Q&A-002: “SUBVERSION IS THE THREAD” - an interview with Alex Ratcharge (Ratcharge, rawpunkart, Psycho Disco, ‘Raccourci Vers Nulle Part’)
+++an interview with French punk writer and comic artist Alex Ratcharge
Alex Ratcharge is a French writer and illustrator who I’ve known of for several years in that strange ~DIY international underground~ network way. I can’t remember how I found his comics and illustrations, and I remember reading his writing in Maximum Rocknroll at some point, but know not when. That distance was broken when Alex translated the interview between Giacomo Stefanini and I (published here in late 2022) for publication in his French language zine, Ratcharge. Out of that, I spent some time looking through the Ratcharge oeuvre and found that he’d published a novel (Raccourci Vers Nulle Part / Shortcut to Nowhere - Tusitala Editions 2022), and immediately reached out to him to do this interview! While the novel and much of Alex’s writing is available only in French, I’m really hoping to see the book translated to English. As you can read from the below, Alex is a real one and his work is very much worth your time. C’est bon!
Max: I’m not sure when I found out about you and your work, but finally spending the time to look at all the things you do (albeit without being able to read French) has made me realise how closely our interests and values align. Giacomo (interviewed here) described you as another of his ‘international twins’ - it’s good that we’re becoming triplets! How did you come to be a part of French punk/DIY? I’m interested in when you had a sense of the international connections between scenes too.
Alex: I became part of French punk/DIY by publishing fanzines as a teen. They were my way of corresponding with people, and eventually meeting them. It was the late 1990’s and the internet wasn’t even a thing for most people, including myself. In retrospect, I’m glad I got to experience this pre-Internet world and, for that matter, this pre-Internet punk. It feels nice, maybe even important, being able to compare.
At first I was isolated in some dull suburb, then I discovered the punk/autonomous/squat scene in Paris and it was love at first sight—I knew I had found what I’d been looking for. Over the years I’ve written a lot about this period and about the squat scene. Today I still greatly value this kind of Temporary (or Permanent, for that matter) Autonomous Zones. These can be squats, bars, infoshops, as long as they allow one to experience another way of living.
The sense of international connection came early on. Bands from all over where playing these squats—Australia, the US, South America, Asia, anywhere in Europe, etc. Actually, I think I started reading Maximum Rock’n’roll a bit before discovering the squat scene. By reading it, I knew this internationally-connected, radical punk scene existed. I just needed to find it.
I’ve never met Giacomo yet, but I’m familiar with his reviews, his bands, the Sentiero Futuro ones, etc. From what I understand he and I are both translators, too? I’m also drawn to the kind of bands you’re writing about, Country Teasers or No Trend type stuff, so I can see what you mean. How would you describe our similarities, though? The terms «weird punk» or «fringe punk» come to mind, and it seems there aren’t many of us writing about whatever we write about.
I’m not sure exactly how our similar interests overlap, but I feel like the fringes of the fringes must be close. We seem to be drawn to bands who are in a second or third wave of reaction to something we also love. ‘Anti-punk’ punk bands interested in subverting the subversive? Does that make sense on paper?
Have you heard the song “Enfonce-toi dans la ville” by Noir Boy George? It’s about finding what you’re looking for on the outskirts of the city, under a bridge, in an abandoned building, you name it. And whatever that thing is – some noise gig, some fanzine with a printrun of thirteen, an uncanny love or friendship, a bunch of homeless folks drinking cheap wine, etc. —it both feels beautiful and dangerous, and you can’t help being attracted to it. “It’s worst than mermaids”, says Noir Boy George, in reference to these songs sirens sing to lure in sailors before drowning/ killing them.
Terms like “the fringes of the fringes”, “anti-punk” or “subverting the subversive”, make this song come to my mind. “And at the end of this dark street there will be / An even darker street”. Well, part of me has always been, and will probably always be, searching for this “even darker street”. It might be curiosity. It might be some kind of unresolved death wish. It might have to do with the yin-yang, knowing there’s always a bit of light in the darkness, and wanting to find out what this or that specific light looks like from really, really close.
Anyway, I’ve been attracted to the margins, to what’s hidden, to alterity, to otherness, for most of my life. I’ve always wanted to experience what it felt like being someone else, or even something else. Gifted or cursed with such a mindset, there was no way I was gonna find, say, Crass or Discharge or Poison Idea, and think the search was over. You know what I mean? Part of me is always looking for the No Trends, for the Country Teasers of the world. If it sounds weird, if it sounds confrontational, if it sounds like it’s got something to say I haven’t heard before, count me in.
I was interested to see you identify the influence of sixties counterculture on punk in what I can read of some of your writing. Seeing you link hippies like The Fugs to proto-punks like electric eels is really thrilling, and something I really obsessed over in writing the Barely Human pod. What do you think is the thread that connects all of these bands to what you do? It’s something I’ve tried and failed to place personally, but I’m interested in how you locate that thread.
I’d say subversion is the thread. Have you read Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus? When people ask me what kind of continuum I see between hippies and punks, I usually end up recommending it. It’s subtitled “A Secret History of the Twentieth Century”, but I’m assuming that’s just because Marcus needed a timeframe. What I mean is that this “secret history” goes back forever. We’ve always been here. The need to subvert has always existed. Social outcasts, freaks, outsiders, troublemakers, revolutionaries have always existed—look at Diogenes the Cynic. During a tiny period of time, the media, and subsequently the people, called us “hippies” ; during another, they called us “punks”. Personally, I like the word “punk”. It sounds like an onomatopoeia: bang, boom, splash, punk! So I keep using it. But at this point I can’t say that I care what word is being used.
I haven’t read Lipstick Traces, that might be my missing link… The closest I’ve seen along those lines was Senseless Acts of Beauty by George McKay which linked the British hippies (new age travellers and free festivals), to Crass and anarcho-punk all the way through to nineties rave. That’s a really good text for what you’re saying about subversive figures being intertwined through time (by whatever identifier they pick up along the way.) I enjoy it when these seemingly mismatched threads get all tied up in people’s work. It’s comforting in some way. You’ve seen this too in the link between hippies and punks via the proto-punks?
The Fugs, the electric eels, the Velvet Underground, the writing of Lester Bangs, were some of my first clues that punk didn’t start out of nowhere in 1977 London or 1976 New York. That was years before reading Lipstick Traces, but let’s just say this book felt like an acknowledgment this intuition deserved to be explored. Since then, I’ve had an interest in time periods where supposedly “nothing happened” in terms of cultural subversion. Take 1970-1975, for instance: if one believes the dominant story, the hippie died in 1969 with Manson, Altamont, etc., then nothing happened, then five or six years later the punk was born. This is bullshit, reality doesn’t work like that. So just because the media and critics were busy trying to sell us something else doesn’t mean freaks and revolutionaries had vanished in 1970-1975. They still were everywhere, talking, reading, thinking, drinking, getting high, writing, stealing, fucking, and yes, playing music. I love learning about people who were hippies then punks. Tim Yohannan, founder of Maximum Rock’n’roll, is an example.
During the Yellow Vests movement, some French writer commented that “politics is the new rock’n’roll.” During the initial so-called “punk years,” one could have written “rock’n’roll is the new politics”. It’s all about cycles. In 2022 I went to a lecture by Spanish author Servando Rocha on his essay La facción caníbal : Historia del vandalimos ilustrado. It’s a history of terror and the way it fascinates us. One of Rocha’s main influences for it is Lipstick Traces. At some point, someone asked him about the Situationists, the Surrealists, the Dadaists, etc. “Where are they nowadays?” the person asked. “I mean, do you think there are still people like that in today’s world?” Rocha gave it some thought, then replied “Of course they’re still here. You just have to know where to look.” This spoke to me.
I think I can see that in your visual art. You’re probably best known for your illustrations (which are like a punk Daniel Clowes to me) or your curating of the rawpunkart instagram page. Your art and curation both feel like a form of world-building: a seedy, transgressive, underground world maybe, but one that is very alive! What motivated you to start illustrating your own work on the one hand, and for rawpunkart, how do you set your boundaries around what passes and what doesn’t?
I started doodling as a kid – first as a way to kill time at home, then as a way to kill time in school. My first fanzine was a comic I sold in high school in the 1990s.
Unlike writing, I never took drawing too seriously. It’s always just been a nice, quiet, fun way to spend time. But when I moved to Lyon back in 2007, my friend Jub asked me to draw a poster for a Mika Miko show: « I’d like something raw, like these 80’s posters for skatepunk bands like the Big Boys, JFA, etc”. I did it, then spraypainted each copy neon green. After that, some friends started asking me to do other gig posters from time to time, so I gained a bit of confidence and sort of “developed my own style”. Since then I’ve drawn for a few international fanzines, graphzines, gigs, bands. I’m always trying to get a bit better, but it still doesn’t feel that serious.
For the Raw Punk Art feed, I just have to take a look at a drawing to know if it belongs. I try not to overthink it. It just has to be hand drawn and even loosely “punk related”. My favourite kind of drawings, the ones that made me start this feed, are the ones where I can feel a mix of confidence and disregard for conventions, like some kind of “punk art brut”. I love it when it’s obvious the person had fun doing it, and didn’t care about reception. For reference, see the cover of Out With A Bang first 7’’, “I’m against it”.
Your last MRR column had a brief discussion around something that I’ve been thinking a lot about… you said that it’s: “getting harder to find people willing to do things for free in punk,” and that this is a, “newish phenomenon.” I’ve also seen and felt this over the past few years and I’m interested in your thoughts on it. Punk and this world of subcultural activity has always felt like a true third place to me, one where (even if you have to acknowledge that money is real in order to make and move records and tapes) there’s a different economy at play. I guess I’m overly sensitive to when parts of this world get treated like a commodity!
I’d say it’s fine if money is one of the consequences of what one creates, but I’m more suspicious when it’s the main drive. Not that I blame the younger generations for, maybe, being less eager to do things for free. In France (and, I can only assume, other Western countries), nowadays it’s harder to avoid work than it was in the previous decades. Especially, from what I understand, in the 1970s to 1990s and even 2000s. It’s harder to be on the dole, harder to squat, food and electricity and rent and basically everything is way more expensive, etc. But doing things “for free”—and by that I’m talking about projects where no one aims to get paid, not some “voluntary work” where the money goes into someone else’s pocket—is challenging the status quo in itself, right?
But more than money itself, what needs to be challenged might be what Mark Fisher called “the banal ubiquity of corporate communication today, its penetration into practically all areas of consciousness and everyday life.” Doing (some) things out of passion rather than for profit could be one of the ways to challenge this.
I think so yeah, and maybe I’m holding onto a bit of a pipedream where the motivation is the work itself, or building towards the bigger picture. On a personal level, when someone asks for a guarantee to play a show, or turns down something because it doesn’t pay enough (or might lose money)…it breaks the spell. It makes me feel like all of this is the same old shit I deal with in my work day. Like your Fisher quote, even the mere mentioning of money breaks the spell for me, and reminds me that yes, ‘DIY punk’ has obviously been long commodified.
I don’t wanna live in a world where money’s the only motivation left. Sounds like a nightmare. So I try to do my part, and there’s rarely a week where I don’t donate some of my time, whether it’s to run our local infoshop, to help some punk or to draw for this or that. But I’m also aware one has to eat, drink, pay rent, learn, have fun, and that in a capitalist society, all these things cost money. So I try to find ways to take both these realities into account. Maybe I can make money with some of my writing or translating skills in some cases, and gladly give them away in some others. Maybe a band can make money playing a big festival, and once they’re there, play another, smaller, DIY or benefit type gig for free. Maybe a publisher can release a commercial book that sells tons of copies, which in turn gives him or her the power to release ten non-commercial books where the motivation strictly is the work itself. Again, I think people should read your interview with Giacomo Stefanini of Sentiero Futuro, etc. I love it when he mentions Macao, the DIY space that made money with the Milano Fashion Week, then donated it all “to the HDP, the pro-Kurdish antifascist movement that was fighting the repression of the Turkish government at the time”. It’s a great story.
Despite not being able to read in French, what you write about feels very close to what I read, write and think about. Your recent contribution titled ‘Acidcommunisme/punk’ for the Audimat journal (published alongside the great McKenzie Wark no less!) sounds like it speaks to the above in a really optimistic yet grounded way. The translated blurb says that in starting from Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, you discuss the world of punk as a ‘parallel society,’ which is something I feel really strongly about building towards with every project I’m involved in. Can you tell us more about the piece and how you came to think about punk in this way?
Mark Fisher’s Capitalism Realism was an important read for me, as it made a good case for the link between culture and ideology. I read almost everything he wrote, but what had the most impact was Acid Communism, the unfinished essay he was working on before he killed himself :
“The concept of acid communism (…) points to something that, at one point, seemed inevitable, but which now appears impossible: the convergence of class consciousness, socialist-feminist consciousness-raising and psychedelic consciousness, the fusion of new social movements with a communist project, an unprecedented aestheticisation of everyday life.”
He then added that “Acid communism both refers to actual historical developments and to a virtual confluence that has not yet come together in actuality”, and that “the material conditions for such a revolution are more in place in the twenty-first century than they were in 1977.” It’s hard to sum up, and I can’t even say for sure I understood what he was getting at, but it got me thinking yet again about the links between 1960s counterculture and radical punk. Then, a little while later, I read Steal this book by Abbie Hoffman, which my publisher Tusitala had translated. To quote Wikipedia, “This book is, in the style of the counterculture, mainly focused on ways to fight against the government and against corporations in any way possible. It is written in the form of a guide to the youth. Hoffman used many of his own activities as the inspiration for some of his advice in Steal this book.”
The piece for Audimat is the result of reading both these books. On the one hand, Fisher theorises; on the other, Hoffman demonstrates. I felt like both were two sides of the same coin, and since Fisher seemed to think a resurgence of (some elements of) the 1960s counterculture could inform a contemporary revolution, I wrote this article to try and explain the ways in which, in my mind, the current radical punk scene was one of the offsprings of said counterculture. So the essay starts with my reading of both books, then goes on to cover my experience of French and international radical punk in the past two decades, and more precisely, what still feels subversive about it : not the music or the aesthetic, but the squats, the unlawfulness, the decentralised networks, the temporary autonomous zones, the solidarity, the communication, the friendships, the empowerment, etc. Since the readership of Audimat isn’t punks, but music enthusiasts in general, I wanted to share these experiences hoping other music scenes could be inspired by them.
It’s nice to hear you mention the idea of sharing your experiences with different scenes or subcultures. Maybe that’s a part of why I’ve become so interested in your work: your interest and ability to cross fields from music to art to writing. The main reason I reached out to you in the first place was because of your novel, Raccourci Vers Nulle Part / Shortcut to Nowhere (Tusitala Editions, 2022). I haven’t known of many people through ‘punk world’ to be writing longform fiction, so I was excited to hear about your book (and am trying to find a way to get it translated and published in English purely so I can read it!) The book is about a character living within a world of Parisian punk, moving between factory work, fanzine writing and playing in a punk band. This is really interesting to me for obvious reasons, but also because it’s something I try to do in my writing too. How did you come to writing fiction about punk, and how has the process of trying to communicate that through a publishing house been?
When I started writing long-form fiction, my first rule was to write about anything but punk. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, and I was entertaining the wrong idea that punk wasn’t a viable subject for a novel.
So, before Raccourci vers nulle part, I wrote two novels which I finished but weren’t nearly good enough. One of them covered things like violent online cartoons, psychedelic drugs and weird cults like The Church of Euthanasia. It took me years to write these, and I was depressed they were so bad – I was kinda considering giving up when, one day, I read the novel We want everything by Italian author Nani Balestrini. For some reason this book, a first-person narrative about the massive autonomous strikes in 1969 Italy, gave me the confidence to start another novel inspired by my own experiences in squats, factories, call centres, psychiatric hospitals and the punk scene as a confused teen in the early 2000s.
So Raccourci vers nulle part ended up being a coming of age novel in which characters listen to the Shitlickers and The Velvet Underground, but one doesn’t need to be familiar with punk to appreciate it. That was one of my goals : to give an accurate picture of the punk/ underground/ radical French music scene, which is often misrepresented, and to make it accessible to anyone. And from what I can tell, it worked, as quite a few readers who don’t know the first thing about punk told me they loved it. Probably because in this novel, punk is the background for a story dealing with subject matters most people can relate with: love, lies, identity, addiction, friendship, family, work, mental health, etc.
Finding the publisher was easy enough. At some point, I was like 80% into my second draft, and I got depressed again (partly by the subject matters, partly by other things) and wanted to give up. That’s when my partner Juliette Salique, who works in independent comic book publishing, told me to send my unfinished draft to Carmela Chergui, a friend of hers who runs Tusitala. Her and her co-publisher Mikaël Demets told me they wanted the book, which gave me the kick I needed to finish it.
I’m really glad all that happened and the book exists in the world. It’s also incredible uncanny to read all the above because, We Want Everything is a huge influence on my novels too for the same reasons. It feels anti-literary in a way, that it’s a precise snapshot of a time that lives on as a document that we can tap into today. It sounds a lot like Raccourci vers nulle part has the capacity to have a similar use, and it was in the back of my mind when I wrote The Magpie Wing, that it could be an introduction or entry point to these kinds of worlds. It’s bonkers to me that we’ve both written novels inspired in part by the same book from 1971!
It does feel crazy that We want everything was such an influence on your book as well. What were the odds ? These days when I go to demonstrations I even carry a sign with the title of said book. There’s a saying in French, “Les grands esprits se rencontrent”. It roughly means “Great minds think alike”, and we often use it ironically, but it ain’t easy conveying irony in a foreign language.
I have to ask, how did you come across this book ? In my case, if I remember correctly, it was because the publisher of its French translation, Entremonde, also was the publisher of Capitalism Realism by Mark Fisher. Anyway, if you love We want everything, I strongly, strongly recommend Never Work: The Autobiography of Salvatore Messana, by Gianni Giovannelli (it’s a pseudonym, the book was published anonymously in the early 1980’s). Rarely have I laughed so hard reading.
To be honest, I found out about We Want Everything in 2020, by typing ‘Italy’ into the Verso Books catalogue (haha, I wish I was joking.) I’d been trying again to learn Italian, and I wanted to build upon that by reading up on some radical Italian history and translated literature, and feel very lucky that was the first part of my reading list. My grandparents emigrated from Napoli in the fifties, so a lot of it was about trying to understand my heritage in a way. But We Want Everything opened up a whole different way of thinking for me, to get that picture of Italian workerism, traditions of strike and protest, antagonism and what led to autonomia. It brought home a lot of the things I believe in, and I think has shaped my writing and thinking. It’s very cool to hear that you’ve had that experience with Balestrini too (I’m really looking forward to tracking down a copy of that Giovannelli book, I’ve never heard of it!)
Haha, I kinda wished you’d say it was Giacomo who told you about the book, but typing “Italy” in some online catalogue might be the next best thing. I wonder what Balestrini would think about being an influence on some 2023 punks from Australia and France. This is very much a Lipstick Traces kind of situation, with dissident voices travelling through space and time in unpredictable ways.
To be very embarrassingly ‘I saw this in the news,’ but the protests against pension reform in France have created enough of a stir for many of us outside of Europe to take an interest in, but I’m really curious about your perspective on this. What is the French punk or anarchist feeling around the protests? It’s promising from afar to see that level of comradeship between trade unions and the broader working class, but how does it feel on the ground?
As you may know, protesting and rioting are more common in France than in other western countries, and in 2018-2019, the Gilets Jaune (“Yellow Vests”) gave hope to a lot of revolutionaries, including punks and anarchists. But then there was the Covid years, and this movement against pension reform is the first massive one since the Gilets Jaune. So the first thing I wanna say is that it feels good to see everyone back in the streets.
The second thing, which is kind of obvious in France, but may or may not be from afar, is that people are protesting against far more than this reform. I mean, sure, the reform is the spark that ignited the fire, but make no mistake: these protests are against our current government, with Macron being to France what Thatcher was to the UK in the ‘80s. Reform after reform, he’s destroying this country. He’s also particularly arrogant, even for a politician, and was only elected because voters were scared of the National Front. Even more generally, these protests feel like they are against neoliberalism, its inherent inequalities, and the ultra-rich bourgeoisie who benefits from it while destroying the Earth. You’d be hard pressed to find a punk or an anarchist who doesn’t support them, as 70% of French people do.
Have you heard about the recent battle of Sainte-Soline? Not sure how it was covered in international news, but it probably was, since even Naomi Klein tweeted about it. Basically, 30,000 people went to the French countryside to protest against a large water reservoir that’s privatising water in a time when France is facing droughts because of climate change. Well, the government sent thousands of riot cops plus helicopters, squads riding quad bikes, war weapons and what have you, and the videos that were shot that day look like war scenes, with hundreds of protesters injured and two still in critical conditions. It happened at the same time as the current protests against the pension reform, and in the following weeks, by the banners, placards and slogans shouted in the streets, it was obvious that people were protesting against this repression as well.
Thanks for that context! I’ve missed lots of the detail around this, and like talking to Giacomo about Italy, it’s good to spread my anglocentric wings to add some Eurocentrism to the mix.
Thanks for your curiosity, Max. I had a good time replying, even if it feels a bit odd considering most of your readers won’t have access to 99.9% of my writing. Hopefully Raccourci vers nulle part will be translated someday…fingers crossed.
Let’s see if we can’t make it happen! To finish this interview, do you have any recommendations or inspirations for current music, art and writing in France? Are there groups or movements tying in sounds, graphics, thoughts that we should be thinking about?
For current French (1) writing, (2) comics and (3) music, I recommend (1) Barbara Stiegler, Joseph Andras, Nicolas Mathieu, Sandra Lucbert, (2) Anouk Ricard, Antoine Marchalot, Jean-Michel Bertoyas, Pierre la Police, (3) CIA Debutante, Litige, Zone Infinie, Scimmia, Noir Boy George, Zad Kokar, Mary Bell, Pogy & les Kéfars, Terrine, Droit Divin, Ectoplasm and Faucheuse.
+++other updates___
___thanks to Alex for the above interview! this substack will pivot to new interviews of this kind now, as i think i’ve expired the readable archives of music writing. hopefully a new one in a couple weeks, and so on and so forth.
___on the barely human front, all subscribers should have their zines & cassettes posted out to them by now, but hit me up if you haven’t received them! i’ll be slowly phasing out the first volume of BARELY HUMAN tapes (folk n country; david allan coe; cccp - fedeli alla linea; ron house; negativland) since i don’t think they’re up to scratch… the last three (T-SHIRT PUNK (Dead Moon/Wipers); PHILISTINISM (Flipper/No Trend/The Crucifucks/Urinals); NO IDOLS (The Fall/Dead Kennedys) I’ll keep making though, and there’ll be two more in the 2023 subscription bundle (go paid below to sort it out). Email me if you want any of these, and thanks to those who keep eating these up :)