Pussy Palace has evolved from a Brick Lane house party to banging club nights that aim to open up an inclusive space for women and non cis-hetero hip hop lovers
If there's one party in London where you'll find drag queens and rude boys coming together beside a couple of Go-Go-esque dancers under a disco ball, to the pulsing beats of Tweet and Missy Elliott, then it's Pussy Palace. Founded by Nadine Artois and Skye Barr, two Glaswegian exports, initially, PP started because the duo found themselves bored with the clubbing scene. Sure, they were having a good time but, in Barrs own words, ‘we understood the politics of how people should and shouldn't be treated in a clubbing environment’.
Essentially, they wanted to take all their favourite elements of various nights and put it them in one. But, as much as they can, they also want to ensure that they are providing a positive and safe environment from the start. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t damn sexy, and, as Artois tells us, you will fall in love at Pussy Palace.
Starting as a cute nickname for their flat, as they were notoriously known for having a multitude of girls and cats living under one roof, their all-inclusive parties soon became too popular for their four-storey flat on Brick Lane and the girls were offered a monthly club residency – most recently at Hackney’s The Laundry. There's a serious side to these girls too. They held their first charity event earlier this year, “Self Care is Warfare”, and raised over £1,000 to provide self care products for women living in refugee camps – they now plan to make it a regular PP event, alongside their infamous parties. With all takings on the night going towards a cause of their choosing, your hangover guilt won't be as bad in the morning.
Due to this growth, their core team has grown and the girls do all their own marketing, social media and video and photo production. Aside from the Artois and Barr, there are six others who head up PP. Namely, Munroe Bergdorf, their resident DJ, transgender advocate and model. Holly Hmiddouche, their graphic designer, Kesang Ball, an app developer and illustrator, Bemi Shaw, a writer and activist, hosiery designer Sophie Burge and stylist and blogger Alexa Kesta Stylist. As they ready themselves for their next party “Infinite Booty” on 20 May, we premiere the hypnotic promo video for it to get you in the mood and below, we catch up with the duo.
Song Soke by Burnaboy
How did it all get started?
Nadine Artois: Well, we always had girls staying with us. About two years ago, Skye moved in with me… There was a bunch of girls staying with us, we were all single and I have three cats and the house was literally like a female frat house.
Skye Barr: Yeah, we were partying a lot in London. We were going out as a group of girls and not giving a caring about anyone except having fun. We really disregarded the settings. For example, people would be like you need to be careful how you act here.
Nadine Artois: And, then, one of the cats had kittens… Someone came over and said it is like a pussy palace in here and the name stuck. We thought it was great. We started putting on house parties because we couldn’t be arsed with everyone giving us grief about how we were acting, what we were doing or what we were wearing. We just bought some DJ decks and did it like a club. It got so popular that people were trying to pay to get into our house and XOYO asked to do a party in the house. That was also the moment we realised that it could be something more!
Skye Barr: We weren’t trying to be anyone but ourselves but it just turned into something more.
Why do think events such as Pussy Palace are important?
Nadine Artois: You need places that you can go that aren’t exclusive. I’ve worked in venues which are a total no go unless you are cool or rich. I’ve also gone to so many hip hop nights around east London where you think you are having a good time but you actually gave up so much to be there. As women, we forget how much we sacrifice to have a good time. It is ingrained in us to behave the “right” way.
Skye Barr: It just makes you feel like you are getting unwanted attention. If you say no or try and bypass that attention, you get aggravation or tension. Unfortunately, alcohol can just heighten that. We (Pussy Palace) come in with this really positive and encouraging vibe. We hope that we can continue to prevent this sort of interaction at our events.
Nadine Artois: We always say that in hip hop it is really hard to navigate your sexuality when you are constantly being sexualised for the smallest things you do or not doing anything at all. For example, your heel is too high or your skirt is too short and then all of a sudden you are targeted. It can feel quite violent when people don’t notice they are doing it.
What are the key things that you wanted to change?
Nadine Artois: With the nights I was going to, there is no way I could have invited my queer friends. There was too much tension and they couldn’t relax. We were always worried that someone would say something or do something. It wasn’t fair. It is not just cis-het people who love hip hop. There should be a place which isn’t just full of men in a club jumping about mosh pitting…
Skye Barr: (laughs) Mosh pits fuelled with testosterone feel like it could be another form of male masturbation, but as a dance move! There's nothing charming about it. But hey everyone's different! At our nights, nobody is discriminated against, unless you are homophobic, transphobic or a racist. All that gets left at the door (or) you aren’t getting in.
Nadine Artois: The energy is so different when women are the promoters/DJ’s and everyone can feel it. Our female and queer guests come down so they can dress how they want and twerk as hard as they like, because the atmosphere is fully charged with acceptance and sexual freedom. The men are very much present and having fun but they are not in control so they don’t act up (as much). We get there is no real 'safe space' to party and I am not saying ours is, but it's definitely a more freeing experience. There is still work to do and by having Munroe Bergdorf who is a trans activist our resident Dj makes the night more queer friendly and exits out the type of people that we don’t want coming in the first place. We always say ‘We are not exclusive, we are inclusive’ and we really mean that. Pussy Palace is about letting your freak flag fly and allowing women to have a really good time rather than this feeling in the back of their mind about if their outfits too slutty and if their dance moves are too provocative.
You recently did a night called ‘Self Care is Warfare’ and donated all the proceeds to people in Calais! Can you tell me a bit more about this?
Nadine Artois: We raised over a grand which was cool! I did some charity work and I got in contact with a girl called Ade. Ade goes out to the camps in Calais and Dunkirk quite a lot. She noticed that loads of people were donating shampoo and conditioner but people with afro hair were missing out because they need something totally different. She hadn’t quite reached her crowdfunding target and we wanted to support her in that. For us, the club night just happened. It has just been really natural so we really wanted to give back. Self care is just really important to us anyway. I couldn’t stand that black people were missing out, as usual, in that terrible situation. We get a lot from black people because we play music by black artists and are inspired by them so we feel it’s important to give back to that community.
Skye Barr: Since the summer, we had been wanting to do something like that in Calais or Dunkirk. We want to keep doing some charity stuff as well. We also plan to go out there ourselves and continue to do work there.
Lastly, positivity is a big thing for you ladies – can you tell us a bit about your new video?
Nadine Artois: The reason why we make the videos was for our first little house party we started made a little promotional video. It was just a bunch of images we liked from tumblr. When it started properly, we wanted to keep doing our promo like that. The videos are a showcase of what we can do. For us, making videos is natural. Together, we have worked in every aspect of production required to create a video!
Skye Barr: People were asking us to be in shoots together and we wanted to be in control of that ourselves. We have both worked in different creative fields and we knew we could do it and own it.
Nadine Artois: This theme has a body positive message because this month is about loving yourself. We managed to get mates in the video but at points, it was quite difficult to get people involved. I think that is because of the way that society is at the moment. If you don’t fit a certain aesthetic, it is really brave to enter into the online space because that wave of confidence that you might have can be ripped away from you. Everyone was super scared and super shy but there is a moment of confidence, that just killed it. We hope that someone else seeing the video might just say ‘yes… I can do that as well!’ We aren’t trying to be about body positivity, it just meant to look like a futuristic music video where having a woman over a size 8 just, well, normal!
Skye Barr: Even though we are in 2016, shaking your arse still gets you hate. That is bizarre, it should just been seen like clapping. It is just a body move. If you have got a pair of tight shorts on, who gives a fuck? This (video) is saying you can do this too. And, you know what, there is a night where you can do that. So, you want to shake your arse, Pussy Palace is the place for you to be.
“Infinite Booty” will be at Hackney's The Laundry on 20 May, 2016. Ciick here for more information