Anarchism in thought and action ideally go hand in hand, and it is only natural for people who have a borderless mind to have it reflected in their art as well. Non Serviam from Paris is a great example of anarchist way of life and music, merging seamlessly many musical styles of depth and energy into a churning storm of rebirth. I had a pleasure to ask a few questions from a representative of the collective.
Bonjour! How are things today in Paris?
Shitty as always. There are cops and cameras everywhere, the state still hunts down undocumented immigrants and other undesirables, workerism reigns, capitalism still kills slowly and the prison of La Santé is still erected a few kilometers from the industrial phallus of the Eiffel Tower. Covid continues to increase inequalities while the extreme right continues to establish its diktat on general politics. I can't wait for this dull black-and-white life to burn down and for the rats, which by the thousands gnaw on the garbage cans of the rich and the drug addicts, to take over the city like a nihilistic kaiju.
The Paris Commune of 1871 is one of the great examples of so called anarchism in action, but - such as is the case with another great European city with an anarchist history, Barcelona - are ripples of it still visible in the daily life of Parisians today?
For those who want to go sightseeing, there are some crowded and museified places that can be visited in connection with the history of the Paris Commune, a bit like in Barcelona. The historiography always belongs to the victors, in this case the capitalist democracies, for whom these places are symbols of their crushing victories. But this is not the case for us anarchists. The Paris Commune was repressed in the blood of the insurgents, the anarchist aspirations (and many of those who carried them outside the classic organizations like CNT-FAI) were crushed by the republicans, democrats and Bolsheviks in the Spanish war. Who still remembers Francesc Sabaté? Illegalist anarchist abandoned by the CNT bureaucrats (then busy getting places in the ministries of the democratic recomposition of power) after having given so much for its financing.
Anarchism is a bit like music: you have to go further than the watered-down mainstream version manufactured by guardians of the bourgeois temple to satisfy soft reformist fantasies.
It would be a real shame if all that remained of these events were vulgar gravestones put up by historians and servants of power, even when they are the heirs of the non-revolutionary "antifascism" that triumphed there as well as here. A lot has happened in Paris since 1871, and the traces of struggles, explosions, and insurrections are accessible in many parts of the city to discerning eyes that are not content with mainstream and academic historical accounts.
You merge many musical genres such as industrial, grindcore, neoclassical and many electronic styles very nicely together, but it is the extreme metal underground which seems to be the target audience for your art? Is this accidental or deliberate?
We really don't think in terms of "target audience", we make music with what we are, what we listen to, what we like, what we are looking for. Of course, we are happy if the extreme metal underground appreciates what we do, it is certain that we pursue the research of a music which would make audible the violence of the world which crosses us, the force of destruction but also the melancholy which it contains, and of course extreme metal is an important horizon of reference. But this research was not born with our time, and we also find inspiration in apparently very distant styles, like baroque music, which also offers possibilities to express these extreme affects.
We don't collect styles like philatelists and our goal is not really to update certain superficial aspects of a genre or to use an incongruous instrument that does nothing more than represent its time, as a curiosity, as in what is commonly called neo-classical for example, which unfortunately often only demonstrates a kind of present-day omnipotence over the past (our harpsichord is not a gadget). It is rather a question of meeting musical aspirations through time, and of making them our own. Then perhaps this melancholic violence that baroque and extreme metal can have in common unfolds, at the risk of offending the purists of both styles... and of losing any possibility of targeting a particular audience!
Your art is also extremely captivating and thoughtful visually. What are the main topics or feelings you want to evoke with the visual side of the band?
The visual aspect of our albums is very important to us. We make the artworks at the same time as the music, as another way of expressing the same things, or to enter in resonance with what was built musically. For example, for Le Cœur Bat, the vanitas of the past that we used imposed themselves on us as a representation of what remains of the heart that no longer beats, and that still wants to dominate. They are relics reconstructed in the Renaissance and dressed with jewels, exhibited to reconquer the territories where Protestantism, then heretical, was growing too dangerously for the papacy. These ornate skeletons staged for religious propaganda purposes seem, seen from today, to show the decay and vanity of an already dead power seeking to reign over life, over the hearts that, desperately, still beat.
As there is a strong atmosphere of history and past epochs in your art, what are your personal favourites of the cultural periods of the western world (or globally for that matter)?
This is the kind of question that could take us into whole nights of discussions. So to sum it up a bit roughly, I am passionate about history and if I had a lot of interest in the so-called "modern" era, the baroque, the renaissance, the judicial and religious persecutions of the inquisition, etc. it would be more accurate to say that what interests us the most through all the eras, even those of which we conserve almost nothing in order to be able to prove it: it's the revolt and the subversion, whether they are individual or collective. You can find it everywhere in the history of humanity, we know some events of these last decades because we lived them, others because the generations before us told us about them (1968, the autonomy in Italy, in France, in Spain, the armed struggle, the Greek, Italian, French, American, Chilean, Mexican anarchist movements, etc.), the struggles and the mutinies of prisoners, the revolts of the French suburbs, against nuclear power, etc. The list could go on and on!
Baroque music interests us a lot too, and it is not a music that you can undertake like you undertake to play rock or rap. You have to be a bit of a historian, if only to understand how the instruments used in it sound, like the harpsichord, the spinet or the oboe, to name a few instruments used in Non Serviam, but also others like the baroque guitar, theorbo, etc. The person who plays the keyboard parts in Non Serviam is a harpsichordist by formation, and she is passionate about these questions, which are also asked in Non Serviam, trying to do so from a different perspective than that of the dusty specialists.
Your collective is elusive, but are we talking about a handful of people or do the releases contain a large amount of musicians from different musical backgrounds? How important is this anonymousness to you, is it to protect the identitites or to act as a statement of equality?
It is above all because we consider that our names or our identities are not interesting that we remain anonymous. It is not a question of wanting to arouse or maintain a curiosity (inevitably disappointing) by transforming into mystery what remains for us of the order of the anecdote. The group started as a one-man band, then transformed itself over the years with encounters between very different musical worlds. It remains open to all kinds of collaborations, and the complexity of the making of the songs makes it impossible to determine from the outside who contributes how to what, and then really, it seems to us that it is the musical result that matters, and we would like to remain as much as possible out of the questions of authors' credits which are ways of mediating and domesticating art particularly too developed in our time.
You have been active since 2014, and have established a clear presence in the antifascist musica communities. How do you see the progression of the project throughout the years?
In 2014 we released a first (electronic) album, but I started messing around before. How do we see the future of Non Serviam? No idea, it doesn't depend on us. The only thing I can guarantee is that there will be a lot of music, what people do with it we fortunately have no control over. We are very proud and grateful for the reception we received in 2021 and we hope it will continue like this.
Besides the project and the left wing extreme metal underground in which it operates (among other platforms), you have a past of anarchist lifestyle in general. Can you tell us more of your life philosophies and action?
I'm sorry but I'd rather not answer part of that question. What I can tell you is that anarchism is not for me a lifestyle, an identity or a counter-culture, because I think that if anarchism is one of these three things then it has no interest. It is in social struggles, direct attacks and active defense of those repressed by authority that anarchist praxis develops. The logos, the folklore and the rest are often made by people who live anarchism only through adventures of thought or identity assertions that don't cost much in a liberal democracy (and that wouldn't have been claimed this way in a region where opponents are really persecuted), in which anarchism can be an opinion or a fashion like any other in the supermarket of ready-made ideas that capitalism offers to those who think they are free in this world. By saying this, we are not contemptuous of anyone, certainly not of individuals, who are only the reflection of a deleterious social environment, which itself must be the target of anarchists, even if it means being misunderstood by the "fans" of anarchism.
I hardly consider a person as an anarchist on the basis of his postures and T-shirt colors, nor even on the basis of his individual way of life, which I don't care about at all. The most interesting anarchists I've known have been warriors with lives to match, not hype artists, influencers, or small businessmen. A lot of people hate us when we say these things, but that's because they think that their anarchist posture is a struggle, so they have a good conscience, while the power doesn't give a damn, they don't know that anarchism is a risky revolutionary and incendiary praxis, to which the power cannot remain indifferent.
A real movement with a history and hundreds of thousands of participants throughout history, connected to each other, not by idealistic opinions or social networks, but by real struggle.
This counter-cultural lie about anarchism is not serious in itself, but what is dangerous is when this postural anarchism attacks the anarchists of struggle and praxis, from nothing and nowhere. This is where it becomes harmful. We live in a terrible time that allows this kind of thing: the postures and individual practices of a starlet with a red and black avatar and "anarchizing" moral postures attract a thousand times more attention than the attack of a bank by comrades, who are in the fray of the terrible social reality. No bourgeois is ready for that.
Recently we have seen massive protests in France against the far right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour. How do you see the political climate of France right now, and is Paris a microcosm of the larger picture, or a unique world of it's own? How about the other major cities?
The pre-electoral period is always a circus that both shields what is really going on (the continuing descent into misery on all levels, the ever-greater hold of social control and repression over everyone's life), and at the same time acts as a revelator and gas pedal of problems that cross the political field and settle for a time on the screens, in the newspapers and in barroom conversations. The importance of the Zemmour phenomenon, but also of the more classic extreme right, is the result of a withdrawal that is also sensitive to other signs, a withdrawal into oneself, one's roots, one's family, one's neighborhood, one's community, one's nationality, one's religion, one's identity, one's fears and their false reassurances of security. Beyond the polarization of the political field around the issues raised by the extreme right, this is a very worrying underlying trend. The borders, the prisons, the detention centers where all kinds of undesirables are locked up are developing in a kind of normality and it is urgent to really tackle them.
As far as the demonstrations against the extreme right are concerned, we know mostly the Parisian context, but in many large and medium-sized cities, antifascist initiatives exist more or less depending on the context. It is a good thing that there are visible expressions of refusal of the extreme right, and we do not wish anything else than the confrontation with this enemy until its annihilation, but the perspective of the hardening of the forms of repression and control, of the hunt for the illegal immigrants, of the repression of the unmanageable is not limited to this swampy zone of the political field, and it is against this dynamic in progress that it is necessary to fight, whatever the president who will come out of the ballot box next May.
As a protest or a demonstration can often turn off people who would be otherwise be sympathetic to the cause presented, what do you think are the most effective ways of turning peoples heads and minds?
Above all, we think that we should be suspicious as soon as the aim of a revolutionary or subversive project becomes to change what is in people's heads, to make them conscious. This is clearly an evangelical and authoritarian fantasy that only gives propaganda as a practice, instead of fighting against this world. If the objective is that the revolution should please, then we might as well do marketing. This is what the new political startups like "Extinction Rebellion" have understood about this connected world. But in gaining followers, they lose the essential: conflict, subversion and struggle.
What changes people, and we have experienced it in our flesh, is precisely the conflictuality and the struggle, which do not belong to any political franchise, not a promotional speech or praxis on sale... It is the miserable situation that the State and the Capital make to all of us that are able to "convince" us to start a struggle, and it is the struggle that transforms us, not the petitions or the moral lessons. The people who are turned off by the protests have to do something else with their lives, we are not publicists or lobbyists.
As you clearly are advocating for the total re-evalutation of all traditions, culture and institutions, how do you see the ideal world emerge on the other side?
What one evokes especially, it is the subversive possibility, and of course it contains the destruction of this world, of its traditions, of its folklore, of its institutions and of its culture. To dream of an ideal world, it is most often to make the list of what one wants to keep of this world, and as such it is finally to ward off the possibility of its destruction. The most beautiful utopias know this well, and do not express themselves as projects for the future, but as daydreams about the present and what it lacks, but without being able to leave it. Revolution, on the other hand, is necessarily the unexpected, something that is radically invented, and it is precisely here that the imaginary and idealization have their limits, because we imagine and idealize from this world. It is thus impossible to imagine another world when our lives and our imaginations are still enclosed in this one. Even the religious back-worlds have been made here below.
When it comes to anarchist thought in general, and in it's classical sense, who are your favourite anarchist thinkers of the past? How about current anarchist influencers or platforms?
My most important theoretical influences in the history of anarchist thought are mostly Bakunin and Stirner. On the one hand the serious and consequently revolutionary thought, without the authoritarian marasmus in which it was forged within the conflicts between authoritarians and anti-authoritarians in the First International, and on the other hand the thought of the individual against the society and of the society against the individual, through the social weapons of religion, of the State, of capitalism, but also of the community, of nations, of traditions and of pedagogies that are as much crutches as army barracks for the oppressed. We could also mention Renzo Novatore, Albert Libertad, Zo D'Axa, Emma Goldman, André Prudhommeaux and many others. As for current anarchism, its currents and platforms, given our individual implications and our choice of anonymity, we prefer not to talk about it here.
You have a very nice presence in social media. How important do you see it today for bringing forth art and social change, if you weight it against all the negative sides of it?
It's double-edged, on the one hand you expose yourself to all the vilest stalker instincts by attracting eyes you'd rather see gouged out, to which we can add that everything is reduced to a few words, a few smileys and uninteresting figures of speech, that memes and animated gifs don't seem to be making people any smarter and that when you step back from it all, it's pretty creepy, vain, empty and stupid. On the other hand, it's the designated way today to make music, movies or any other form of artistic expression known outside the mainstream, but also assemblies, struggles, etc. It's sad, because of all the reasons mentioned earlier. Sad like that king on the cover of Le Cœur Bat. If one day we feel that our music is known and spread enough, which is unlikely to happen, we will spare ourselves social networks to devote more time to music and other things that are more important to us in life.
At the time of writing this, your next release will be a split with Viviankrist of the cult band Gallhammer, how did this collaboration come into being, and what other artists you would like to work or release with in the future?
I discovered Gallhammer a long time ago and I always loved this band, its very specific sound between black metal, doom and crust. It's through them that I discovered the much less known Sehnsucht project, in which Vivian, Maniac (ex-Mayhem) and Andrew Liles were indulging in more extreme experiments. Since then I have never stopped following Vivian and her different projects. It is for me a sure value, it is enough to listen to Gallkrist to realize it. You can imagine that we were pleasantly surprised when we discovered by chance on the internet that Vivian really appreciated our music, I obviously didn't hesitate a moment before contacting her to propose this split project. She quickly sent me these three tracks, and we found them amazingly beautiful and mysterious, so we produced artworks for cassette and CD for Trepanation Recordings (UK) and Bad Moon Rising (Taiwan) who were willing to take part in this project. Everything went very fast, which is something we appreciate. Because the usual music industry timelines don't really work for us, we're overloaded with too many projects that need to be released. I didn't discuss this specifically with Vivian, but I feel like we were on the same page. The split is now available for pre-order, as well as two limited edition long-sleeve t-shirts that we produced ourselves with Non Serviam and Gallkrist.
About other artists we would like to collaborate with, there are so many, but as we are not well known, and unable to finance any ambition in this capitalist world, then there is very little chance of that happening! Working with Jarboe, Julie Christmas, The Body, Attila Csihar, Nadja, Thou and so many others, to name a few with whom we could have quite specific projects to propose if we were in contact, is more a dream than anything else, unfortunately. Although I say this, I am currently mixing the voices of two grindcore idols of my childhood on one of our new tracks!
Thank you very much for this deeply and positively thought provoking interview! What are your plans for the year of 2022?
Many releases from Non Serviam, and the launch of Biollante, a dark industrial hip hop side project with many collaborators. Thanks to you for your questions and for your interest in our music.
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