By Alexander Cheves
Berlin-based DJ handbag, aka Tal Se, started DJing at 44, which is hard to believe when you hear—or see—her play.
At the decks, she is pure joy: tongue-out, smiling, making peace signs, radiating the easy confidence of a seasoned professional.
She recently did a mix for SEVEN, the Berlin-based queer music label (the one Hinterhaus is entangled with), and she is playing at SEVEN’s end-of-summer garden party at OXI.
Now a core member of Ooze Collective, which operates between Stockholm and Berlin, her sound blends vocal house, UK bass, and garage with an extra dose of industrial edge.
Before her DJ career, Tal was a longstanding presence in Berlin’s underground queer scene. Before she ever touched a mixer, she had already spent years working the door at Berghain and the gay sex club Laboratory—handling body checks and selection, watching over the dance floor, and stepping in when things turned dangerous.
She has pulled overdosing dancers out of clubs. She has kept people safe.
Her day job is as a social worker—a position she hesitates to discuss in detail—but one that nevertheless makes her “see a lot.”
I work a lot with harm reduction. I see the good side of drugs and the not-so-good side, too.
As a well-known face at Berghain, she is, for better or worse, someone Berlin ravers recognise on the dance floor.
Does being a bouncer make it harder to party in Berlin?
Yes, she says.
“Sometimes I just want to be another dancer. Just someone happy. Or a little fucked up,” she laughs.
This was challenging in particular because the club she was associated with was Berghain, which holds its own mystique in the minds of Berlin partiers. And with bouncers and door selectors in general, she says there is an undeniable “power position.”
When she just wanted to rave, people would either avoid her on the dance floor or treat her differently, thinking that any interaction, positive or negative, might affect their future chances of getting into the legendary club.
She left the Berghain job just last year.
So much of my life was defined by Berghain. It’s been strange and liberating being away from it, but it was the right time.
Making music came unexpectedly—she’s only been DJing for a year.
Why did you start DJing?
A friend in Ooze Collective asked why she wasn’t playing with them.
“I said, I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
She had always been involved in nightlife, but DJing was new. “I made a set and tried it out. Two weeks later, I played my first party.”
The response was instant. “People said, ‘You’re kidding us.’ But no—it really was my first time.”
She felt comfortable behind the decks in a way that surprised even her. “I had never done it before, but something clicked. The techniques made sense. It just flowed.”
Since then, DJing has become a central part of her life, reshaping how she relates to music and herself.
“The connection has gotten deeper and deeper,” she says. “Before, I promoted a lot of industrial and hard techno, but that’s not where I come from. I’m from the early ’90s. I’m from house music and minimal. House music had such a big impact on me growing up.”
That return to house felt both natural and necessary. “There’s a reason I stopped doing the dark, heavy, hard stuff,” she says. “House music makes me feel younger and happier. It makes me pop. It’s survival energy. It gets me through.”
People think house is just joy—and yes, it’s joyful. But it’s also about empowerment. Sometimes it goes to dark places. Sometimes it’s grief. House music says: Yes, life is hard, but you can fight and move through it. You can have joy even when you’re struggling.
Can I ask about your DJ name?
The name “DJ handbag” came from her early sets, which leaned toward what she calls “handbag house”—a term that describes the glittery, vocal-heavy house music of late-’80s disco and early-’90s club scenes.
“That was the base,” she says. “But now I’m exploring more. I love bass house. It’s a different energy, but still, I always come back to vocals.”
She adds: “I’m really into gospel house. Even if I’m playing something different, there’s always that voice. Always that emotional weight. That’s what I call queer house.”
Does Berlin feel like home?
DJ handbag would not say exactly where she’s from originally.
“I’m from the Baltic sea,” she says, “but the German part of the Baltic Sea.”
Hearing this, the image came to mind of a mermaid rising from the water to live on land among humans, which feels accurate.
She first came to Berlin as a teenager.
“Around 15 or 16,” she says, she was drawn to the energy of the city. “There was always a connection to Berlin. I came in the ’90s, when things were different here. There was this feeling of underground freedom. Because of its political history, there was real survival energy in the city.”
She isn’t sure how long she’s lived in Berlin. “At least 15 years,” she says, and shrugs. “But honestly? I don’t know anymore. Time is strange. It’s shifting.”
What she’s more sure of is how much the city has changed—and her relationship with it.
I used to glorify Berlin. It was a place where everything felt possible. You had the underground, and high society, and different kinds of high society. Everything was cute and sexy. It had that slogan—‘poor but sexy’—which really felt true.
How is Berlin different now?
She sighs. “Well, some of the sexiness is gone. Rising rents. Money. The little places that made Berlin magical are disappearing, and the people who built them are being pushed out.”
She admittedly sees herself as part of that change.
“We’re all complicit in gentrification,” she says. “It’s not something happening to us. We’re all doing it, and that’s what makes it so hard. You love the city, you build something here, and then you realise you’re helping change it into something else.”
What does Berlin need more of?
She doesn’t hesitate.
“Berlin needs more inclusivity. And not the surface-level kind. Not the word everyone throws around. It needs real inclusivity, built into the spaces and the way we throw parties. Right now, a lot of people are being excluded.”
She brightens when she mentions places that are doing it right—venues that are collectively run, artist-oriented, and community-led.
“There’s a space in Neukölln, around Sonnenallee, a secret spot, where collectives share a venue and rotate their events. That’s real community. That’s what we need more of. More places where people who don’t fit in anywhere can still belong.”
Still, she’s honest about the broader picture. “Berlin is struggling,” she says.
“And I don’t know what the next version of the city is. It seems like other cities, like London and New York, had their collapse, bottomed out, and then something new started. Drag shows, underground scenes, real regeneration.”
Berlin hasn’t had that break. It’s just slowly burning out. It feels unclear where we’re going.
She’s not cynical—she still loves the city. But she wants more for it.
“Berlin needs more layers,” she says. “And it needs one layer in particular—real inclusivity. Not just as branding but as an authentic practice.”
Can we talk more about your job as a social worker?
Her day job involves supporting people living on the street, many of whom are navigating substance use.
She also works with Sonar, a Berlin-based harm reduction initiative that partners with parties, clubs, and festivals to provide supplies, information, and care.
That overlap between her professional life and her music life makes her uniquely positioned to speak on a subject many are still uncomfortable addressing: how to take care of one another in a scene where substance use is widespread.
One of the first things she wants to challenge is the language.
I think we need to stop using terms like ‘healthier lifestyle’. What does that even mean? Healthier than what? By what standard? Who decides? Everyone has their own version of what makes them feel good, safe, or okay. Sometimes people do substances. Sometimes people go to dark places. That’s part of it.
What matters more to her is how we respond when that happens.
“In Berlin, people talk a lot about ‘safe spaces,’” she says. “But nothing is ever really safe. People change. Energy shifts. You can feel fine in a room one second, and totally unsafe the next. That’s just how it is. What we need instead are braver spaces.”
What are braver spaces?
She says the concept of “braver spaces” comes from the U.S.—specifically from academic and activist spaces that focus on accountability and care.
A braver space, she says, is one where safety isn’t promised, but where the community takes responsibility for what happens when safety breaks down.
It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being present. If something goes wrong, you’re not alone. The community is there. We learn together. We mess up together. But we take care of each other for real, not just on the surface.
She believes this kind of community accountability is still missing in many nightlife spaces. Too often, she says, it falls apart when things get difficult—for example, when responsibility is just dumped on care teams.
“We’re good at being together when things are easy. But when someone needs help, that’s when scenes disappear. People get overwhelmed. Or they just don’t want to deal with it.”
Her solution is to normalise harm reduction as part of the experience—something that’s always available.
How can clubs normalise harm reduction?
One suggestion she has: Put clinically trained mental health professionals in nightlife spaces, and empower all clubs to offer access to safe-use kits or testing kits, where party-goers can test the safety of their drugs, find sterile, medical-grade using equipment, and so on.
This is “building care directly and intentionally into the club experience,” she says.
We need to stop acting like shame is a strategy. Shame isolates people. I’ve seen more people harmed by shame than by the substances themselves. When someone is using, and they feel like they have to hide it, they’re in danger. But if they can say, ‘Hey, I’m about to take this—can you be with me? Or can I test it to make sure it’s pure?’ That’s a totally different space.
She has another vision for what this could look like: a city-wide initiative where, once a month, every major venue in Berlin hosts a sober Friday. Not one party in one venue, but all of them—together.
“That way, people don’t have to choose between music and sobriety,” she says. “They can still go where they want to go, still be with their friends, and still feel part of the scene.”
It’s not just about sobriety, though—it’s about building a culture where people don’t have to opt out in order to feel safe.
To illustrate this, she talks about her experience going to the opera—something she has loved to do in Berlin for as long as she’s been here. She used to go often—“Like, every weekend!”—but opera tickets have steadily gotten more and more expensive.
She only goes to the opera if she can sit in the first row and see the performance up close, study every detail, and those tickets are simply too expensive now to buy very often.
“But,” she says, “my vision for Berlin nightlife is like that. First row for everyone. Always.”
What was transitioning later in life like?
She transitioned later than many of the trans people she meets today.
I started transitioning when I was 39, maybe 40, not like all the young girls. I’m old.
She laughs as she says this, but she doesn’t deflect. Age, for her, is both meaningful and freeing.
For younger people transitioning, I get the sense that the transition feels like it must be rushed. Of course, there are things you want—tits, surgeries, hormones—but those things take time. There’s really no rush.
One benefit of transitioning later: the pressure to “pass” is something she does not feel.
“I’m so much more relaxed about being trans than a lot of the kids I see,” she says. “When I was younger, I probably would have cared more about passing,” she says. “But now, in my mid-forties, I just think, fuck it. I don’t need to pass. I’m not chasing that. I exist how I exist.”
She’s open about the fact that dysphoria hasn’t gone away. It lingers. Some days it flares up hard. But something else has shifted, too—her relationship to herself.
“Now, if I have a hard day, I can still say: fuck it. Today’s not great. But I deserve myself. That’s the difference.”
What advice would you give a younger trans person starting their transition?
I tell her that, inevitably—maybe even because of this interview—she will be a role model to someone out there starting their transition. At first, she shakes her head at this question.
“I’m not good at advice,” she says. “I fucked up too much in my life.”
But then, after a pause, she offers this:
I would say: do it your way. Do it at your own speed. There’s no rush. There’s no one right way to do this. And if you’re struggling, remember you’re not the only one. Other people are going through the same shit. You’re not alone.
“In ten years, everything will feel so different. You’ll look back and laugh. Or at least, you’ll see how far you’ve come.”
Throughout our conversation, one of the quiet throughlines in her answers is a deep self-respect. It does not feel loud or performative—it’s earned. So, I ask her one of my favorite interview questions.
Who is the most inspiring person you’ve ever met?
She looks me directly in the eye and says: “Me.”
“Not in a narcissistic way. But in a real way. I’ve gone through a lot.”
I’ve made it through a lot. And even the gay boy version of myself from the past—I love that person. I’m proud of that person. That person fucked up a lot, but they made someone great. They made me.
Here, I admit, I was close to tears.
Though I did not tell her this, I wished every queer person could say something like that. Though she did not specifically state her age, DJ handbag is, by her own account, no longer young, but young in spirit—and in that moment, I saw her as a burgeoning queer elder, someone who will guide and inspire many young people. I wish we all could feel that kind of self-love. Sometimes we just have to be taught how.
She says she still finds inspiration from that former “cocky gay boy” version of herself—she looks back on the confidence, the refusal to be told no, of her former self, and uses it.
Back then, I had this energy. This ‘fuck society’ attitude. When I started transitioning, I suddenly found myself insecure in ways I had not been before. Can I go out with my shirt off? Can I go to a sauna with this body? I thought about what my former self would do and said, fuck it. And I did it.
She pauses. “There’s a lot in my past I’m proud of. And I try to carry that with me.”
Can you say more about working the door at Berghain?
DJ handbag estimates she spent ten years working the door at one of Berlin’s most mythologised venues.
“I was there a long time,” she says. “It shaped me in a lot of ways. I learned how to read people, how to read someone’s energy, and how to protect a space.”
The job was not easy. It required presence, flexibility, and an emotional vigilance that most people don’t see when they approach the door person.
People think working the door is about power. And it is. But it’s also about responsibility. You see someone walk up, and you ask: Are they here for the right reasons? Will they take care of the space? Will they take care of others? Sometimes you don’t know, but you have to decide.
She admits that, to survive it, she had to become someone else at work—someone colder and harder.
“I created a different version of myself,” she says.
The one who worked the Berghain door wasn’t the real me. That was a character I played because you’re performing authority at the door.
At first, it worked. The persona gave her confidence.
But over time, the cracks showed. “I started feeling numb,” she says. “Disconnected. I could walk in with the worst mood and still smile, still laugh, still do the job. But it wasn’t me anymore. It was just someone I became to get through the night.”
She began to question the whole framework—the way clubs talked about “selection,” the idea that curating a crowd meant turning people away.
I don’t like the word ‘selection’. What if it was about something else entirely? What if, instead of deciding who gets in, we just greeted people? What if the person at the door was there to welcome you—to say, ‘Hi, we’re happy you’re here tonight’? What if, instead of just checking for drugs, they worked with people to make the drug-taking experience safer?
She describes her ideal version of the door as “greeting, not gatekeeping.”
It’s a shift in posture, not just language. “It changes the energy,” she says. “If you build a party with a clear intention—if you know who it’s for and market it appropriately—then you don’t have to exclude people so much. You just invite the right ones.”
She admits that this responsibility falls more to party promoters than door selectors, and she suggests that maybe there should be some kind of fusion between those two roles—maybe promoters should be more involved in door work.
If you’re creating the right kind of invitation, you don’t have to stand there judging people. They’ll know if the space is for them and they’ll show up accordingly.
Can you say more about Ooze Collective?
These days, DJ handbag is part of Ooze, a Berlin/Stockholm-based queer collective whose founder, Daniel Berj, moved to Berlin about three years ago.
She wasn’t there at the beginning, when Ooze was founded, but now she’s fully embedded—playing parties, shaping the vibe, and helping it find its footing in a new city.
“Ooze is Daniel’s baby,” she says. “He started it in Stockholm and brought it here.”
She has a glowing look when she mentions Daniel—a look of love and admiration.
Daniel and I are best friends. Soul-mates. Partners. Whatever you want to call it. If you ask me again who inspires me, I’d have to say Daniel. We work together now, and we believe in the same things.
That shared belief—about the purpose of nightlife, community, and care—is what makes Ooze Collective feel sustainable. “We want to throw parties that feel good,” she says. “Not just cool and edgy, but honest.”
Tell me about DURCH.
Before Ooze, she co-founded DURCH, a high-speed industrial techno party and music label. It had a strong run, with celebrated bookings, a defined aesthetic, and a name that carried weight in Berlin’s underground.
Their biggest international hit was “Satan was a baby boomer” by Brutalismus 3000, which was played “everywhere, from Ibiza to Athens.” But when it came time to grow, she and her collaborators made a choice.
“We had to decide: do we go commercial, or do we shut it down?” she says. “And we said, fuck it. Shut it down.”
She doesn’t say this with regret—quite the opposite.
“I’m so proud that we didn’t go the commercial route. And also, the culture around hard techno now—the TikTok stuff, the influencer DJs—is not for me. Especially when it goes commercial, it gets very macho, very toxic, and honestly, I find it a bit disgusting. But that was our sound when we were at our most successful, so I’m glad we stopped when we did.”
Still, the experience shaped her. It taught her how to build something good, and how to let it go.
What makes a party good?
“Sometimes the music is good, but something’s off,” she says. “People are there, but they’re not there. You can feel it. They’re watching. They’re performing. And no one’s really taking care of each other.”
What makes a space come alive, she says, is when people show up with real energy and presence—when they commit to bringing something to the party, not just consuming it.
You know when a party is working. You feel the pulse of the room. And it’s not just about the music—it’s about the people. Are they dancing together? Are they checking in on each other? Are they actually there?
She’s seen this magic moment happen more often in places outside Berlin lately. “Barcelona, Athens, Manchester—even Stockholm,” she says.
“Those scenes are thriving right now. People don’t fly into Berlin like they used to. It’s too expensive. And techno has spread to other cities now, so Berlin is now in competition with them. It used to be that, if you were in London, you had to fly to Berlin to go to good parties. But now there are good parties in London.”
That, too, is part of Berlin’s drop in party tourism—perhaps an inevitable one. When techno culture spreads to other cities, it means the techno capital has fewer people on its dance floors.
“Berghain never really feels empty,” she says. “But some Sundays now, the crowd is much smaller than it was in years past.”
When she goes to other cities, something shifts.
I dance more when I’m out of Berlin. I feel free. In Berlin, people watch me. I have a face, you know? There’s pressure. But in a city where no one knows me? I can just be another dancer.
She smiles and adds, “And that’s still the dream, right? Just to be.”
DJ handbag is performing at the Ooze Collective party on 16th August at Kwia Berlin and at SEVEN Saturday (Open Air) on 30th August at the OXI Garden.
On Friday, 5th September, she is playing all night long at Cunt Core at Zu Klappe, where she is raising money for new tits. She is joined for b2b sessions by a glittering array of friends from Queer Berlin, including ADAM MUNNINGS, Carly Zeng, Daniel Berj, Dirty Daddy Don, DJ Hyaluron, DJ Love Me, DJ Pheromone, FLEMISH FETISH, Glem Sesh, GIA, Mashyno, Shaleen, Sparkly Pony, Stina Francina, and X Tin.
You can help Tal with her Fundraiser for her gender-affirming surgery on GoFundMe right now.
Her latest DJ mix for SEVEN is on SoundCloud and in video on YouTube. She is on Instagram and SoundCloud.
Words: Alexander Cheves.
Images: Mara Menzel, with additional photos provided by Tal Se
