Mark Leckey: As Above So Below

What are some of your earliest memories of clothes and the construction of identities?



My earliest memory is from when I was at school. We didn't have to wear a school uniform, but I made my mum buy me one. I just wanted to be a schoolboy. I wanted to have a little blazer. I didn't want to fit in. It's a story my mum tells me about how strange I was as a kid. I got into skateboarding when I was about 13. And then I wanted to look like an LA surfer. You know, even though I lived in like the shitty part of the northwest of England, I wanted to look like a shaggy blonde.



What was the last subculture that sparked your interest? Do you think that the internet dissolved the subculture?



In England, we call them roadmen. Sort of comes out of drill music, grime. It's when they wore tracksuits, head to toe, The North Face. I kind of like Playboi Carti too. I like what he's doing. It's mad. It's a bit Balenciaga-ish, which I don't love, but kind of black Goth. I think something is interesting watching a Black African American man taking Goth, which is the whitest kind of style. He also looks like a pop star. I like pop stars. And then in terms of the subculture thing, I guess you could say that the internet changed time. Before the internet, everything was kind of periodic. So you could go like 50s, 60s, and everything's marked out.



And then it all collapsed.



Yeah, because there's an idea that the digital converted time into space. So you're not moving linear forward anymore. You're going across in all sorts of ways. Linear time isn't natural, you know, if that comes out of light and of print, because print is linear. So when you move away from print, you get a different conception of time.


You have a dope music taste!



Oh, thank you!



I heard you playing Meat Computer in one of your NTS mixes. How does your music search engine work? Do you rely on algorithms or do you search for it?



I search, but I got resources. To be honest, a lot of the stuff I get is from this guy called Billdifferen. I don't know where he gets it from. He posts loads of stuff, like he was the one who turned me on to baile funk and sigilkore. Axxturel, Sellasouls, this kind of young rappers. Everything sounds really broken, and they just whisper. It's like you can hear the internet.



What was the best party you’ve ever been to?



Probably the Burning Man in the early 90s. It was still very real. It was very organised but completely boundless. I hung around with this guy for three days, didn't know him and never saw his face because he had a gas mask on all the time. In the desert. Gas mask guy, had a fishing tackle box just full of drugs. Built his own shed in the desert; it was just crazy. People were going out to this range and shooting stuffed toys.



It feels like being in a sci-fi film.



It was the nearest I've got to another world. The fact that there's a structure that allows for anything to happen is very magical.


I remember you mentioning Philip K. Dick’s quote “The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.” Would you expand on that in relation to Burning Man?



That’s good, that's sort of built from trash. I like that quote for a number of reasons. The first real music I ever got into was Little Richard. And I think he embodies that quote. He's like a gay, poor Black kid down in South America when it was really racist and religious, and everything that they despised, he kind of turned into something powerful. He's my icon. I think that the ability to alchemically transform disadvantages into charisma, power, whatever you want to call it—I love that! And I think the first time I got really into fashion, I used to call it casual. We wore a lot of brands, before people were really into brands—70s, early 80s. We were all working-class kids without any money, but you're taking this stuff that shouldn't belong to you, that you shouldn't be wearing, and making it yours. I always like it when fashion does this kind of conversion.



When did your fascination with Medieval Art begin?



At a foundation course—it was part of art history. Nearly everyone else I knew got taught from Duchamp, Warhol, but for some reason, he taught us early Renaissance painting. I got introduced to art history through Giotto and Fra Angelico, all these pre-Renaissance painters. And then during lockdown, I started looking at it again and had a new appreciation for it. Your jacket is quite medieval.



Oh, thank you! It's a Fred Perry wool jacket that I put in the dryer, and it shrank. And it became so much better!



Oh, that’s great! It’s got some Elizabethan shoulders. To Paige: I like your skater back in the 70s, you look very kind of LA 70s.



We're all in 70s cosplay.



My favourite year is 1971.


Why is that?



Because it's the end of the 60s, and there was a kind of darkening. The kind of utopia had collapsed, and no one really knew what was gonna happen next. And so there’s this kind of exploration of everything. And musically, there’s still money around, so they give people money to make obscure, weird records. It’s like the beginning of nostalgia. Go back to 71, they’re starting to already look back to the 50s—kind of catchy and camp—that’s where it all begins.

It resonates with what's going on today as well. The big emphasis on nostalgia—it’s almost like that's all that’s left.



Yes, I’m in nostalgia. I mean, the difference then would be a very small bunch of people, like Malcolm McLaren, Westwood. But now it's like nostalgia is everywhere. And everywhere is at different levels of nostalgia.



You talked about the iconography of an image and how an icon transcends the representational meaning and becomes a portal. The icon is looking back at you as you look at it. What is the equivalent of an iconographic image online?



Icons on paintings are doing something else. They're not an aesthetic object at all. They're there for a reason, and the reason is to commute. I think it's like you feel safe in the gaze of those up in the heavens, right? I think images are becoming less about what they represent and becoming something else—especially with AI. Images are literally looking back at you. They’re gathering information.


It’s like a mirror—neural technology. Icons are mirrors as well.



Yeah, I think there's something kind of alien about it and otherworldly—and all these things that you would kind of feel when you were looking at an icon that doesn't belong to this world. We're trying this new way of understanding the world that starts to emerge. I'm interested in what kind of stories we tell ourselves about it.



Do you think there's a connection between the algorithmic media rise and things like the manifestation trend?



I don't know, the spiritual thing slightly unnerves me because about two years ago, I had quite a profound spiritual moment. I thought it was coming from me. And then I started looking at ways that I could establish a practice that would allow me to have these moments again. So I started reading about religion and spirituality, and I found that it's a thing. I think there is something in the idea that, even though this kind of global connection is producing some bad shit, it's also at the same time literally connecting us. And so there is some kind of emergent group consciousness—or something of that—is developing.



Can you describe the experience?



I was in the park, it was the end of lockdown. I was with my youngest daughter, pushing a pram and listening to music—listening to this song from 1971 by Judee Sill. You heard of Judee Sill?

I love Judee Sill!



Nice. I was listening to “Jesus Was a Crossmaker.” It was a fucking beautiful song. The sun came through the trees. Restrictions were being lifted. I just felt this joy—and then the joy kind of grew and became kind of too great. It nearly felled me to the ground. It was so powerful. I was just moved—everything seemed alive, and everything seemed both in time and outside of time. It was the nearest thing I've got to understanding something described as a sacramental reality. I go online, and it’s like, “Ten things you should know about the new spiritualism.” *[laughs]* 
Years ago, I grew a beard because I was getting old and it looked better. Then you go out on the street and everyone's got a beard. You know what I mean?