Hailing from New York City, Colin Self is one of the most dynamic and multifaceted artists of our time. On their new record, respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis, Self – who is based between Brooklyn and Berlin – showcases their boundary-pushing creativity in full force, singing in Latin and Polari, a form of English slang.
The conceptual album blends futuristic experimental sounds with Self’s hauntingly operatic vocals and delves into themes of grief and mourning, born out of the singer’s efforts to reconnect with those they’ve lost. We spoke with Self about the inspirations behind the record, puppeteering as a means of dealing with heavy topics, and the challenge of finding purpose in their art amidst a turbulent political climate, marked by budget cuts to Berlin’s culture sector and the broader state of the world.
Everyone has a story about how they came to Berlin. What’s yours?
I used to say that I moved to Berlin by accident. I was playing a lot with Holly [Herndon] and Mat [Dryhurst], and it got to the point where it didn’t make sense for me to fly across the ocean again and again. Over the last few weeks, though, I’ve been grieving over Berlin, thinking about what it was like around 2016. I was starting my life as a touring artist. There was this valuable infrastructure and community. I think as an American, I’m always somewhat in awe of not just arts funding but sort of like general cultural appreciation of someone who’s contributing to society.
It feels like I’m coming back to Berlin and asking myself, what’s the future of my existence here?
When you say you’re grieving this, do you mean the recent budget cuts to the culture sector or the funding cuts targeting artists who openly criticise the war in Gaza?
Both. I’m really at a tricky place. I’ve already had four commissions cancelled. I worked on a project in Hannover, where I was brought in for a pilot programme, and before I could finish the first performance, they decided to cut the programme because they said they were actually not interested in experimentation. And then it expanded into a few different other institutions who wrote to me, telling me that I was a culprit of imported antisemitism into Germany, that they would no longer be able to work with me because of my political views, and that what’s happening in Gaza is not a genocide, and that I’m antisemitic for calling it that.
Then in the last week I saw this massive political turn. When I first started coming to Europe, it was during the Trump era, and everyone said I was so lucky to be here. And I would have to say that it’s not that different. It might feel like we’re living in a different world, but things are really intense. We’re all in the same boat with these political issues. So what happens next, and where is the best place to pour our energy into? It feels like I’m coming back to Berlin and asking myself, what’s the future of my existence here?
Grief also seems to be a central theme of your new record…
When I first started working on this collection of music I felt this gulf within myself and I started asking, who am I as an artist? Why do I make the music that I make, and what is the purpose? I think we will always live in a deficit of grief, no matter what happens. In 2019, as I was working on these sequential operas and thought, what is this other thing that I haven’t really explored? This one thing was about light and this expansion of consciousness, and what it looks like to dive into the shadow worlds of grief and sadness.
I decided that I wanted to leave behind the idea of making an explicitly groundbreaking record, or something that had to really be declarative – no more big gestures, just nuances and the smallness of the self. There’s also no collaborations on the album, so it involved a lot of soul searching. My friend Asher Hartman reminded me that I make things for the community, but that this thing should be about the dead community, and specifically, my dead community. So I started thinking about friends of mine who passed away and how to be with them and ask what they need.
There are some incredibly beautiful people in Berlin, but there’s a lot of despondency and a lot of lostness.
Berliners are starting the new year on a rather glum note. Do you see any hope for the city?
I’m an optimist in the sense that I always believe that there will be exciting, beautiful things happening that most of us don’t know about. I think that’s true about every city that I’ve fallen in love with or spent time in. But there’s a caveat of being a working artist in Berlin. As a touring artist, I’ve been trying to reconcile what it is to be a resident in a place where I don’t have income from.
Agosto Machado, who’s become a central figure for what I’m trying to do and who made the album cover, said this beautiful thing to me: “We always think of an individual reincarnation, but creative cities also experience a collective reincarnation.” I think that we’re bearing witness to a kind of decomposition of energies, which will eventually reappear again. There are some incredibly beautiful people in Berlin, but there’s a lot of despondency and a lot of lostness.
I realised a couple years ago that my thing is to be ridiculous. I was like, oh, that’s why Europe has me over here. When a city is so anchored in this intellectual seriousness, there will always be people who are making space for my kind of stuff. I’m definitely not the only one. There’s also this thing that happened, coming out of lockdown, a bunch of people who used to go to club spaces stopped going. As a core of Berlin identity, a lot of this is creating an identity crisis. What is the city for if it’s not about raving?
What can we expect from the live performances of this record?
It’s going to be theatrical, ridiculous, with puppetry and video. I don’t want to be too conceptual. I’m such a silly person at the end of the day, so one of the most important ways of dealing with death is through humour, and by using puppets, who have the capacity to do things that humans can’t do. If a puppet dies, it’s a little bit less serious. They are these incredible proxies for getting out of our own way of seriousness; they can bring transformative stories to us. I don’t know if I’m going to have a Berlin premiere, though. The two places that were going to invite me lost funding, so we’ll see what happens.
- Respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis is out on February 21. Follow Colin on Instagram for upcoming shows.
