"I feel like people get their lives stolen from them by capitalism and consumerism."
"Experimental music artist… well I suppose it means that I'm inspired by people who take risks. Singing in all kinds of strange places like in nature or in different industrial spaces, maybe creating songs that go for an hour… basically I'm up for stuff."
Alice Night is very much a niche artist. She plays with "pop and grunge and dirty electronic sounds and beautiful simple guitar-folk-voice combinations" and intertwines them with dance, theatre, design, poetry, visual art and play "with a message". It's cool, it's innovative, and she's worried it won't fit in. "If I'm honest," she giggles shyly, "I don't really feel as if I am in the industry. I haven't really entered it yet. At this point I don't think I've found a place for myself."
"If I had bigger breasts I'd have more fans, more people would come to my shows. But at the same time that's something that I really resist."
The plan for her performance of Culture How Could You? takes all of these elements and pops them on the moon: "A small group of people on earth decided to leave the earth and go to the moon to set up another way of living, because things weren't really working out on the earth. My character's approach is that we shouldn't forget everything about earth and the aspects of our humanity that are positive," Night explains of the concept.
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There are so many elements to get your head around, and even Night spends a while explaining her thought processes and purpose, taking a minute to work out what world issues move her as an artist: "What really gets me is the hierarchy that humanity have created, meaning that depending on the luck of the draw — where you're born or what family you're in — you either have opportunities or don't. I feel like this culture that we've created is very much driven by greed and self gain. I feel like people get their lives stolen from them by capitalism and consumerism."
She shares her philosophies concerning humanity's loss of innocence, hatred from a lack of love and laying in your death bed, and it's clear that she is a deep thinker who doesn't get much of an opportunity to share her views — one of the reasons her music is so important to her. As a female artist, she's hyper-aware of the constraints of her gender imposed not only by society, but by the music industry. "I sometimes have the thought 'well, I'm just not sexy enough to be a music artist', as a female. If I had bigger breasts I'd have more fans, more people would come to my shows. But at the same time that's something that I really resist."
She's quick to admit to remaining entrenched in the social constructs she's preaching against with her music. It's the paradox of her work. "I look at other female artists and, you know, I'm very aware of the particular kinds of beauty that are privileged in the media, but what I feel about that is that they are silencing techniques used by the media and the culture in general — not wanting diversity in the public arena.
"In some ways our broader culture would prefer it if artists didn't speak up about important issues and we did just create background music."
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