When the subject of artistic education has come up in the past, you’ve often positioned yourself as non-aligned and countercurrent. You once said: “You can’t learn creativity or teach imagination.” It immediately reminded me of a quote from someone I’ve always admired, Marina Abramović: “Art must be a direct experience. The audience doesn’t need preparation.” However, can a lack of knowledge or of reciprocal exchange of ideas limit one’s personal development, making it self-referential and closed?

I still believe you can’t teach imagination. But isolation isn’t purity, it can become a trap. I’ve felt that for sure. When there’s no exchange and no resistance you start circling yourself. I regularly feel closed off and alone in music. But those experiences make me dig my heels in and it makes me more determined to show people an alternative. The issue isn’t knowledge, it’s rigidity. Education can open doors if you don’t worship it. The problem is people using theory as a shield against feeling. Abramović is right, art has to be direct. But friction and disagreement….even misunderstanding with others is part of growth. You need something to push against otherwise we all stand still.

You lived in Berlin for a period of your life. Although your expectations were high, once you arrived they weren’t fulfilled, at least musically speaking. Your style simply didn’t fit the club context. Don’t you find it contradictory that in a city celebrated for its artistic freedom like Berlin, each country still seems to have its own “dominant” genre (house in the USA, punk/metal in the UK, techno in Berlin), pushing all other styles into the background?

Berlin sells freedom but it also sells an aesthetic. When I arrived I expected danger, something raw and unresolved, straight out of a mad max film. What I witnessed was a lot more polished and it felt curated, all smoothed out. Techno as a uniform. Scenes protect themselves by narrowing the frame as it’s big business now.
My sound didn’t fit initially because I wasn’t interested in servicing the dominant narrative. That tension is what eventually kick started Contort. If a place is truly free it should be able to tolerate discomfort. In the end it turned on its head and I was playing live in Berghain at 8am on a Sunday morning, making ears bleed! We made a mark on that city, for a short time anyway. I’ll try it all over again on March 21st with the Contort re-incarnation of Kick To Kill at OHM. 

Despite this, your desire to experiment led to the creation of the Berlin party series Contort, where you took risks and acted as ambassadors for the genre. Even though the events were well attended, by the sixteenth edition you decided to stop everything. The audience had changed: more appearance, less substance. Today, how much do volatile trends and the desire to be seen really shape the music scene? Are events still made out of passion for music, or do business, money and a narcissistic community now prevail?

Trends are fucking brutal now. Everything’s accelerated and chewed up, then spat out. A lot of people aren’t there for the music anymore, they’re there to be seen near it. Proof of attendance and content. I don’t say that bitterly, it’s just reality. I welcome spaces that ban phones. When we stopped Contort it was obvious the room had shifted. Less sweat, more mirrors. That kills the reason I do this, I’ve never been interested in servicing a lifestyle brand. I want friction with danger and release. Passion still exists, there’s some fantastic collectives still kicking back, but you have to dig for it. The business side is louder than ever and narcissism is the background noise. I’ve come to the conclusion you either accept it or step away, time will tell if i’m still standing in 2026.

Looking at the other side of the coin, Berlin did allow you to interface with platforms such as Not Equal, CTM Festival and, last but not least, Atonal. In fact, you became a key and essential figure there, even curating the festival for three consecutive years. What can you tell us about this unique experience? And what is your relationship with what is often described as “the biennial of experimental electronic music”?

CTM, Atonal, and Not Equal, those were lifelines during my time in Berlin. Spaces where risk wasn’t just tolerated, it was expected. I was invited to curate the final day of Atonal for a few years under the Contort guise.
Atonal isn’t a festival to me, it’s a pressure chamber. You don’t go there to be comfortable, you go there to confront sound, body and architecture colliding. I’m very proud of what we created, we took those Sundays by the scruff of the neck and created something huge. I never saw it as ownership, more like stewardship. Temporary custody of something bigger than you.

One of the most interesting audiovisual projects you presented in this context of intense cultural ferment was The Mysterious Other, created in collaboration with Taylor Burch of Tropic of Cancer. The inspiration is no coincidence: La Fin de l’An 2000 by Jean Cocteau. Intended as a manifesto to future generations, Cocteau reiterates themes such as death as a form of life, poetry as superior to time, and the errors that define the individual. To me, these themes reflect you deeply. Am I wrong? Are there other filmmakers or authors in whom you particularly see yourself?