THE SHOW DON'T TELL SHOW

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club night / performance
 

The Show Don't Tell Show was a club night that addressed issues at the intersection of art, gentrification, party politics, and nightlife.

The night included two DJ sets, one of which was performed by me as DJ Jamanna Hoj (Leipzig/Berlin). My performance was accompanied by text and image projections, designed to function as party visuals in sync with the beats. Moving and blinking text conveyed my personal narrative of how the party leader of Alliance 90/The Greens had made me a DJ in Berlin when I interned at his headquarters, just before moving to London. By recounting how I became a DJ, I aimed to demystify the “club ritual,” replacing the DJ’s prototypical aloofness with a more vulnerable and transparent narrative, while simultaneously infusing the night with party politics.

The visuals raised questions about gentrification on two levels. On the one hand, I questioned my own role in the process, as a student who had just moved to Peckham. In the context of the night, a venue like the Bussey Building functions as a major gentrifier, attracting a hip audience from all over London to Peckham. Yet, blaming individual artists or hipsters would miss the point. The bird’s-eye view of the process in the visuals included an interview with Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, whom I had met at a Radical Housing Conference. After hearing the story of how Cem Özdemir, leader of the German Greens, had made me a DJ, she agreed to participate in an interview. We discussed the gentrification process, focusing on its various levels (individual, national, global, and urban).

Another projection showed a slowly moving 3D pill, with the letters “P-ME” engraved. Beneath it, a continuously flowing stream of the phrase “politicize-me” appeared in small letters. The Show Don’t Tell Show sought to link the gentrification processes in Berlin to those in London. Names like “Berlin,” “Kreuzberg,” and “Neukölln” featured in the visuals are part of a clubbing hype that extends well beyond Germany’s borders. One reaction to the show was that “finally, there was a proper Berlin-style techno party in London – something usually missing here.” So, even though we ironically referenced the hype around Berlin, the show could also be perceived as part of it.

It took place at the Bussey Building/CLF Art Café on Rye Lane, Peckham, as a collaboration between Athanasios Anagnostopoulos and me.