yes, but is it art?





A few more thoughts on the origins of this act:

After Ju Ju Space Jazz finished I was looking around for a project to really focus on and had a few ideas in mind. At one stage I remember thinking, O.K If I am to do another live project, I want it to involve the following:

  1. A lot less technical setup nonsense. I was sick of patching, balancing levels, having to deal with open mics, live instruments, etc...
  2. Cruising around in limos with lots of girls
  3. Champagne and
  4. Theatre – i wanted something that you could really call a show.
Fair enough really I think...

Also the D.S project was a direct reaction against the conservatism and train-spotting geek led dourness of the whole techno scene. I wanted to confront people on the whole gender and power issues, and the whole dichotomy of performer as god etc... I find all this really rather ridiculous so D.S was really a big ‘up yours’ to the whole Patriarchal DJ as God thing.

It’s funny when I look back at some of these images now. On the one hand you could really dismiss this whole act as really indulgent nonsense. And on one level it is – I mean a bearded guy in drag, the Limo and Champagne thing etc... just smacks of completely vacuous pap. But then somehow in the middle of all this – this weird stuff happens, and strange figures lurch into the light to reveal something about themselves, and perhaps all of us. Suddenly, the light changes and it’s art, it’s eternal and harkens back to anything from the nightclubs of a 1920’s Berlin to the eternal archetypes of desire and control, the whore and the virgin, the Dionysian and the sirens.

So again, I really don’t understand a lot about this project and the processes that drew me into it, I just have to follow where these bizarre whims take me and trust in the fact that somewhere at the bottom of this – there is a point, and trusting in it, and going with it allows this point to come across. Like all art I guess. The more you think about it, the less it is.

Selah!