Part of your trade craft is dealing with the press, TV, radio, etc. Of course as unkultur referenced, being coy with the media can be part of that strategy. Its worked for many people, but when you do talk to them, you better be good.

Going back to the unwritten rule bit, the trap here is you can never break character when you are under the spotlight and in these days of paparazzi, the internet, gossip rags/sites, etc., the spotlight is always on. Some folks handle that very well, some (myself included) do not. I’m far happier to toil in obscurity than to have to pay the ante of joining that game.

But yes, you end up in a hall of mirrors whatever you do – DJ Jackal (and Karen Eliot) become overly associated with particular individuals… perhaps there is no way out but it is still worth exploring the boundaries and trying to punch the odd hole in the wall.

I really like the idea of *not* putting dj names on flyers tho (but then whatever you name the party becomes the “brand” like a record label…)

I think, as you imply, creating/producing anything has the potential to feed into “celebrity” culture but doing things in a rougly collective/anonymous fashion is the best tool we have yet to subvert that.

So here’s the thing, I don’t think “artist” is the right word at all for 99.999% of musicians, performers, producers, DJs, etc. It sets up an implication that is impossible to satisfy, creates a false idol. Its a job, plain an simple and usually a shitty one at that. Most of us inside and around try to pretend that we are the golden calf when in fact its just a spray paint job on a plaster lump. Its a job. All that romantic notion of the tortured soul? Mostly bullshit we wrap ourselves in to play the game.

The men at the factory are old and cunning and all that. Do your job, play some tunes, make some records, but if you dont want your 15 minutes, just don’t play.

Everybody speculates about the identity of Burial (or Banksy) which boosts the hype around the artist. This is not a critique of the bourgeois concept of the artist, but the system of the star in it´s purest form: you have a) the specific artist name with b) artworks related to this name and c) one person as a genius behind it. In the cases of Burial and Banksy anonymity is a clever marketing idea: you have the just mentioned criterias of the artist PLUS an extra which makes the product additionaly attractive: the speculation about the “real person” behind the name which creates a huge media attention.

(Note: I´m talking about mechanisms of capitalist production of art here. I don´t believe in blaming certain individuals for their actions when it comes to “sell out”. )

The other way round: The anonymisation IS A business strategy to sell certain goods labeled as “subversive”. You brand your products as underground, non-mainstream by connecting certain attitudes with them. It would be different if you would not use artist names any more: why would you need them, when you can put out your stuff anonymously (which Praxis records does on some upcoming releases, by the way)? You could also produce music under the names of a collective so the music can´t be related to one individual person. Or use the above mentioned neoist collective names. Why use a label name, which is also a form of capitalist branding of products? Why putting even DJ names on party flyers (by the way: who produces the rave as a social event: the audience of the musician) ? And least: why produce art at all? Every artwork aimes to an audience and follows the specific rules of capitalist production, either to aim to accumulate economic capital or symbolic capital (according to Pierre Bourdieu), which is the currency of scenes and subcultures. I believe there are strategies of posing critique on the capitalist forms of art production but there is no way out yet.