Interview & Words by Catrin Lewis
This was one of the most unusual answers I’d ever had. Sitting on the veranda of a bungalow in Melbourne, beer in hand, I asked Alex Podger:
Who are you? What do you do?
I make gigantic human-powered puppets for a pagan-inspired parade in Galway. They’re bigger than the houses in this town, and we push them down the streets with all kinds of fairies, goblins, and other fantastical creatures.
At the time, Alex was one of the lead creatives for Macnas, a “spectacle theatre company” based in Galway, Ireland.
Every Samhain, the Gaelic festival that marks the end of harvest, the streets are filled with jaw-dropping art and live performances.
I went to see it for myself—it was spectacular. From that moment, I was hooked on Alex’s work.
For Alex, all this is normal. As a multi-disciplinary artist, he’s created work one couldn’t fit in a portfolio: giant exploding sculptures, chaotic circus shows, devilish cabaret numbers, outdoor operas, and large-scale spectacle theatre with puppets, abstract pyrotechnics, orchestras, feral art parties, and mass public rituals. Add to that a list of TV ads and a library of music videos.
This is what I like about Alex—you can’t pin him down. He works across the profound and cathartic to the absurd and silly, always showing something never seen before, with people I’d never expect to share the moment with.
Six years later, I’m at Alex’s East London flat. The garden outside is wild but homely, the walls marked with touches of his Australian past. His day is hectic, but he always makes time for a friend. We sit with hot tea and bagels and I ask him the most foundational quesiton for a creative person.
What is your definition of art?
Art is mostly how you frame it. It’s what you put a light on. Once, I hung a big block of ice in a club, tied it with chunky shibari rope, and lit it. Everyone loved it – licking it, watching it melt.
“At the next event, I froze a £20 note in ice and put it in a cage with no light to see if anyone would notice. I don’t think they did. But the next day, the ice and the £20 were gone. First, I was annoyed, but then I thought, maybe that’s art for the person who found it. Or for me, because I set it up so you couldn’t get it. But someone did. Good for them.”
He laughs. “It was the same time I installed a boxing bag in the middle of a bar and had a boxer punch it to bits. It burst open, stuffing everywhere. I hadn’t planned that, but I lit it up, and suddenly everyone thought it was a Tate installation. It is. Or it isn’t.”
Scenes like this are why people love his event NACHTLICKER—seven hours of curated chaos combining punk theatre, hard house, absurdist comedy, dirty techno, speed garage, filthy drum’n’bass, nineties euro-rave, cult-punk-drag, and whatever else lurks in the corners.
Let’s talk about NACHTLICKER.
At NACHTLICKER, I’ve seen the disembowelment of Henry Hoover, a moment involving a bowl of fresh peas and someone’s penis; life drawing; cinema; human-sized rats doing cabaret in kinky traps; and someone riding around the bar on a leather-clad pony.
I’ve discovered DJs I now adore, learnt about astrophysics, seen some of the best live punk shows in London, danced until dawn, and stood under bunting made from Ziploc bags of fake urine—pale yellow to a deep, dark, dirty caramel, intended to chart the stages of dehydration.
It was funny until the piss bags leaked all over the bar. I grabbed the darkest one, which I think was iced tea, and drank it. People were horrified. It was great.
While he enjoys grossing people out, Alex spends much of his life engrossed in his work.
He had his first day on the job at four weeks old—he grew up in a world of art, fire, community, and festivals. Echoes of that childhood are inked on his legs—a snake and other creatures that hold meaning.
Let’s talk about childhood.
“I’m originally from my mother’s vagina, but I don’t remember it.” He says this with a straight face. “I grew up on a dirt road in the bush in Queensland. Our neighbours were a biker gang. You could hear the motorbikes and sometimes gunfire, but they were pretty chill.
“My parents are both veterinarians. Dad’s a snake expert and musician. Mum specialised in large animals—she’s also a sculptor, artist, fire artist, and director.”
“There was always art being built in the garage, and snakes being collected from the lawn. I was taught early on how to tell if a snake was venomous by the scales on its face. They’d hold venomous snakes in front of me. ‘Is this venomous?’ they’d ask, and I’d say yes or no. Sometimes it was only the fifth-deadliest snake in the world.”
I’ve never held a snake, and I shriek at grass snakes.
You grew up with snakes. Are you scared of them?
“No. I have huge respect for them, but they’ve tried to kill me a few times.”
I mention that 2025 is the Chinese Year of the Snake, where snakes are seen as elegant, shrewd, and transformative.
“I don’t like the idea of snakes as evil. They’re misunderstood. They’re powerful. Year of the Snake is nice.”
Earlier that year, we’d celebrated with a fire ritual, part of an independent queer folk festival, which Alex programmes: four handcrafted snakes representing North, South, East, and West, each tied to an element. I had the honour of puppeteering one into the fire.
When did your love for fire start?
“The first fire festival I went to, I was about four weeks old. Huge fire ritual show by Neil Cameron and his team. Mum saw it and said, ‘I want to do that.’ The next year, she did.”
“I was involved throughout my childhood and ended up being Artistic Director for about eight years. We lived a double life, ‘normal’ most of the time, then disappearing for big fire shows two or three times a year. Back then, you could miss school for a couple of weeks as long as your grades stayed up.”
That spark led Alex to attend film school.
“I studied directing at Griffith Film School in Queensland. When I graduated, my friend Pete Ireland, later creative director for MTV, asked if I’d make a music video for Brendan Maclean, a radio host then breaking into music. I thought I didn’t know design, but Pete reminded me that my films kept winning design awards.”
“We made the video, won a load of awards, and that’s how it started.”
Since then, Alex has made many music videos.
How do you approach making music videos?
I ask how he does them—storyboard and script, or just the track?
“I sit and hallucinate, not on anything, I just can. Often, I come up with ideas for completely different music, then adapt them. If it’s a big show, we write new music to fit the images I’ve imagined. It’s all layered.”
Music videos take weeks of work, often with personal money invested, so he’s selective about what projects he takes on now.
It’s easy to have an idea. It’s hard to have one you can execute with the resources you’ve got. I have to think about how I can get enough great shots in one day to make this dynamic? That’s the challenge with low-budget DIY projects, and most people don’t see it.
One of my favourites of his is a co-creation with Of Ghosts and Other Forms, a synth and vocal music group. It’s a metaphorical take on queerness.
“The problem is, music video budgets haven’t changed in 15 or 20 years. In fact, they’ve shrunk. Unless it’s a major commercial project, there’s no real money. But I still think they’re important, and they’re still being made.”
Tighter budgets affect everything, and music videos aren’t the only projects Alex has put his own money into.
If he’s emotionally invested, so is his bank account. In the creative world, money can’t be the driver, he says—creating often means accepting a loss. His payoff is different.
If not money, what is your creative payoff?
It’s the shared communal feeling.
“Film is visual, emotional, and can be spectacular. But when you shoot it, you’re only halfway there. You wrap, go home, and six months or a year later, someone shows you what you made. By then, I’m often over it.”
“With festivals, you create something for 30 or 30,000 people, and you feel that shared reaction in the moment. It can be simple or complex – either way, it brings people together. That shared catharsis during a big ritual project is what I love.”
“Parties are the same. They run for hours, and you see every moment: people meeting, making new friends. You feel it as it happens.”
As many festivals have been swallowed up by big corporations and smoothed into something bland, Alex has kept community, storytelling, ritual, and art at the centre. No billboards advertising beers, just big thematic openers and creative intent.
Festivals are temporary societies. You leave the usual structures behind and build something new. I’m fascinated by the crews, camping in tents or vans, building something together with limited resources. They’re resilient, and the relationships run deep.
“At Boomtown last year, our crew started as total strangers—photographers in their 40s, 19-year-old music students, social workers, graffiti artists, drag queens. Different worlds, but they looked out for each other, respected each other, and learned what frustrates and inspires each other. It’s amazing to watch that happen.”
What is your leadership style?
Whether it’s a crew of ten or a hundred, as a creative director, Alex’s role is to make sure everything gets done. I ask what his leadership style is.
“Empathetic and chaotic!” he laughs.
“You need structure and accountability, but I’m a big fan of anarcho-syndicalism—worker-led groups. Minimal hierarchy. Middle management is only used when necessary. Workers can overrule the leader if they all agree.”
As a leader, I won’t dictate every detail. I give everyone the brief: here’s the canvas, here are the colours, here’s what others are doing. Then I let go. You have to let go.
At Woodford Folk Festival, over 1,000 people are involved: choirs, lantern processions, performers, and crew.
“I’m a designer by trade, but I can’t design the whole show. We have 11 or 12 lead artists: prop designers, scenic artists, puppet makers. My job is to communicate the world and let them bring their own slant. The best shows are when I don’t know exactly what’s coming on stage. The whole team’s making decisions together. My role is to sit back and see what happens.”
What was a recent favourite event?
This year, one of his standout moments was an event called DISREPAIR at Dark Mofo in Hobart. Dark Mofo is an annual mid-winter arts and culture festival held by the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
DISREPAIR involved clowns, heavy machinery, explosives, and post-capitalist sun worship.
“I’ve worked with pyrotechnics since I was a teenager, but I use it artistically, not commercially. I work with Skylighter Fireworks because they’re brilliant and safety-focused. Sometimes what’s legal isn’t safe, and we won’t do it. But we’ll always test and experiment.”
“I did a project called ‘Rebehold The Stars’ with Stuart Bensley from Howard & Sons. He’s an amazing designer, and I wanted to break all the rules. I wanted centaur’s arrows shooting through the sky at odd angles. Stuart designed a deconstructed pontoon with explosions from unexpected points. It was beautiful chaos—a symphony where every drumbeat was an explosive boom.”
You moved to London just before the COVID pandemic. Why the move?
In late 2019, Alex moved to London with his partner, excited for a new life—fresh festivals, a new city, a whole new continent.
We moved in just before COVID. The flat was too small, but we thought we’d never be home. Then lockdown hit. My partner was working for an environmental and human rights NGO, researching murdered activists. I was in the next room, losing my mind. I lost all my work for a year and couldn’t get back to Australia.
How did NACHTLICKER begin?
“By 2023, I was looking at Dark Mofo again. I love it—big parties, sometimes controversial, subversive, contemporary—but I thought it could use more punk, more lo-fi analogue weirdness, more humour. Many festivals have lost their sense of fun. It doesn’t all have to be intense. You need balance.”
So he pitched them NACHTLICKER. The brief:
“A bacchanalian cesspit of erotic esoterica, absurdist filth, and punk theatre. Rock bands on burnt-out cars. Industrial techno behind cold rooms. Performance artists emerging from latex sphincters. Neon string art canopies. Socialist propaganda flyers. Free porridge. Artists in the porridge. Goat sacrifices, but the goats are people. Pagan masks with neon horns. Industrial pagan fire. Giant suction tubes abducting people. Spoken word in gibberish. Circus artists doing terrible things with tinned food. Yodelling. Weasels. Glamorous pigs. Urinal altars. Rotating ice sculptures. Nude marching bands. Chandeliers of wigs. Crashed cars lit in red. Accordion players covered in flowers. Toasties. A pig on a spit. Spit on a pig.”
Exactly like that, the pitch went to Dark Mofo’s Artistic Director, Leigh Carmichael. Months later, he came back—they wanted it.
“They gave me a three-storey building—band room downstairs, club in the middle, apartment upstairs. About 12 spaces. Seven absurdist clowns. A budget. It was amazing.”
The concept of NACHTLICKER was born at Dark Mofo in Australia, and having lived for just a few nights, it came back to London.
In the same way Alex had looked at what Dark Mofo might have been missing, he looked at London nightlife and saw a hole.
I was blown away by the London scene in 2019—wild and varied. But I noticed it getting more homogenised, formulaic, with less creative love in the parties. The best nights are under 300 capacity, running less than three years, with a proper DIY spirit. That’s where NACHTLICKER lives—DIY, community-driven, sleeves rolled up.
How has NACHTLICKER grown?
The next chapter in the story of the party began when Alex met an artist named Alfie Goffey in a shipping container in another country.
“Security wouldn’t let us have an after-party, so we locked ourselves in with a torch and a pack of water. He was producing a band, Rizzy and the Gents. I wanted to do a party. We teamed up.”
“The first event was in December 2023. I was anxious. Rizzy and the Gents did their first show, and we had someone dressed as Elon Musk wanting to fuck the moon—very funny. We sold 300 tickets. Insane for a first event.”
“The party has grown so much. We’ve had Grove and Toya Delazy do full sets, incredible drag acts, clowns, and actors. Co Kendrah was our pig in a bath—a tub of milk facing the DJ. Milk everywhere.”
“It’s just ADHD – the party. Everyone who walks through the door has a completely different night. There’s always something happening somewhere.”
What have you learned from years making such a wild, strange party?
“The first few were stressful. Constant juggling, because it’s a show. We’re not just hiring DJs, putting them in a room with a bar, and leaving it at that. At NACHTLICKER, there’s a band, a performance, a cabaret. And it might be in the bar, the toilets, the smoking area—you never know. You have to keep that energy rolling. We’ve got such a good ensemble now. They know when to start, when to finish, and it runs like a weird machine. I just poke from a distance and see what happens.”
NACHTLICKER happens four times a year, in autumn and winter and operates as a chaotic, semi-anonymous art collective with numerous collaborators. The rest of the year, Alex is plotting, earning, and funding more mischief.
The last NACHTLICKER was the most feral, the most unhinged party I’ve been to. Completely insane. I can’t repeat half of it. People went wild. It was so much fun. Total financial disaster, but we’ll get there. Everyone gets something out of it, and we’ve built a community that makes it happen.
“I think maybe that’s my role, bringing people together who don’t even realise what they have in common. The more the world goes to shit, the more you need friends.”
Alex calls it “social bridging”—the opposite of social bonding.
“Social bonding is what fascists do—separating people, spreading their ideology. Social bridging connects people across divides. If you keep groups separate, you can break them. But when communities are already connected, they’re unbreakable.”
The more you work with people of different ages, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures, the more you become an unstoppable force against fascism. Resistance often comes from unlikely alliances—groups that shouldn’t get along but do.
What subculture do you feel most at home in?
Alex has lived in many different worlds and scenes, but doesn’t feel fully at home in any of them.
“I’m more comfortable working with people completely different from me. I grew up at festivals and in so many places. Social bridging comes naturally.”
“I’ve seen it at NACHTLICKER. Regulars mixing with newcomers, building bridges in the most unlikely settings. The crowd has grown beyond personal friends—the age range runs from 18 to 80, with around 15 distinct scenes in the room at once.”
What kinds of people come to the party?
“There are a few people who come to every single one. Some are in their 40s or 50s, and they tell me they’ve never walked into a party that welcoming. We’ve had drum & bass lads from Boomtown, arty non-binary queers, goth lesbians, corporate types, music students, jazz fans, punk rockers. A whole spectrum. And they all get along because they know they’re sharing the same space. The friendships that come out of that are really special.”
After entertaining thousands at Dark Mofo in Australia, scandalising people in Ireland, and confounding Boomtown in the UK, NACHTLICKER returns to London on 11 October 2025 with its nocturnal playground of eclectic music, punk theatre, live bands, feral rave, eccentric art, and absurd silliness.
Nachtlicker VIII is on Saturday October 11th, 2025 in London. Tickets are on sale from today, 20th August 2025 from their website. Follow the feral ones at @nachtlicker or www.nachtlicker.com
Alex Podger is at @alexpodger and www.theartfulpodger.com
Words: Catrin Lewis
Images: all pictures by Oli Mosse except the one of Nachtlicker frontage and the ice which were taken by Alex Podger himself and the one from The Rift by Lachlan Douglas @SomeFX.
