Kieran Behan ist der Prototyp einer wahren Künstlerin. Keine autistische, in sich gekehrte Künstlerin, die sich einsperrt und dann wirres Zeug hervorbringt. Kieran macht das Leben zum Kunstwerk. Bekannt ist sie in Berlin für ihre Photo Booth Aktionen auf sämtliche Veranstaltungen in Berlin von Comme Ci Comme Ca auf dem Badeschiff bis hin zum Berlin Festival. Auch liest man oft ihren Namen im Lineup irgendwelcher Flyer, da die gute Kieran auch auf Partys Disco auflegt. Grund genug mich mit der Dame aus San Franisco bei der Bordel des Arts Party im Schönwetter zu treffen, um mehr über sie erfahren.
Angekommen treffe ich sie mit ihren Mädels noch bei den Vorbereitungen für den Photo Booth, chaotisch am hin- und herrennen. Alle sind sie verkleidet und das Ganze erinnert mich an eine Hochzeits-Space-Zirkus Veranstaltung.
Die Situation nutze ich, um Isabel, die das pompöseste Outfit, nämlich ein abgefahrenes Hochzeitskleid, trägt, ein bisschen über die Photo Booth Action auszufragen.
Hier ihre Einleitung:
Isabel: Wir haben Luna Park zusammen gemacht und wir haben das Berlin Festival auch zusammen gemacht. Wir machen auch die nächsten Projekte zusammen. Es geht jetzt momentan darum eine Crew zusammenzustellen, dass alles irgendwie so funktioniert. Eine macht die Kostüm, dann Make-Up halt und die ganzen Hintergrundsachen und Kieran, die halt eher fürs Kreative ist. Und wir helfen halt mit und sprechen mit den Leuten und animieren sie ein bisschen. Wir machen die Bilder mit den Leuten zusammen. Beim Berlin Festival hab ich halt auch für Radio Fritz ein Interview gemacht. Ich hab schon die ersten Photo Booths mit ihr zusammen geleitet. Wir haben auch letzte Woche ein Photo Booth zusammen gemacht in der Kleinen Reise.
Es ist jetzt halt schon so ne Gruppe, die das zusammen macht, weil das keiner alleine machen kann wegen den ganzen Kostümen und dem Aufwand und der Organisation. Einer muss halt gucken, dass die Sachen in Ordnung sind und mit den Leuten sprechen und noch fürs MakeUp und Styling noch jemanden.
Und das machst du dann?
Isabel: Nein, ich helf da eher bei der Deko und den Kostümen mit und animiere die Leute ein bisschen.
Wie hast du Kieran kennen gelernt?
I: Beim Arbeiten an der Gaderobe vom Cookies. Ich war ihre Chefin. Sie kam halt irgendwann dazu und wir haben uns sofort gut verstanden. Dann haben wir angefangen uns im Cookies zu verkleiden.
Wirst du dieses Outfit den ganzen Abend über tragen?
I: Das ist, glaub ich, nicht möglich. Ich finds halt supergeil und bin auch total überrascht, weil das gar nicht geplant war. Jemand, der Kostüme macht, hat das für mich zusammengestellt, weil er meint ich soll seine Corpse Bright (Figur von tim burton) sein und hat das dann halt mit detaillierten Anweisungen, wie ich das anziehen soll, gegeben. Den ganzen Abend aber über das zu tragen, geht nicht, weil es auch unbequem ist. Manchmal trag ich aber auch die Sachen den ganzen Abend über.
Das trägst du jetzt so, damit sich die Leute angesprochen fühlen?
I: Wir verkleiden uns halt immer ein bisschen dem Thema entsprechend, um die Leute dann auch zu animieren. Es kommt auch sehr gut bei den Leuten und spricht sie auch gleichzeitig an. Wir haben auch immer ganz viel Zeug dabei, was die Leute anziehen können.
Euer Thema ist heute also Hochzeit?
I: Ja, genau. Aber wir haben jedes mal ein anderes Thema. Letzte Woche in der Kleinen Reise lief halt eher unter dem Motto “Mach den Deppen aus dir”. Beim Berlin Festival halt “Märchen und Einhörner” oder wir hatten schon die Themen “Sailor”, “Black and White”, oder nur Luftballons, und man konnte sich zwischen den Luftballons verstecken.
Geilomat, denke ich mir. Alberne Themen, die eine Party durch das eigene Mitwirken am Photo Booth zu einem wirklichen Erlebnis machen. Langweilt ihr euch nicht auch an den immer gleichen Partys mit einem 0815 Line Up? Man geht hin, haut auf die Kacke, feiert und geht nach Hause. Immer die gleiche Farce. Wer ist denn nun diese Frau, die..
When did you come to Berlin?
Kieran: 4 and a half years ago.
Why?
K: It’s a really crazy story. I was in Thailand volunteering after the Tsunami and I met this really amazing, amazing woman Lisa. We were swimming out into the Ocean and divers were diving down to the bottom of the sea and with these big air balloons lifting up wallets, washing machines- All the stuff that was washed to the bottom of the ocean by the Tsunami. We really had an intense time together. She had a little Fusion wrist band on and I remember asking her “Hey, what do you have there on your wrist?” and I asked her “Where do you come from”. And she came from Berlin, born and raised in Berlin. She gave me the keys to her old flat, because I didn’t know what to do after Thailand. And she said “Go! Just go to Berlin, i know you fit it in, you’re gonna love it!” So i went to her flat-she lived in this old newspaper factory in Kreuzberg. And her roommates totally welcomed me! I stayed for three weeks and fell in love with this city. So i went back to San Fransisco and sold all my shit and moved here directly after that experience.
What were you doing the first months over here?
K: It was really hard for me to find a job. I always knew that I wanted to be a photographer, I even went to photography school, but no one knew me here. So I was selling jewelry that I made in a park, I was bar tending, one of my first job was Cookies in the garderobe…Anything I could do to get by. It wasn’t so easy in the beginning.
When did you start the Photo Booth?
K: It started a year ago. Friends of mine were having parties and they were like “Hey, why don’t you come and make a photo booth?”, because I’ve done a few photo booth’s before for friends. And it started with the “Comme Ci Comme Ca” party at HBC. The first photo booth was just me and Isabel, hungover as fuck with one purple stuffed unicorn and my camera and we just got totally drunk throwing the unicorn in the people’s face and taking pictures.The people were freaking out, doing totally weird and dirty things to the unicorn and it was like “Wow”, if you set up something people will come to you and get excited. And I was so bored before, because I had worked a lot with event photography and the typical style had grown stale. I’m really tired of this “shoving a flash in your face” thing- totally impersonal, like some dude walking around a party and just going “snap! snap! snap!”. There’s no fun, no soul, no passion. It’s not creative and you never get to see the pictures. It’s like someone is taking your soul and you don’t get anything for it. With my way the people can come in to the space, because they want to. They want to have the pictures and we always post them on a blog and a website or I give out my email and people can get copies of the photos. I just wanted to start a mini revolution in the way people see event photography.
This new wave with event photography started about four years ago, with the rise of this guy called cobrasnake from LA and this guy Bronx from New York. Bronx was actually the first one who started to reinvent party photography. They blew up over the whole scene, the whole world. And it was somewhat in the vein of Terry Richardson-overly sexualized, get girls to make out and take out their clothes and flash in their face. It was provocative in the beginning, something new and different… but then it grew cheesy because people were copying the style and it was being done too much. I really appreciate what they created…but I just got bored of it.
What is Crystal Mafia?
K: It started with my friend Ashley, Ashley Hayward. She’s the other half of Crystal Mafia- we started together. We were selling stuff and traveling around festivals on the West coast of America and there are a lot of wannabe gangsters in the scene, I don’t know how to describe it actually…
There were these really big psychedelic “jam-bands” and they had followers. People who travelled from festival to festival to see them and to make money to get to the next place. They would sell shit, like burritos or something in the parking lot. And six or seven years ago when I lived in California, Ashley and I got together. She was a painter, an artist and making buttons and selling them and I was making these hand wire-wrapped crystal jewelry and we were thinking about those parking lot kids… This whole group is kind of lost, they were just following the music from festival to festival, but they didn’t know what it was about. So we just made a joke one day, like “Crystal Mafia”, because we were selling this crystal stuff, we’re our own little family with this group of people going from festival to festival. And I really liked it, because it was really fucking provocative! There’s a big problem with Crystal Meth in America, so when people were first hearing it, they were like “What the fuck is Crystal Mafia? What do you guys do? Are you selling drugs?”, like “What the hell are you doing?”. This is the whole point! I really like to fuck with people’s heads. And I really like confusing plays on words… it helps you to figure out the whole process.
When did Ashley come to Berlin?
K: Well, she was just watching what was happening the in the beginning. And she was really amazed that I could have an artist’s lifestyle here, because San Francisco is crazy. When I was living there I was renting a room the size of a small bathroom and paying more than 800 dollars a month. I was working all day and Ashley was the same. It wasn’t easy to be an artist. She saw that I was having a lifestyle here that was really comfortable and I wasn’t stressing about money all the time. I could be an artist and a photographer. She kept hearing so much about Berlin so she came to visit a few times and in February she moved here. She’s like my missing half, the other little piece of my soul because she just gets me. She understands all the weird shit in my head and all the things I want to do. I don’t even need to say things to her. If I’m working on a project or having an exhibition or doing the photo booth she just instinctively knows how to add to it. So I’m really sad that she has left now.
So it was the first time that Ashley was in Germany, right?
K: Yeah, the first serious time. And she loved it and is going to be back soon.
When did you start djing?
K: When I came to Berlin four and a half years ago I went to all these underground parties and I had never heard music like this. I had no idea that you can go to a party for like 5, 10, 15, 24 hours. And I came here and soaked in all the music, soaked in the experience.
But then I started to feel unsatisfied; the DJs were kind of wasted and lost and playing music just because other people were playing it.
I’ve loved Disco since I’m a little girl, but I never thought I could be a DJ. Liane and Marcus, the two people who make this event “Bordel des Arts”, asked me a year and a half ago to come and start to dj. And I remember the first time coming with my computer and some records, I always collected records. But I didn’t know what to do! I was putting them on and playing things from iTunes, starting to go back and forth and I had no idea.
I’m just easily bored if people are not keeping me interested when they’re playing. There are some amazing DJs here, they are really passionate about music and there some people they are just doing it in a passionless way. Between 1979 and 1984 was a really interesting time period in Disco, when this Studio 54 sound was dying and the beginning of House, Electro and New Wave was starting. And it was really fucking intense when all these different genres were forming. DJing is a way for me to share this type of music with people. I’m not a serious DJ and I’m not hungry for a career, because I really like being a photographer. But as long as it keeps stimulating me and I’m hungry to keep digging for music every week then it’s worth it. I need to see this sparkle in people’s eyes when they’re listening. That’s the whole point and nothing else.
You seem to me to be an typical artist. Would you call yourself an artist?
K: Yeah, I mean, I could never have a real job. I could never wake up every morning at 8 and go work for someone else. An office job, sitting on a computer- I haven’t had a real job since I’m 18. I’ve always been this gypsy wandering girl. I don’t picture anything else for myself. I guess that’s part of being an artist. It’s the way that my mind works-it doesn’t allow me to have a normal job. I really like to be free. I like keeping this nomadic mentality that I can travel anywhere in the world and that I can make this photo booth, share music with people. I can do so many things. I don’t feel tied down to do one particular place or lifestyle so I don’t think I’m one particular stereotype. But perhaps in this freedom comes the stereotypical concept of an artist.
How old are you, Kieran?
K: 26.
Are there big differences between your life before in San Francisco and the live you are living now in Berlin?
K: Ooohh, fuck, I was young. I mean, I moved here when I was 22. So there was this tiny little girl. I left home when I was 18 and went to this photography school and when I came out of it, I was like “What the fuck am I doing?”. I travelled around and did this Festival stuff. I didn’t really find myself so I left California and was in South America, Central America then Thailand and Turkey… and then I came here. I was just searching and searching. I couldn’t stay in one place longer than 6 months. I was hunting for a place that I could call “home”. My life in California was working all the time for people I didn’t want to work for. Doing stupid things and all my money was going for rent. I wouldn’t say that I was the happiest girl. I had this really itchy and intense feeling that I was really hungry for something I couldn’t find. When I came to Berlin that hungry feeling vanished. My life in California was totally different- I was a young, naive girl in her early twenties looking for something and having crazy adventures. And now my adventures have a deeper meaning for me.
It seems like you’ve found what you were seeking for?
K: Berlin gives me 100% what I was looking for, but who know what the future holds. I’m working for this art show that’s going to go around the world. It’s from my friends from Bali-they are making this really fucking beautiful art show and they want to have a photo booth involved in it. The art show is telling these whole fantasy stories. I’m in Berlin right now, but I think for the new year I’ll be working towards this art show. But I’ll always come back. Berlin is always going to be my homebase. I feel like home here. It’s the first place that ever felt like home, really.
This Bali art show is your next project. Tell me more about your future projects!
K: I’m gonna go for three months to Bali (January until March). Right now I’m going for California for a month, to see my family, to calm down. No wastedness, no partying. Just forest and ocean and getting my brain a little bit settled. Then I’ll come back a little bit and go to Bali to work on this crazy project.
And then, this is my dream: my dream is that I’m gonna buy a big bus and I’m gonna pimp out the inside. There will be a DJ booth for my favorite Disco DJs -you’re invited to those adventures. And I’m quite serious about this dream, like anything I think I’m gonna do. I’ll invite all my friends who help me make the photo booth, all the costume designers and performance artists and make up artists-everybody important to the crystalmafia cause. Then we’re going to go on a festival tour! But not cheesy, commercial festivals. Only beautiful ones… things are really starting to happen for me. And I’m super grateful for that, but I also want to keep it gypsy. So I think when I come back this spring I’ll start planning this crystalmafia Photo Booth tour with my favorite DJs and friends.
It’s really interesting, that you seem to feel better here than in San Francisco. I mean, I have a few friends living in California and they always tell me that the party or electronic music scene over there is growing more and more. It always seems like as they want to show me that San Francisco is able to keep up with Berlin, Germany or Europe. Don’t you want to go back an have an impact on this development?
K: There is a soul connection to this city, I love San Francisco. I think it’s more import to spread this magic feeling I’m getting in Berlin to give it back and bring it to them. There are some fucking amazing, super treasure people in Berlin, but they just don’t get it. If I go back and visit and spend a month there, talking with my friends and giving them music- that’s like me bringing a piece of this magic to them. And I think the people that are committed to San Francisco, the people that love San Francisco, they are gonna be inspired if I give them some input.
Hehe, yeah, a lot of people from all over the world love Berlin.
K: Yeah, there’s so much hype. But Berlin is huge right now. The thing with the stereotypical Americans is that they aren’t so brave and they are scared to get out of the country. So the brave, kind of crazy ones come here as well as the ones who think that Berlin is kind of cool and cheap. Not every American tourist is brave-But the brave, kind of crazy ones see that they can build something here. Every artist, deep down inside, could be a little bit lonely and searching for other artists. There are a lot of important artists coming here and a lot of people who are just along for their ride. That’s how it is. I mean Berlin is changing..
Yeah, like New York. I guess New York was the place to be in former times. But I guess that it has changed nowadays, actually in a negative way, and a lot of people from New York came to Berlin. But as you said, Berlin is also changing right now..
K: The weird thing about Berlin is, that it has these crazy intense cycles-it’s always kind of moving. The weimar period in the 20’s-wow-I wish I could have lived then. And then the war came and a lot of things changed so the cycle changed. And then another movement comes and another movement comes. I think that could be the future of Berlin. I think everything could start to be more expensive here but I don’t have a feeling in one way or the other. Even if that happens, Berlin is kind of self-destructive. If things get too intense the city will destroy itself and begin anew. If Berlin is about to get overwhelmed it would blow up its energy and create itself again.
Is your Photo Booth action going on, while you’re in San Fransisco or Bali?
K: Yeah, I have these really incredible people around me and they really know how to take care of shit. So if I get jobs or opportunities out of town I trust them 100% to take care of business. They have a feeling for what I want and will be able to keep this thing alive. I really like to be in this collective. I don’t believe that one person has the total control over everything. The whole time we are creating together; I’m showing them how to use my camera, I’m showing them how to use the props. It’s a whole education for us all.
I love the idea that a group of girls are doing this crazy shit.
K: Yeah, it makes me very happy. It’s girlpower! When I came to Berlin, I wasn’t supported. There are a lot of photographers with huge egos and I really had to fight for everything.
I’m surrounded by all these powerful women right now and they are so creative, so amazing, so strong. If you give them something-give them a belief, they just go for it. I have the sot incredible people in my life surrounding me and they support the whole thing. They are happy to be involved. We all have this glimmer in our eyes when we are decorating or taking photos. It’s amazing. I think all of us are passionately involved because we see how it it is effecting people.
You seem to very happy right now in your life.
K: I’m really happy; I have so many opportunities, so many impressive people around me. My career is finally beginning after a lot of hard work. I thank the universe every day… I’m kind of a hippie. I really believe we’ve all just been through a really fucking intense time. I don’t if it is something in the stars or in the air or the energy, whatever. I’ve been in the process of figuring out who your real friends are- figuring out who understands you and who doesn’t. And in the process I worked my ass off.
It’s really hard in this scene- you can always get involved in someone else’s thing. Now, for the first time, I’m really trusting in myself. I have this little fire inside of me- about photography, about interacting with people, about creating something every single day that makes me feel alive. That’s how I’m living right now. You’re catching me in a moment that I’m so fucking in love with my lifestyle. My whole life; when someone did something bad to me or a friend was talking shit or someone didn’t give me a job… I was all the time thinking negative things. And now I’m just like “brush it off, don’t hold on to the negative energy”.
So if you keep positive in your life, keep passionate, no one can tear you down…I’m just learning this right now. I trust in the universe and I trust in karma. It’s all about karma, really. And if you behave in a really amazing way and you’re positive, you can do anything. So get ready for the crystalmafia takeover!
Interview Paramida Sabay
[flickr album=72157625106521646 num=30 size=Medium]
Paramida Sabay
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