The Remains of the Heyday:
Are Subcultures Still Possible?

Once a subculture goes mainstream, is it even a subculture anymore? I get concerned for the authenticity and integrity of a subculture when it becomes fed to the masses. I’ve seen things shape-shift and change and authenticity can get lost if people aren’t careful. At the same time, the internet makes it available to more people. And that could help a lot of people find where they belong. I remember when ball clips started going up on YouTube and how wild that was to walk a ball on a Saturday night and then see it plastered all over YouTube and Facebook the next week. It was so jarring, and then there was this certain level of underground fame that came with it. Being a trans youth, that was very intense, exciting, but also kind of scary. It used to be that you had to buy the DVD or VHS tape to watch it. And only select people had it. Now ballroom is worldwide. Which is cool but again, kind of scary. Culture is meant to be shared. Not co-opted, but shared. I see subculture thriving where it needs to. Subculture often comes out of survival. So as long as people are as varied as we are supposed to be, subculture will find its way. I see a lot in Gen Z (is that what we are calling them?) that bucks societal norms, and I think that is part of the cycle of growth. I don’t think subculture is going to dissipate anytime soon. I sure hope not.

Trace Lysette is best known for her recurring role on the critically-acclaimed series Transparent. She can also be seen alongside Jennifer Lopez, Cardi B, and Constance Wu in Hustlers, in Tarell Alvin McRaney’s David Makes Man, and the upcoming independent feature Venus as a Boy. She is also currently producing the docuseries Trans in Trumpland. She has and continues to be a voice for trans and marginalized folks in Hollywood and beyond.

We other kids couldn’t understand her style and yet weren’t alienated by it, either. Meaning it didn’t negate, like punk, but rather showed the norm a better version of itself it didn’t know existed. I remember one day she made a glamorous statement wearing house slippers. We were all in awe, even though it was so over our heads. I think what you’re driving at when you talk about subculture is the use of one’s looks and interests as a weapon, like in the heyday of subcultures, the 60s and 70s. Since then the subcultural impulse has been absorbed into society, and by now become part of the norm, to where it’s those who don’t practice subcultural tendencies who are a bit of a subculture.

Bernadette Van-Huy is an artist and photographer. In 1994, she co-founded the collective Bernadette Corporation, whose eponymous clothing brand of the 90s and subsequent artistic productions have had a profound cultural impact. Bernadette Corporation has exhibited at galleries and museums such as Greene Naftali Gallery, Gaga Gallery, Artists Space, the ICA London, and the Whitney Museum.

Online, where many trans people live GoFundMe to GoFundMe, intra-group legibility can be a matter of survival. Inter-group visibility, too, can make the difference between paying rent or not: marketing (and flattening) one's transness for a paying cis audience.

People post tagged selfies in the hopes of offering a mirror to others fumbling with their own self articulation, but the Instagram algorithm devours as much as it amplifies. To try to carve out a measure of cultural specificity online is to drive a bargain with the mainstream, moneyed platforms that host our images, our words, our music. What does it take to become legible to one another while muddying the systems that file away our visible faces into neat containers? I find myself seeking glitch as common culture, that which erodes the algorithm's ability to sort us and sell us back our boxes. I reach out for confusion, recognizing myself there.

Sasha Geffen is the author of Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, out now from the University of Texas Press. Their writing also appears in Rolling Stone, Artforum, The Nation, Pitchfork, and elsewhere. They live in Colorado.

Sometimes I’d see him sitting alone at a party looking on, watching the young people enjoy themselves without any hint of self-consciousness. I couldn’t help but think about how his life story had helped pave the way for so many young people like him.

When I came to NYC in the early 80s, there was a downtown subculture heavily surrounding art, music, and fashion. Parties brought everyone together. It wasn’t about money back then—because you could survive on so little. It was more about interacting with others and sharing creativity. I think subcultures are still alive and thriving, but are very different now. It was much more difficult before the internet—you had to be adventurous, to go out with the intention of finding people who shared your interests. Now, anyone has access to any subculture they seek out, and small communities will inevitably grow and change whether they want to or not. I don’t mean that subcultures will die out, rather that the internet is one of the things managing to keep them alive. The future is now, and subcultures are more accessible than ever, but they will never be the same as they once were.

Canadian-born, NYC-based photographer, Kevin Hatt has created fashion, portrait, and fine art images for a wide range of publications, clients, and collectors. Clients include Conde Nast publications, New York Times Magazine, Interview, i-D Magazine, and Stüssy.

Twerking was once a street dance in the New Orleans nightclub scene, and now everyone knows what twerking is. And there’s a benefit and drawback to that, of course. We want popular success, but we don't want to be watered down either. I just hope that artists who appropriate subcultures will acknowledge the originators. I think that’s happening more now.

Known as the Queen of Bounce, Big Freedia is a New Orleans-based hip-hop artist and worldwide ambassador of bounce music. She was featured on both Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning single, “Formation” and Drake’s “Nice For What.” She is also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, ​Big Freedia: God Save the Queen Diva.

At the beginning of the 2010s, when I left my job at i-D and moved out of East London, subculture felt completely dead. Everybody was a hipster. Everybody was hazily alternative in the same boring way. It was all indie bands and lumberjack shirts and girls in leggings. It’s hard to over emphasize how desperately awful culture was back then; far, far worse than now. Today, we no longer have a shared culture. Society has been shattered into a million little pieces and everybody lives in their own atomized hell; your mom’s Facebook group is likely far weirder and exponentially darker than your iMessage group chat. So perhaps subcultures are disappearing because there’s no longer a culture to stand apart from. Or perhaps everything’s subcultural now; everything’s weird and obsessive and wounded and nonsensical. There’s too much subculture!

Identity no longer resides in personal style and cultural consumption, but rather in how you express yourself online, which has much more to do with your politics, your perspective on the world, and your body. Tribes are now formed around perspectives on the world. In her recent essay “Influencing the Void: How the 2010s Art World Lost the Thread” for Kaleidoscope, Caroline Busta wrote, “From the rise of whistle-blower culture and info-leaks … to questions of gender and performance, from ‘conceptronica’ in music … to fashion’s memetic turn … not to mention the growth of podcasting culture and the endless, bizarre and at times disturbing digital channels from which the likes of the Virgin/Chad meme emerged, theory seemed to be happening foremost at the club, in music, online, through fashion.” These places where theory is happening are also where subculture is thriving.
Looking back at the 2010s, I think Tumblr and 4chan were massively influential spaces for subcultural formation. I’d imagine a similar process is taking place in certain Subreddits and Discord channels, which have become hubs for niche communities with shared perspectives, but I’m not a part of them so don’t know for certain.
Here in New York lots of people are hanging out in public spaces, on the streets and in the parks. But it’s far less documented and performative than before; no pictures or videos, or shared invites. Nights out are secret once more. This might be framed as a return to an older model of subcultures; one that happens in the parks and behind closed doors, in real life, that travels by word of mouth, that can be stumbled upon if you go to a certain pier on a warm summer night, or get a hold of an address and apartment number; one that’s irresponsible, hedonistic, frowned-upon, and concealed below the surface.

Dean Kissick is New York Editor of Spike Art, for whom he writes his monthly column “The Downward Spiral.” He has also collaborated on projects by artists including Amalia Ulman, Cécile B. Evans, Irena Haiduk, Julien Nguyen, and Laure Prouvost.

I played and toured off and on with hardcore and post punk bands up until me and Cristopher started Our Legacy in 2004. When things started rolling with the brand I had to make a choice, and I quit the band. I still have a lot of friends involved in the scene, I follow both old and new bands and whenever there is a show close I try to go. I went to see Turnstile during Paris Fashion Week last year.
A subculture is often a reaction or response to what’s going on in the world at the moment culturally, financially, or politically. With everything going on, the future of subcultures must be bright. Subcultures that involve interaction, not just transactions, survive.

Jockum Hallin is the co-founder of Stockholm-based label Our Legacy and the creative leader of Our Legacy Work Shop._