While we were over in London stomping around with the LONDON CALLING competition winners, we did a lot of cool things and we met a lot of cool people. None were cooler however than Nuha. We saw her play with her band at the Amyl and The Sniffers warehouse gig (see previous blog post) and she immediately stole all of our hearts and attention. A few days later we took ourselves along to a zine launch she was hosting for the artist collective she is involved in called Vicious Collective, where Nuha was pouring punch, talking shop and bringing the vibe. We caught up with Nuha over e-mail to find out a little more about our London muse.

Are you from London originally and what do you love most about living there?

I was born not far from London but I had my childhood in Cairo, Egypt where my heritage is from, and teenage years up north and in the midlands of the U.K. I’ve been in London ever since.  I love the diversity and acceptance of London that has to be number 1! We have an incredible music scene as a musician I’m grateful of that and we have so much greenery and nature in the city which for me is very important!

You seem to have your fingers in many creative pies. How do you describe your practice?

I’d say I’m an experimental artist. All practices are tools to achieving the end result. 

Do your creative outlets ever clash? Or do you find that they mainly fuel each other?

They used to! I’ve learnt and definitely still learning to make them be each other’s support systems.

Who are some of your major musical influences?

Birthday Party, Add N to X, Philip Glass, Einsturzende Newbauten, Abdel Halim Hafez, Brian Eno, CCCP, Princess Nokia 

Tell us a bit about Vicious Collective and the Sunday Service?

VC is an art collective I started with my long term ex boyfriend (but still my friend!) Conrad Armstrong and our friend Ashby Field. In a little warehouse unit in Limehouse. We designed and painted leather jackets, Conrad did some amazing satirical illustrations we put out, Ashby made it all legit and got us a slick website and contributed as a writer. We moved it to the Hackney Wick warehouse and recruited a few more members. We started SS 4 years ago, an experimental performance platform spread by word of mouth. It’s an unapologetic space for what it produces with respect to everyone that steps into it and puts themselves and their art out in it.

You can check out the Vicious Collective art stuff at the link below, grab yourself a zine while you're there, you won't regret it!

https://www.viciouscollective.com/

Advice for future punk-rockers?

Be the most yourself. And forget everything about what punk rock is meant to be and do something else, it’ll be the most punk rock thing you’ve ever done!