In conversation with Luke Nickel
Keira Sinclair is an artist manager and booker, event producer, kink organizer, and dedicated raver. They stay pretty busy: Keira founded the Alchemy artist booking agency and works as a night manager for the popular queer parties Power Dance Club and Lecken.
Keira and I know each other through our work on the theater show FAGGOT*S, which they produced in 2024 and 2025.
For this Stall Talk, we catch up on a sunny Thursday after CSD, Berlin’s Pride celebration, at Sorrel in Berlin-Kreuzkölln. We talk about purposeful work, intimacy, the light and dark sides of partying, and being Daddy. Standard Thursday-in-Berlin stuff.
This is Stall Talk with Keira Sinclair.
LN: What does being a Daddy mean to you?
KS:
Daddy is my gender, my practice, and my identity all in one.
It really only clicked when I found my boy. Initially, I had to become a dominant. That happened in kink spaces, through workshops, and with play partners who helped me to learn the practicalities, and the friends who guided me through the emotional work. It was quite an existential crisis to transition from being a sub to a dom.
LN: That reminds me of a phrase that comes up with friends quite often: we have to be our own daddies before we can be someone else’s. It takes a lot of internal work! Can you pinpoint when and where the shift happened for you?
KS:
Fundamental to my development, and to the clarity I now have that Daddy is my primary archetype, was the sweaty chaos of working at Power Dance Club.
In a more masc environment, I found the freedom to develop a sense of self that was incredibly affirming. I’m very grateful for that.
LN. You wear many hats when it comes to work. What draws you to certain roles?
KS. I like places where I can add value to things that are ideas other people have, and help make them happen. I think that’s the through-line of everything I’ve been involved with. I really love the symbiotic nature of this, knowing that it wouldn’t happen without me. And it wouldn’t happen without them, because I would never have had the idea. I love seeing the dance between artists and organizers.
LN. That makes sense with your work as a booking agent too.
KS. It’s also about building connections, networking, being a travel agent, social worker, therapist, accountant. You’re holding all the pieces together when somebody’s maybe unraveling a little bit while they’re on the road.
LN. That’s a lot to hold at once!
KS.
Something I’ve come to notice recently is that, throughout my career, I’ve often been a middle point between two opposing forces.
Like, a festival and its sponsor, or an artist and their promoter. I can hold 100% of each person’s experiences and needs and help mesh them together in a way that’s meaningful for them to collaborate.
LN. It’s not an easy position. Last year I tried to do a side gig where I was basically the go-between for a tour company. It involved working with parents, students, stakeholders, hospitality, and transit. I just thought it would be too much. Ultimately, I couldn’t do it.
KS. (laughs) Some of it is sheer manipulation!
LN. “Miracle worker” is maybe what I’ll call it. Where did you learn these skills?
KS: My Papa was deeply involved in community organizing in our small fishing village where I’m from. From an early age, it’s been obvious to me that getting involved in things brings me the greatest reward in life. A feeling of belonging.
LN: How long have you been in Berlin?
KS. I’m from Scotland, but I’ve been here for 13 years.
LN. Wow! What brought you here?
KS. Honestly, Berghain.
LN. (laughs) You’re not the first person I’ve heard say this!
KS. Techno is really responsible for my whole career. After working at various music festivals and shows in the UK, I realized how FLINTA* DJs were so vulnerable when they traveled, especially early on in their career. I came to Berlin and started an internship at a booking agency.
LN. Are you still involved with that agency?
KS. Not quite. I had a breakdown a year after the pandemic, when I quit everything. Then I lived at Ponderosa in a caravan, and slowly realized I wanted to come back to music.
I set up Alchemy, my current agency. It’s the smallest booking agency ever!
LN. When you moved here 13 years ago, what would have been a three-artist lineup that you would have jumped to see?
KS. Shackleton, always. Something harder techno like a Regis or Surgeon, something British hardcore, British techno. Then for a warm-up, I guess somebody like Lena Willikens or Helena Hauff.
LN. I remember seeing Helena Hauff in Bristol around that time playing Batu’s Timedance party. At the time, so many fewer people were doing music that intense. Who would you book on your dream lineup now?
KS. People think I am a maven about music. I don’t have the ego to build lineups. I’m much more there to take the lineup someone else builds and turn it into a reality. But to answer your question, I’d still book Shackleton.
LN. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in Berlin since you moved here?
KS.
Sadly, people now see a clubnight as transactional. Like, ‘I’ve bought a ticket, therefore I shall receive an experience.’
It misses the symbiotic relationship between DJs and dancers.
LN. I haven’t been here as long as you have, but in general, I see drug choices changing a lot. I go out mostly sober, but most people are taking mephedrone. The short high means people are leaving the dance floor every 20 minutes, standing in line for the bathroom for 30 minutes, and then coming back. DJs like Ketia have spoken out on social media about what this does to expectations for a DJ’s set. People expect high-energy bangers every time they come back to the dancefloor.
KS. I could write an essay on how certain substances have changed my life, how therapeutic they are, but I couldn’t even write a tweet about what mephedrone offers anyone.
LN. A lot of your work deals with intimate contexts, including the monthly BDSM party Honey and Spice at Quälgeist. How do you see the future of intimacy, either personally or collectively?
KS. I’ve had this really radical gender exploration of masculinity and, at the same time, went from being a gold star sub to becoming a Dom.
This changes how I feel at clubs.
I’m interested in the FLINTA* people at Power Dance, a party mostly attended by cis gay men. I feel like there’s a whole new generation of people attending who are outside the norm. And I’m part of that.
I don’t want to be at a FLINTA*-only party. I want to forge a new path. Same with being on Grindr. So far, the most interesting thing has been seeing how it changes the perspective of people who already know me. I’m not only who you think I am, and the platform is also not only what you think it is.
LN. In a sense, the app almost becomes like a piece of clothing, in a way, a way of showing people this is how you see yourself; therefore, this is how others could see you. Have you had any negative pushback on what is traditionally quite a cis-man-oriented app?
KS.
I’ve only had positive experiences on Grindr. There was one person out of hundreds who was like, ‘Are you a woman?’ I think in the grand scheme of things, that’s pretty good!
LN. How about intimacy on a social level?
KS. Spaces are disappearing. Losing Fortuna, a venue and community space formerly in Neukölln, which hosted Social Pleasure Center, which I was involved with, has left a huge absence in my life.
That was such an easy space of non-prescribed intimacy. It’s very hard to find that, you know?
Like, I don’t want to join a choir that meets every Tuesday. I don’t want to make a commitment to a project. There was something special about having a physical situation that brought many of us together with similar worldviews. It made it safe to have a little chat with somebody you didn’t know, or see a friend that you don’t have time to go for coffee with.
LN. I guess you’re also referring to the idea of a third space, a place that isn’t work or home where you can meet people. We don’t have so many of those in Berlin, especially if you want something less intense than a party. I try to practice just going to a party for three hours, saying the hellos, having a little dance, and leaving. But it’s not easy.
KS. I’m the opposite.
If I’m not out for 24 hours, I don’t bother. I’m a very slow wheel to get turning, so it takes me a while to get to the place where I feel comfortable and good in the zone. But once I’m there, I can stay there for two days.
And then I would like a nice afters to, like, come down.
LN. Do you still go to the afters?
KS. That’s something that’s actually changed a lot since moving to Berlin. In London, there was a big afters culture, and then I moved here, and I was like, oh, the club is open forever, so I will leave when I’m done. So I stopped going to afters until I became kind of radicalized as queer. Then it became going to afters that were usually double the length of the party.
LN. And now?
KS. Right now, I’m in a kind of post-afters world where my friendship group has shifted and changed. This summer has been a constant, like, misfiring of never catching the right combination of people at the right time. Also, my new lover means I’m going home with him, and that’s a whole different—I’ve never done that before.
LN. (laughs) The one-on-one afters! Any projects coming up that I can hype?
KS. Other than my agency, Alchemy, I also co-organize a monthly BDSM party called Honey and Spice at Quälgeist. It’s been running for 20 years, so I didn’t start it; we’re just the current stewards of it. It’s a labor of love, but it’s a major life hack for me, because I have to go every month even when I don’t feel like it. And now my kink practice has really changed my life. Raving will always be a priority, but kink is now maybe more important. Nothing else has shaken my commitment to rave for the last 20 years!
LN: What is the biggest draw about kink?
KS: Community. We create, hold, and support each other in actualizing ourselves. We belong together.
Follow Keira Sinclair on Instagram, and see links to all their projects here.
Dr Luke Nickel is an award-winning Canadian multidisciplinary artist, writer, and composer living in Berlin. His interests include experimental music, speculative fiction, roller coasters, and contemporary performance. He’s eager to write about people and practices on the margins of the mainstream. Follow him on Instagram and visit his site.
Images: Mara Menzel + additional photos courtesy of the artist
Edits: Alexander Cheves
