Courtesy knows Berlin can be transient, but that’s why the Berlin-based, Danish artist and DJ loves it.
“The transient nature of Berlin comes up in conversation a lot. I’ve heard the sentence ‘my friends always move away’ on repeat throughout the years I have lived here. [Especially because] the places we meet in – clubs or parties, or openings – have this elevated quality of transience,” Courtesy tells PAPER. “[But] that’s also what’s great about this city. Interesting people are always coming in and out of Berlin.”
That transience, and how it dovetails with friendship and creative collaboration, is the subject of Courtesy’s newest single, "My Dazed Friend" feat. Klō, the first from her upcoming album, intimate yell, which will be released October 24, on her record label, Against Interpretation. The song, which evokes the dreary joy of blossoming connection, centers around French singer/producer Klō’s vocals. Klō sings with a cool attitude over a bed of drums and synths that pulse to the rhythm of an early morning house party.
The video for “My Dazed Friend” was directed and edited by Courtesy and German-Italian photographer Laura Schaeffer. The footage toggles between a conversation between Courtesy and her creative confidantes and a hopping Berlin house party where Courtesy spins on the decks. Their conversation melds between audibility and silence, but the text of their dialogue is always visible in the video. This dichotomy — between the imagery of partying and the heady ideas expressed in their free-wheeling dialogue — pairs well with the song, which begs the body to move while imploring the listening mind to wander.
PAPER caught the nascent DJ and artist in the lead-up to her new release to chat about friendship, creativity and the reality of Berlin living.
"My Dazed Friend" feat. Klō explores the complexities of friendship in the context of creative collaboration and the general transience of life today. What inspired you to explore these themes in particular?
Living in a city like Berlin where the majority of my friends moved here from other countries and we don’t have our given families near (however intentional that may be for people), we’re all kind of trying to manage these relationships with each other. It’s not without difficulties to live in an environment where this is the intimate foundation of your life, which feels very fragile at times.
It’s a topic that I think about a lot, and talk to my friends about a lot. It's our life. Laura Schaeffer is the photographer I collaborated with on this music video and the video project going forward, and it's something we discussed a lot in the process of developing the video. It was also a big topic for Klō who I co-wrote the lyrics with. That part of the creative process was very intuitive for all of us.
At one point in the video, Clara Sartor reflects, "In Berlin, a lot of people that I have met through nightlife did not stay with me. Because the moment I met them was not quite reality.” How does friendship and connection differ in a creative, nightlife-driven city like Berlin?
The transient nature of Berlin comes up in conversation a lot. I’ve heard the sentence “my friends always move away” on repeat the years I have lived here. And these places we meet in – clubs or parties, or openings – have this elevated quality of transience. Australians spending three months here to escape their winter, the Swiss return to Zurich, etc. But especially within this constructed world of partying, which is not repetitive or predictable the way a normal day-to-day life would be, as Clara says, where it’s a fantasy setting.
This is also what’s great about this city. There's a reason I don’t live in Copenhagen anymore. Interesting people are always coming in and out of Berlin. I love that. I personally had a hard time living in environments where the primary friend groups have been established in high school or university, maybe because I dropped out of most schools I attended. But I always felt a bit like a guest in other people’s friend groups. I was moving around so much, and because I didn’t really fit into any of these groups for longer periods. Maybe it was because I was changing too much and a lot of people don’t like it when you change or develop within the structure of a friend group. It causes a lot of conflict.
The video is an overwhelming collage of footage from a house party and conversations with friends. What was the process like of shooting and putting this video together?
When the project started in my head quite some time ago, it was very much based on these Instagram stories by photographer Clara Sartor that I was watching, when she was in her so-called “party phase.” I was getting a glimpse into this world of these people that were ten years younger than me, living this beautiful after-party life in apartments in Berlin. Later me and Clara ended up working together, we have a bit of a long story, starting with us being confused for each other in a photo of Clara taken by Spyros Rennt.
I think the reason that Clara’s stories touched me so much was how much they reminded me of Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore - a very important video piece, relating to many things I am interested in. There’s something extremely sad and innocent about capturing youth party culture on video this way.
We started the video project earlier this year, after I had finished recording the album. I sat down with Clara Sartor and Laura Schaeffer and we started discussing how to explore the music I had made visually, sharing ideas about its themes and references.
This video is a party shot in my studio and we were interested in the aesthetics of a party, like pure aesthetics somehow, which for us are completely removed from any unfortunate commercial depiction you see mediated everywhere of Berlin party scenes. We basically shot this in one night at a party where I was DJing, Klō was DJing, Laura was filming and doing lights, Liz and Clara were filming each other, and we were all partying. And then it all came together afterwards with the decisions that Laura and I made in the editing process, which was informed by some early essays by Umberto Eco that I have been reading recently.
"My Dazed Friend" feat. Klō is the first single from your forthcoming album intimate yell. What can fans expect from this forthcoming project? How does it differ from your last full-length album, fra eufori.
It’s very different. fra eufori was a concept record where I did only covers, and this time I wrote all the music in collaboration with different singers, artists with writing practices, authors and musicians. intimate yell is much more eclectic genre-wise too, I wanted to try to make music that would kind of assimilate into my DJ sets as well as music that dips into the other genres that I’m interested in like ambient or experimental music.
Photography: Laura Schaeffer
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