‘Liquid Sky’: The film that inspired the electroclash club scene
The likes of I-F, DJ Hell, Miss Kittin and Fischerspooner are related to the electroclash club scene and music genre, an intriguing concoction of 1980s electro, new wave, synthpop and techno. A true pastiche of a movement, there is a deep performative aspect to the genre that undoubtedly takes its aesthetic inspiration from the independent science fiction film Liquid Sky.
Liquid Sky was released in 1982 and was directed by Slava Tsukerman. It serves as a fascinating insight into the dark underbelly of the avant-garde scene of New York City in the early 1980s. Featuring a pulsing electronic soundtrack, visuals of bright neon and a narrative that verges on the border of a surreal dream, Liquid Sky is a film that overloads the senses and tantalises its audience.
On the surface, there is a comedic exploration of the nature of sex and drug use amid an alien invasion. As hopeful model Margaret and her nemesis Jimmy, who are both heavy cocaine users, make their way through the gritty and hedonistic landscape of New York’s underground club scene, aliens descend on Earth, searching for the chemical released during orgasm.
The models, along with a swathe of other intense characters, find themselves wrapped up in their addictions and obsession and experience paranoia to the highest degree as the alien’s victims’ bodies soon begin to pile up in a narrative of genuine uniqueness.
Not only is there an alluring subversive nature to Liquid Sky, but its visuals are largely what help to capture the hallucinatory feel of the film. With some of the most vivid use of colour in 20th-century cinema and strange positioning of the cameras, the aesthetics of Tsukerman’s film helps to create a parallel with the kind of damaged psyches its characters possess.
Beyond the androgyny of Margaret and Jimmy, there is an examination of the hedonistic excess of the 1980s, reflecting the endless consumerism and lack of moral concern of the era, while the aliens’ hunt for the orgasmic chemical is representative of the AIDs epidemic that was ravaging the underground gay community at the time.
Most importantly, though, from a cultural perspective, Liquid Sky made a deep impression on a swathe of significant artists, including David Bowie, Grace Jones and the kind of cyberpunk science fiction movies that followed throughout the 1980s, a testament to the film’s artistic prowess.
Electroclash, which largely emerged in the late 1990s with a focus on 1980s electro and 1990s techno, was heavily inspired by the visual aesthetic of the film too, which goes further to show the unlikely yet incredible impact that Tsukerman made with his unique and very strange work of cinema.
