Agathe Blume: Feel free to skip any questions that make you feel uncomfortable.
Sorelle: (laughs) Not many things make me uncomfortable.
So began an interview with interdisciplinary artist and DJ Sorelle. Born in in the United States of America, the musician, dancer, and performance artist personifies a middle finger to stringent conventions. Educated and articulate yet at times speaking with a coarseness that betrays her Detroit childhood, and wearing colourful hairclips that contradict a loose-fitting sport jacket and black tie, this human subversion and Un:seen co-founder Agathe Blume engage in a revealing living-room conversation. This piece contains discussion of eating disorders and mental illness.
How would you describe your work?
I grew up as a dancer. The notion of colonialist dance, institutionalised dance, is embedded in that curriculum.This established structure makes it almost impossible to break out of those heteronormative, outdated conventions. It’s rare that you’d even see a staged ballet that isn’t about a prince and princess. As I got older and started becoming more invested in interdisciplinary art, I wanted to shift my focus into music. You see dance and music coexist in every space. I thought that I’d start with drums - there are so many characteristics of dance that also work with drums. That opened up the realm of electronic music.
I got interested in producing music when I was at CalArts. I was studying a lot of feminist theory and art/music history, and became really invested in how I could combine my dance education with music production and overthrow political concepts. As a performance artist, it’s extremely important to convey something that’s relevant to you.
My whole life I was tightly governed by my family in a lot of ways, and it created these pressures that made me resent a lot of things about myself, giving me a lot of ideas of beauty and my productivity, and what I should be doing.
So, I wanted my performance art to be a direct subversion of all of that. I also wanted to do something innovative. I’ve never seen a dancer with a formal dance education stand on stage and do spoken word with dance gestures, or techno elements in music production, like techno and ballet. I wanted to evolve on that idea so I started combining feminist theory with dance elements and music, creating a dark, rough, raw sound.
When I was introduced to Abelton, I went for it. My work was a combination of poetry, layering noises, sampling youtube clips, and combining it with dance. It became this slew of mind-vomit. People were really responsive to a lot of the trial runs because they’d never heard anything like it. I was living in LA for a while and people are so used to seeing live bands, nothing that combined multiple mediums. That inspired me to move from dance to other forms of art, which is when DJing came in. I wanted to create something people hadn’t seen, but also move behind the scenes after dancing for so long. There’s no better feeling than standing in a crowd and getting chills from something you really love; that pure euphoria. People can get away from themselves for a minute.
I had a pretty good feeling of what kind of crowds I’d be playing to and how that demographic would influence my sounds. How do you shift from being a dancer to being the person making people dance? That was such a beautiful transition. To go back to how I describe my work: my work is a life experiment for myself as an ever-evolving artist, challenging myself to become virtuous at something that I hadn’t imagined myself doing. Now I want to give back what I’ve taken and give my observers the ability to just be lost in whatever space they want and they need.
How do you identify yourself within the community?
I use she/her. As much as I believe that gender is inherently a social construct, I personally don’t feel like I need to negate my femininity, I fully embrace gender fluidity. I wish everyone was gay and gender-fluid. Ethnically I have Mexican roots, but I’d say I’m more attune to American culture, having grown up with my American family. I’ve only recently gotten in touch with my Mexican family, but my dad’s always been omnipresent, even though my mom forbade him from being a part of my life, which was devastating to me, but I always felt like there was something in my dad I could relate to. Now, upon meeting him, I learned that he's a DJ -
Oh, wow!
We played a gig together in Mexico. I want to establish my cultural roots a little better, and in the next few years live in Guanajuato for a little bit and get to know the other half of my family. Obviously with the devastating political climate in America, especially in terms of discrimination against Mexicans, now is a time more than ever to strengthen those connections. It’s such a beautiful, misunderstood culture in a lot of ways. A lot of people don’t understand—they see poverty and crime, but there’s so much beauty in any culture.
When you say “American family”, what do you mean?
White, suburban, middle-class, what you see in the films. Every house looks the same, every house has a yard, there’s nothing to do except smoke crack and go bowling.
I’m glad to have that information, it contextualizes your work. It’s not the case for everyone, that identity plays such a significant role in our experience, but for me, at least, it does.
For sure. In a way, feminine beauty ideals have shaped who I am. I struggled with identity for a while, especially when I first moved here. I was told by parental figures growing up that I was fat, that I wasn’t good enough, and that really fucked with me. I struggled with body image and have had an eating disorder for six years now. As much as I’m trying to recover from that, it’s hard. For a while I thought that if I got more in touch with my non-feminine side that I could let go.
Lack of femme visibility when you’re queer is totally a thing. I constantly have to prove my queerness to people.
On the one hand, I’m not that jaded by it, but on the other, it’s annoying. I went through this phase where I was like, “You know what? I’m only going to wear blazers and baseball caps”. I cut off all of my hair and thought “Yes, this is the butch look I’m going for”. But I didn’t feel comfortable. That isn’t me. I’ve always been a tomboy at heart, but super aesthetically feminine. I thought I had to eradicate pink from my life or risk being considered ditzy. Womanhood has so many connotations that are so stigmatised and demonised. That’s so toxic. Instead of embracing my feminine side I had to get rid of it for a while in order to understand that that’s not me. I can still be just as queer and feel genderfluid within my feminine body. As I got older, I matured into that idea.
Could you describe you and your parents’ journeys of immigration?
My parents met in Cancun. My dad is an artist, primarily a painter. He was spending a lot of time in New York.That sort of set the tone for me. I was born in New York. My whole life it was kind of weird. My mom was always imposing thes mexican ideals onto me. I went to Mexico when I was four, and I have this picture of me when I was two wearing a tiny sombrero. It’s not even her culture at all - I guess technically I’m not appropriating the culture, but she sort of romanticised my dad’s culture and then superimposed that onto me. I always felt there was something I should be proud of, but it was kind of tucked under the rug. After my dad moved back to Mexico before I was born, it was always like I had these two separate lives.
I always wanted to be proud of my Mexican heritage but I didn’t know how because I didn’t understand it culturally.
So then, growing up, my mom stayed in Michigan and I went to boarding school in California. There are so many Mexicans in California. Government webpages have to be in Spanish because there are so many Californians who don’t speak English. That was the first time I had authentic Mexican food. I lived in a Latinx community for a while, and you begin to understand the hardships these immigrants face. It’s very tight-knit. Everyone has their own backyard parties and community. That’s exactly what I felt going to Mexico recently. Even though my mom has lived in multiple states, there’s a homogenous aspect to American culture. Everywhere you go, there’s something that connects all of them that seems a bit culture-less. State to state and city to city, you really get a sense of how immigrant culture enriches communities. It was nice to get a better understanding of culture by getting to know the Mexicans that live in California.
Did you start going to raves in Berlin or was that already happening in California?
The nightlife is totally different. I was already going to warehouse parties when I was like 18. I honestly, shamefully have to say that chasing a bunch of different sounds came from music festivals, primarily Coachella. I went twice. That was cool, to not be married to any one set. You could experience so much sound in one place. Coachella’s fucking awful, just for the record, but having the opportunity to experience so much diversity in sound all in the same vicinity was incredible. From 16 through 22 I was going to music festivals, not just Coachella but smaller LA ones. Most of my LA-friends were musicians. Those were the raves where I had my first extreme drug experiences. I went to London when I was 18, and also had crazy rave experience because there you party super hard with a lot of drugs. That nightlife was what I needed. I got to a low point when I hit 18 and if it wasn’t for these night parties then I wouldn’t—I don’t know. I don’t think I would be the same. That gave me an option when I felt like LA was really stagnant all together.
There’s nothing like Berlin. We’re so privileged here with the club scene we have, and the music selection and parties and raves, and this hard-partying lifestyle that I’ve been experiencing here since I was just a baby queer. I definitely haven’t experienced anything like I have in Berlin. That also gave me options. Things really present themselves to you. That’s the nice part about being here. That and that you don’t have to drive home fucked up.
No, you can just take the U-bahn. Nightlife wasn’t the same for me before coming to Berlin, either. I feel like other places the goal of the night is to find someone to go home with.
Yeah, the last thing I wanna do is go home with someone when I’m at Berghain!
Do you feel that you’ve experienced extra difficulties or barriers to the music scene due to your identity?
Personally, I would say no. I haven’t experienced any discrimination that I’m aware of. of course, I know that it’s happening all over, and most of these positions are still male-dominated, so I understand oppression’s still happening. I started music at a later time in my life. It’d already been cultivated in such creative communities that I never had a problem. Since I became an adult, I’ve always been part of the queer arts community and of course they’ve never discriminated based on gender or sexuality. I’m thankful that I’m always in a really supportive community.
Although—when I played the show in Mexico, though no one was discriminating, my dad said that people were really shocked because no one had seen a female DJ. Only male DJs in Guajuato. Mexico City has a queer music scene, but smaller towns, no way.
So, what keeps you going?
The lust of for motivation. Last year, I had severe depression and was diagnosed with multiple disorders, and having a solid year of mental recovery time made me more depressed in a way. I felt I wasn’t productive at all, I wasn’t dancing at all, wasn’t doing anything creative, wasn’t challenging myself. I thought, “What am I doing? I’m not receiving any input. I’m just working to sleep”. DJing gave me something new, a new challenge. For art in general it’s always just this urge I have. I feel the compulsion to dance and even when I’m sitting in my room and have no motivation whatsoever, there’s part of me that wants to get up so bad and take a class or something. Right now it’s more of a financial issue than anything, so it’s more pragmatic, but I’ve always had this desire, this burning. I always need something more, more input, a creative figure, propelling me into another state of mind.
I’m really glad to hear that your journey of recovery has been successful.
It needs a lot of work, but I’m definitely in a better place than I was a year ago. If art isn’t cathartic, then why are you doing it?
What’s your biggest inspiration right now?
I would say it’s not any one artist or figure or identity, but sort of a collective hivemind of support from friends. When it comes to artistry, I have people that influence my work and people that I idolize, and I find that so different from inspiration. My inspiration solely comes from a feeling as opposed to a tangible thing. It’s not something you can see or hear but more of a mood. It’s the energy that I see in my friends, my own personal growth and how much I’ve come from in the United States, and not liking what I’m doing and getting a one way ticket here. I feel inspired by my own past failure and how I’ve evolved on that and changed as a person and how the queer community around me constantly inspires me to be a better person and a better artist.
Do you think there’s anything that could be done in the music community to reduce barriers?
As much inclusivity as we see in our own community, in the mainstream I'd like to see more line-ups with more finances for marginalized groups. It’s easy to play for your friends, but what’s breaking down boundaries is not just queer people playing for queer people, but the Turkish community playing with queer people, and straight men with trans people. We need to break down barriers by also permitting ourselves to mingle with oppressors. Their language isn’t the most educated and sometimes they don’t know how to approach situations, but that’s due to socialisation. If you can talk to these people on a human level and somehow collaborate with them, then in the end it’s going to make for more diversity and more inclusivity. In the end, it’s just breaking down barriers. People on the left don’t want to work with right ideologists, but in the end people never understand unless people start talking or working in combinations that are outside of the norm.
Interview conducted by Agathe Blume. Edited by Siobhan McKay. Art and image design by Liam Li.
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