Colin Self: Apocalypse now?

Artist, composer, choreographer and producer Colin Self is apologising. “I haven’t had an interview in a while,” he says. “I feel like everything I’m saying sounds super intense.”

But everything is super intense at the moment. The news is full of flooding, wildfire and threats of nuclear war. Colin has been struggling. “I’ve had a very hard time in the last year finishing this record and performing,” he says, “because I’m questioning any way to measure progress, hope or change.”

The record he’s referring to is the sixth and last chapter of his sprawling and ambitious opera, Elation, which so far it has included a liturgy, represented an allegorical journey towards enlightenment, and a set of sculptures. The 2015 album that accompanies it is breath-taking. Layers of voices, mimicking choirs, ring out, disjointed bells duck and weave around majestic thuds of bass, and bursts of sparkling synths tremble. He’ll be performing some of it at COIL 2 – the second edition of a collaboration between label Howling Owl, and queer platform Thorny, both Bristol productions.

So why is he putting an end to this long-term operatic project now? “This project started in 2012, when there was a lot of hype around the Mayan apocalypse,” explains Colin. “And now we’re in another wave of apocalyptic thinking – we have to face up to a lot more death and dying than we did maybe, five, six years ago. I think a big misunderstanding is that the apocalypse is quick, but it’s actually a really long process. There’s a Donna Haraway quote that goes, ‘the apocalypse is not a thriller – ask any refugee of any species.’ That’s the underlying current of all of this – that the terms on which we talk about this have to be long-term. Humans are going to be around for a while, so we have to contend with the fact we’re not going anywhere any time soon.”

As a result, Colin has found it difficult to draw a line under Elation, and has been adjusting it based on his gauge of the world’s social barometer. Some of the material he will perform at COIL will be improvisatory. “In general this material is schizophrenic – it falls within a really diverse emotional timbre,” he says. “I think that’s because the emotions of this moment are so diverse and complex. The trouble of trying to create something amongst the collapses we are seeing is definitely very emotional for me.”

And even though his work represents hope for so many, Colin has a difficult time with acknowledging change. “It would be super egotistical of me to think that I have the ability to create change with my art,” he reflects, “but at the same time, I’m at this point in my life where I can recognise these small increments of change that I am capable of. I feel that also, within all of that, that I have to ‘do the thing,’ and do things with other people. Experiencing the collectivity of those moments can be the solution. Even getting people to experience emotions – getting people to let themselves cry, or let themselves dance, or have an emotional experience is something I appreciate right now.”

Colin Self will appear at COIL 2 at Brunswick House, alongside Imma Asher and Elysia Crampton on Saturday, October 28. Find out more over at www.wearethorny.com, or check out the Facebook event over at www.facebook.com/events/338211209925137/