by Nikolaj Tange-Lange
My calendar says I’m interviewing Bleach today! Bleach is the loud-mouthed, punk-rock drag queen who seems to have her red-painted nails in every pie across queer Berlin these days.
She throws naked karaoke parties, hosts a drag night dedicated to poppers, and DJs and hosts events everywhere from dive bars to megaclubs. On top of all that, she publishes a zine, Spatmag, and fronts a band. Their full name: Bleach and the Bumholes.
It’s a Berlin-based, five-piece queerclash band fusing punk, disco, soul, and queercore spirit, known for explosive, confrontational live performances. They’ve performed across Berlin’s club and arts scene, including at Volksbühne and alongside PEACHES. Rejecting corporate music platforms, they connect directly with audiences via live shows and grassroots organizing (you can only find them on Bandcamp).
Bleach, I think, is what would happen if Sid and Nancy gave birth to a drag queen. But, it turns out, the person who’s now serving me coffee in her Friedrichshain kitchen isn’t Bleach.
“For me it’s the red lipstick,” she says. When that comes on, she becomes Bleach.
Most drag queens, in my experience, relate to this. People call them by their drag names, no matter what they’re wearing, and since Bleach uses her own hair, her own bleach-blonde signature curls, the line between her private and public selves can feel blurry.
Once, she says, the tension between her stage persona and her real self brought her close to pulling a Ziggy Stardust-style stunt and killing off Bleach entirely. But we’ll get back to that later.
First, tell me about your upcoming events.
Bleach has their first solo art exhibition: 1-5 December at West Germany. The show will include artworks, costumes, photographs, and video.
“And there will be performances every night from Bleach’s friends and family,” she says.
Then, on 12 December, at midnight, LIDO Berlin: “I bring back the BB SHOW, a night of drag, live music, and burlesque.”
Bleach will be accompanied by “a cast of dancers and musicians.” Full details are on Bleach’s site.
Bleach is on the rise. But I want to know how it all began.
What’s the Bleach origin story?
Like many drag personas, Bleach took a while to form, first in the dream life of an awkward queer teenager, then in glimpses on social media, until she finally came out on stage.
Her first time in front of an audience was in 2016, at a burlesque bar in Stockholm where she also worked as a chef.
“Everyone there was a performer. The waiters were jugglers, and the bartenders were burlesque girls. So one night I said, hey, if you give me 500 kroner, which is roughly 50 euro, I will give you Marilyn Monroe next week.”
She bought red lipstick and hair rollers and wrapped herself in a white bed sheet. When she asked the audience if she looked like Marilyn, they all said yes.
I’d always envisioned Marilyn Monroe doing punk, so one of my first performances was to Anarchy in the UK, the debut single by the Sex Pistols, but dressed as her.
Then, after a few years of art school in Stockholm, she arrived in Berlin in 2018.
Her first Berlin show was at Giza’s Pokehouse, at a night dedicated to newcomers.
From there, she kept performing “like an over-energized Energizer bunny”, taking every gig until, in December 2024, she was able to fill SO36 when she put on The BB Show: a full night of drag, burlesque, and punk rock, including the queer all-stars band Punx ‘n’ Kweenz and Bleach herself as headliner.
I’ve noticed you have a thing for getting naked on stage.
Yeah, I’m obsessed with nudism. I find it so liberating. It’s connected to a sense of shame around having a small penis and really owning that.
“In my art practice, I work a lot with embarrassment. I’d be pissing myself or doing embarrassing things to better understand how embarrassment works and take the power from that.”
And, of course, getting naked always gets a strong reaction.
Honestly, getting naked is the easiest way to make an audience cheer.
I ask if it’s also a commentary on drag. I mean, RuPaul claims we’re all born naked, and the rest is drag. So when Bleach gets naked, she’s basically doing the only thing that, according to RuPaul, isn’t drag.
“Yeah, I’ve been questioned a lot on my drag, like why I don’t wear wigs, and about the nudism.”
Actually, I really want to do a naked drag show. Drag is also just about the way you hold your body, how you present yourself, how you move.
How do you relate to the new wave of drag after RuPaul’s Drag Race? Are you part of it or are you a counterpart?
“Really, as a counterpart. Totally anti.”
In the same way The Sex Pistols slagged off QUEEN, I feel like I’m slagging off the stadium rockstars of drag.
There are lots of people she finds to be “more drag” than any of the queens on TV, but they don’t identify with the word “drag” anymore because they don’t want to be compared to these new high-priced, polished standards.
I try to uplift and reimagine ‘drag’ for what I believe it is. It comes from street queens who rioted at Stonewall and who still perform every week in tiny bars across the world, holding culture that nobody sees because it’s not on TV.
Still, some credit is due; the new mainstream popularity of drag has opened doors, also for Bleach.
“The first time I saw 10 drag performers on stage simultaneously, that was watching Drag Race, and I think that goes for a lot of people from my generation.”
Sadly, it has placed U.S. drag culture and drag lingo as the standard everyone is trying to copy.
“It has opened up this door and gives you the opportunity to dig and ask things like, what do I want to represent? What culture am I coming from? What can I take from my culture? Then you build yourself up, and you must turn against the thing that birthed you.”
Bleach rather sees herself as standing on the shoulders of trans punk icons like Jayne County County or drag legends like Lady Bunny.
She once experienced Lady Bunny DJ in New York: from the moment Lady Bunny arrived till she left in the taxi, she was barefoot.
Bleach thinks this is great, especially considering how the Drag Race judges will shame contestants for not wearing heels. Lady Bunny just fucks shoes entirely.
“Fucking icon,” Bleach says.
I sense a longing for a pre-digital world in your work.
She sees what I’m getting at, but it’s more complex. “I don’t see it so much as longing, but an understanding of my idols that came before me. It’s love and respect for all who have created the culture I admire.”
She says that carrying heavy records in a bag over her shoulder heightened her respect for the work that went into making them. It’s an experience that’s still with her, even when she just rips something off YouTube and puts it on a USB stick.
“I prefer to DJ vinyl when I can get my records out, and the turntables are available. I DJ vinyl 1-2 times a month on my radio show and at gay bars and club nights, and play digital if I’m on the run.”
When digging, it’s always from record shop bargain buckets, from travels, and from Berlin. Like Toy Story characters, I think they just want to be played with.
“I’m not anti-technology, but I am intrigued by the fact that we’re not using our technology in the best way possible.”
Look at 90s New Queer Cinema. These kids had VCRs for the first time and made classics: Bruce LaBruce running around sucking dick, Greg Araki making insane stuff. Surely we should be making crazier stuff now that we all have video cameras in our pockets.
As we talk about it, we agree that the problem isn’t computers or even the internet. Rather, it’s apps that feed us addictive content to keep us trapped inside their gated walls.
In particular, she has a love-hate relationship with Instagram.
“I remember Instagram before the adverts. It was this place to be my queerer self, because I couldn’t be so queer in reality.”
There are old pictures on Instagram with me in high heels before I’d ever performed or entered a burlesque bar. Bleach was coming. She started there.
How do we keep tech companies from controlling us?
Here are Bleach’s simple steps to digitally detox: First, keep your phone out of your bedroom.
The bedroom is sacred. It’s where you make love and replenish your body. You should not have this dangerous device there. Just get an alarm clock.
Then turn off all notifications. “You don’t need to be notified all the time. All we have is the present moment. By getting a notification, you are taken out of that into something else, and eventually you will get lost in their hole.”
Eventually, you’ll need to delete apps off your phone entirely, because they’re, in her words, “addictive and dangerous.”
“I get it, they’re a source of work and information, and I respect that.” She points across the room: “That’s why I have an iPad over there. That’s where I intentionally go on apps that I know are necessary for my work.”
In the end, the goal should be to create the same things we create on our phone for Instagram, for our feeds, but in ways where it isn’t owned by a multinational billionaire.
This is how she came to publish her zine, Spatmag. She created and runs it in collaboration with genderfuck photographer and multimedia artist Aimé Dabbadie.
It’s basically all the content she would have posted on social media, collected in an old-school xeroxed zine. There’s no subscription; if you want it, you have to find her in real life, at the zine launches or the merch table at her shows.
“Whether you’re writing a blog or you’re genuinely making an exhibition of selfies, or whether you like food and you’re just writing about that, in the end, it’s about rewiring your brain to understand that you do actually enjoy something and it’s not just about the likes.”
And that matters for the health of the city, she says:
I genuinely believe in the art and culture of this city I live in.
Can you tell me about when you thought of putting an end to Bleach?
It was after the first BB Show at SO36. By all measures, the night was a milestone in her career. All her friends came to the legendary punk venue in Berlin dressed as her.
But once it was over, Bleach thought it might be time to let go of the signature hairdo.
I shaved off my bleach-blonde hair and had short brunette hair for 4 or 5 months, just to see what I am without Bleach.
At that time, she deleted Instagram. Since then, she has become more aware of the need to find a balance between Bleach and private life.
“Honestly, she’s a very good drag queen,” she says, talking about herself. “When she’s booked, she will steal the spotlight, and she will take all the attention. Which can also be quite aggravating in a space where people didn’t ask for it.”
When I ask about her private name, she says it’s just that: private. Instead, she shares the name I can call her if I meet her somewhere outside of drag, which I guess means without lipstick.
The name is a middle ground, she says; it’s a non-drag name that isn’t her most private self. But she tells me not to print it. She still likes to control who has access to her many selves.
“One time, I announced my private name, and people started using it when I was in drag, and it really pissed me off. Because I’m fucking Bleach. I worked hard for this, and when I’m out, this is who I am.”
Join Bleach’s mailing list at www.spatmag.net and see her upcoming exhibit and the new BB show: all details on her website.
Nikolaj Tange-Lange is a Danish-born, Berlin-based writer, musician, and adult performer. They’re the author of six novels in Danish, including Romeo & Seahorse, an open-hearted look at chemsex addiction and toxic romanticism, which is also published in English. Visit their website and follow them on Instagram.
Images: Javier Alejandro Cerrada, IG: hxxdz, Aimé Dabbadie, IG: emptymindscanfillagain
Edits: Alexander Cheves
