I stroll in and Julia Casablancas is baring her total soul for a virtually empty room of three folks. The house seems like a haunted classroom, the partitions stacked with ladders, containers filled with video cables and movie frames, folded-up cardboard, a clock with the improper time. Wires and circuitry snake round and droop from the ceiling like they’re reaching out to tickle you; a cage redolent of an elaborate torture instrument wobbles within the air. And in the course of the room is Julia, not the Strokes frontman, howling into the mic as her rainbow necklace and furry tail flap in opposition to a inexperienced bikini prime and skirt. The music’s someplace between experimental rave-pop and weak exorcism, delicate odes that mutate into thwomping digital drops. The visuals push it to next-level nutty, with a projector that engulfs Julia in flames and clips from festivals of large crowds. Julia finishes the set main “FUCK ICE!” and “FREE PALESTINE!” chants, then collapses on the bottom. By the tip, the room was packed.
This was my intro to Swaggotfest, the anarcho-pride parody of a music competition that went for 12 hours nonstop from 7 p.m. on Friday to 7 the following morning. It was held at NYC Resistor, a shared house run by a hacker collective in Boerum Hill. Just some blocks from Barclays Heart, a few of the greatest and worst dressed folks in New York had been jumpstyle-dancing all evening to a molten gumbo of rave music and pop edits.
I’d by no means been to NYC Resistor earlier than, and I couldn’t inform what was naturally within the house versus the present decorations. The staircase up was affected by DERP faces like Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs. Inside, the principle cling space was maximal to the maddest. Paper lanterns and cotton clouds radiated from the rafters; the partitions had been festooned with bionic followers, gridded avenue networks, stitching supplies, lightsabers. There have been drinks on the market—purple and blue Jell-O pictures, Sapporo—together with a row of distributors: trans literature zines, shiny tchotchkes, a tattoo artist. A fridge glimmered with magnets in assist of a slew of causes: Information privateness, ACAB, queer youth, mask-wearing, intercourse work, library funding. A large TV display interspersed clips of the beloved monster DOMO with an Affect font greeting: “YOU ARE NOW AT SWAGGOTFEST.”
I first noticed the time period “swaggot” earlier this yr on TikTok, by way of semi-ironic movies about “performative twinkism” and Lil B acolyte Captain Swag, whose music “Swaggot” (“I’m going loopy for the swag/I’m a swaggot”) infested my feed. An analogous factor occurred for Julia, who co-created Swaggotfest with Jock, a VJ often known as nonbinaryjakepaul. “I began seeing swaggot memes a couple of months in the past, prefer it entered my algorithm—or what, my mind—and I began calling my buddies swaggots,” Julia instructed me. The concept of a competition appeared in her thoughts like a imaginative and prescient. She began posting parody flyers of lineups that featured Frank Ocean, Nettspend, Lana Del Rey, but in addition her and DIY scene buddies. “Individuals couldn’t inform if it was a meme or if it was actual,” she mentioned. It began as a joke, till they really determined to do it, spending months wrangling every part collectively. “When you’re there it’s like oh shit, that is truly a really legit occasion.”
