Olivia says that in Poland it is “luckily not forbidden to have a good time.” What the ruling party Law and Justice tries to forbid, though, is allowing people to life their lives any way they want. The oppression of (sexual) minorities was a focus of October’s election and led to counter protests all over the country. The nightlife scene with its historically liberal ideals, of course, took their stance both in Poland and beyond and tried to mobilize for a better society. The results of the respective actions, however, were mixed, as Olivia tells zweikommasieben’s Mathis Neuhaus. The two met before a gig she played at Elysia in Basel back in early November. Their conversation touched on the before mentioned topic and the country’s specific reality—alongside more specific reflections on Poland’s musical lodestar Unsound and stories about Olivia’s own (musical) endeavors.
Mathis Neuhaus Poland had an election in October. Was nightlife or culture more general a big part of a discussion surrounding the election?
Olivia It was not a big part of political campaigns, but it was refreshing to see that people from our scene have been engaged during this election quite strongly. There were a lot of calls to action that aimed at encouraging people to vote. The majority of people I know or follow on social media posted frequently about the upcoming election and reminded others to register to vote, if needed. In Poland, you can vote anywhere, but you need to have special documents to do so. Festivals and promoters were constantly posting about this possibility. There was a big mobilization from our scene to change the current order. In politics, it was the other way around: Culture and nightlife are topics at the bottom of the ruling party’s interest list—unless it is deemed patriotic or categorized as “high” culture.
The ruling party in Poland is the right-wing party Law and Justice, which is heavily associated with the Catholic Church and shares very narrow-minded convictions. Their main angle of this year’s political campaign was deeming LGBTQ+ culture as the enemy of the state and the so-called “normal people.” In Poland “normal” means a family that consists of a woman, a man and a child or as many children you can have. To sustain this order, Law and Justice ran an awful campaign aimed at the LGBTQ+ community; they introduced and proclaimed an understanding of the “LGBT ideology” opposing “normal” life. Both politicians and members of the right-wing media were calling LGBTQ+ people pedophiles or rapists—calling gays and lesbians rapists that want to hurt children was the main angle of their campaign… The sad irony about that is that the Polish church has, in fact, a big problem with pedophilia. Even sadder is that Law and Justice maintains its power in Poland, because they have the support of the Catholic Church. The circle closes here as a majority of Poles are Catholics that are fed these lies of the Law and Justice party every Sunday at mass. Unfortunately, this party won again—even though voting turnout was higher and the opposition got more votes than in the last election. There are now more left-wing politicians in the Parliament now, so maybe it is a little ray of hope for change? We will see what the future brings.
MN You mentioned a call to action from the scene. Can you elaborate on the counter reactions?
O A lot of demonstrations, marches, and rallies where happening all over Poland before the election. It was very uplifting to see that also communities in smaller cities got involved, and not only the ones in the big cities like Krakow, Warszawa, Wrocław or Poznań. This shows that a desire and the need for change is everywhere. All those people were very brave to take their opposition to the ruling system to the streets as they were met with a lot of resistance. You probably heard about what happened in September in Bialystok, where football hooligans brutally attacked a peaceful pride parade. A couple of weeks later in Lublin, the police stopped an attempted bomb attack at another pride parade… It became very dangerous to publicly demonstrate in Poland.
Much of this aggression is both backed and fueled by propaganda shared by TVP, the Polish national television. Sometimes the daily news on TVP remind me of propaganda news from the communist past I watched in history lessons. And again, one of the favorite topics on national TV are these lies in relation to the LGBTQ community, like the myth of gays who want take children away to lead them to a “bad and immoral life.” This is especially weird in relation to sex being more and more a taboo in public discourse and slogans like “stop the sexualization of children.” The latter is related to a bill the ruling party tried to introduce that bans teaching kids in school about their sexuality. In fact, you could go to jail for it. Jarosław Kaczyński, who is not even the prime minister, but just the head of the party, pushes all these decisions by installing the right people in power, so he’s very much the grey eminence here. He said something like: “Teaching kids about their sexuality wants to make them have sex.” It’s such a medieval way of thinking, but a lot of people believe it. It’s becoming more and more obvious that club culture is this little liberal bubble, where people are tolerant and open, while a majority of the country is, in fact, not. But this does not mean that we should not fight to reverse this order.
MN You have been active as a promoter for a long time in Poland. How did you get into it? And where you ever confronted with reaction or repercussions from the intolerant part of Poland when organizing nights?
O In the sixteen years that I have been involved in organizing parties, I was able to mostly work freely. I think it is because I have been working with institutionalized clubs and therefore had all the licenses needed to feel safe. In this context, you can always do parties in Poland. Even though the country has a lot of difficult regulations, the nightlife institutions are, once they have all the documents in place, mostly left alone. It is not forbidden to have a good time, luckily. Together with my crew, Chino & Kinzo Chrome, I organize parties named We Are Radar. We started eight years ago in a gallery called Radar, where we promoted Polish artists, mainly by exhibiting them. Then we started doing parties each month. This became quite a success and it grew from there to become a regular club night organized all over Poland and abroad.
MN Being involved and active for so long already, do you feel like you have a responsibility for the nightlife and its “scene” in Krakow?
O I feel like I do, but this feeling also changed a bit. I have certain “activist” ideals and I always felt like I belong in and to Krakow. I want to make this city a better place. The best way I know how to do it is via music, so I throw parties here to present music that the local audience does not hear on the radio. Through this, I also show them a culture that is open and tolerant; events that focus on topics like pride or charity. I even co-organized a music picnic with planting trees in Krakow. It was a great feeling planting your own tree in your town. The little boscage with apple trees, magnolias and cornel is still growing next to the Vistula river. I had this feeling that I need to be very involved in Krakow’s life on many levels—but there is a new generation of promoters and DJs that are doing great work, too. It is a nice feeling to see that Krakow’s club scene developed so much that I do not need to be so involved. I feel like it is time to change my balance towards an attention to self-development. I play abroad a lot now, work on a new live project and my own music.
MN What do you make of the development of Unsound, a festival you are associated with as a resident DJ? A lot of people consider it to be one of the best festivals in the world…
O I think what makes the festival so good is the fact that the curators focus on presenting new acts from all over the world. Normally, if you go to the European festivals you see a lot of the same names and headliners everywhere. Since 2010, Unsound builds its program around a theme, which was kind of a turning point for the festival and helped it grow. They were the first festival to shed light on Nyege Nyege—the collective from Kampala, Uganda and the new African scene centered around them—, they brought the footwork pioneers to Europe, flew in the Portuguese artists releasing on Princípe, among many other things… The festival treats artists equally, there are no headliners. The curators are not afraid to take risks. I got to know a lot of new music while attending the festival and working for it. I especially like the concerts during the week, because that is a context that opens up new possibilities. Also, the festival lays a strong focus on fostering collaborations, which opens up exciting new resonance chambers.
MN You mentioned that a lot of the big festivals have comparable line-ups. I feel like this slowly also starts to be true for festivals like Unsound that focus on the more experimental side of things…
O I would agree—and also the curators of Unsound realize that. I talked to them recently and they mentioned how difficult it is to find new music, to keep it interesting and to do something that not everyone else is doing as well. It becomes a stress factor to keep it fresh and unique after 17 years. And I think they found a winning formula that can be and is copied—which complicates it even more.
MH Is having something like Unsound Festival making things more difficult or easier for smaller promoters in the city?
O For Krakow’s scene, it is good to have Unsound. The city’s audience is very receptive and open to different strains of music, because people are used to hearing adventurous music. It happens a lot that you invite artists to Krakow and they know about Unsound already—which is a strong argument for the city. Sometimes artists come and play smaller events in Krakow which consequently leads to being invited by the festival in consecutive years. But it also has to be stated that Krakow is a very different city and scene during the time of Unsound, because a lot of agents of the global nightlife are in town, whereas during the rest of the year, it is mostly quite a small and local affair. A good party in Krakow attracts maybe 250 or 300 people, maximum. But what makes it special is the openness of the audience. You get away with playing whatever you want…
Being associated with Unsound helped my career a lot. I was encouraged by the festival to cross my boundaries by playing together both with artists I look up to like Ron Morelli or that I did not know at all before like Nazira. I also played my first ever live performance with Chino as Radiation 30376. I learned a lot thanks to that. Playing at Unsound also helped me get my first gig abroad, as Steffen Bennemann heard me there and invited me to Nachtdigital.
MN You are mentioning that your bookings have been increasingly picking up since a few years, which leads to travelling more. I also saw that you are quite vocal about the consequences of climate change. How do you maneuver this conflict of interests? I think a lot of DJs start to reflect on this more and more.
O I was thinking about it a lot when I toured India recently. Delhi is heavily polluted and seeing that this pollution is also to a part caused by the changing climate makes you reflect your own role in all this. It is hard to find a satisfying answer, because I am dependent on travelling for my career. When I am touring, I try to have weekends in one country, so I can take trains instead of planes more often. But it is not easy… In India, for example, I had to fly every day because the country is too big to just take a train from A to B. And not only is it impractical there, but it can also be dangerous. As you mentioned, a lot of travelling DJs start to think about their own impact more and it will affect the scene in the years to come. Maybe everything will become more local again, which can also be a good thing. And everyone can do something, like stop eating meat or buying locally sourced products. Or just buying less stuff in general.
MN What were your experiences like in India in regards to nightlife?
O I fell in love with this country and it was a nice experience on so many levels. It was very refreshing to see so much passion, which I think gets lost sometimes in the global nightlife. Even though the conditions could be difficult, for example with regards to having a proper sound system, the passion I experienced in India was unmatched. Touring in Europe can feel streamlined, which makes it hard sometimes to build up meaningful connections with people. Kekao, the collective that invited me to India, only organized a few parties before they booked me. When I arrived at the venue in Kochi some of things were not right—like the turntables set-up—, but during sound check I helped them and explained how to do it properly. We all together fixed the problems. I could usually get annoyed by things like this, but this time I saw that it was not disrespectful. The promoters were happy to get my help—and so excited to be able to throw this party—, so I could not be mad at all.
MN A magic dwells in each beginning.
O For sure. Especially Kochi felt so special. Delhi and Mumbai were a bit more like parties you’d find in Europe, but Kochi was something else. It felt like some people at the party heard this music for the very first time. The other thing was that 80% of the audience were men. The reason for that is that Kochi is a very conservative city and a lot of women are not allowed to go out. Even though there were so many men, I felt super safe. There was one situation when a girl told one of the organizers that some guy was rude to her. They took this very seriously and immediately kicked him out. They took it serious, not least as they want to change the society.
The photos within the article are by Kachna Baraniewicz, while Michał Nowotniak took the article’s featured photo.