey something “high-brow” and as above so below. Our work Number #1 Hit Trauma was about the relationship between flashbulb memories and popular music after we discovered that Candle In The Wind ‘97 (that was released on the back of Princess Diana’s death) is still the bestselling single in the UK. That song fulfils all the requirements of a traditional folk song in being adapted from a previous structure, mythologising a human being and codifying them to the collective identity. That interplay between popular culture and collective memory is really the active process of mythmaking.
On a gentler note, the second bestselling single in the UK was Bandaid which shows that however misguided people are they are generally compassionate if saturated with a message.
What three trends have you been most surprised by in pop culture since 2010?
The rapid mainstreaming of conspiracy theories.
The successful rebranding of the right-wing as a voice of the underdog.
Movements that have opened a broader nuanced dialogue about oppression and abuse like MeToo and Black Lives Matter. We are beginning to talk about these difficult subjects. The only conspiracy is generally silence.
What three things do people most misunderstand about their engagement/complicity with/in pop culture?
Whenever you are reading this it is more difficult to do something new than at any time before in lieu of the fact that more has been done before you. “There is nothing new under the sun” etc.
Everything is in mutation.
Tiktaalik felt nostalgic too.
I don't for one second take you for a nostalgic, but what three trends/aspects of pop culture do you feel warrant review/reassessment?
Guillotines
Mescaline
Human sacrifice. (Ideally, this list would all be one trend.)
Once, I went to the Rosicrucian Order's webpage. I was tickled but ultimately surprised by the options of Initiation into the Mysteries they offered, including via Skype. This was well before the plague, or soft apocalypse, as I prefer to call it. In digital late capital, we can eat, expel, entertain, marry and climax online. Surely being able to pray, bless curse, and initiate isn’t altogether odd? What, in your view, is the relationship between magick/the occult and technology? What 3 things have you noticed in this relationship over the past decade? Do you spy out any advantages/disadvantages of Practicing this way?
Technology is practical magic. There is no distinction.
The very nature of the internet and especially chat-based sites like social media actively aide in the creation and actualisation of superstitions.
We have an intuitive drive towards technology before we have a use for it; 64 hexagrams in the I-Ching and 64 different codons in genetic code, crystals working in computer boards, media as language. Occult concepts can be useful to reappropriate for technology but you lose that if you get stuck in fitting diagrams within diagrams.
