Cold War Steve in Conversation with Kit de Waal

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

This week’s guest is Birmingham’s own artist and political commentator Cold War Steve. In this week’s episode, Steve talks to writer Kit de Waal about the ways his work tells the story of Birmingham and the Midlands, the power of art call
out fascism and art as therapy.

The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast brings writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions
about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.

Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/

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Credits

Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Guest Curator: Kit de Waal
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands

TRANSCRIPT

BLF Podcast Transcription, Episode 10: Cold War Steve

Kit de Waal

Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast series. I’m Kit de Waal and I’ve worked with the Festival Director, Shantel Edwards, as Guest Curator of this year’s podcast series. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. I am very excited to introduce this week’s guest, artist and political commentator Cold War Steve; interviewing him for the Birmingham Lit Fest podcast was a career highlight for me as a long-time fan of his work. Cold War Steve is a Birmingham born and based artist who specialises in surreal, satirical and hilarious collages originally made on his phone and iPad. Since 2016 Cold War Steve’s Twitter account, with almost daily posts commenting on current social and political issues, has been a lifeline to many in these dark times. In this episode we talk about the ways his work tells the story of Birmingham and the Midlands, the power of art to call out fascism and art as therapy.

Kit de Waal

The first question I want to ask you is, do I call you Cold War Steve or do I call you Chris?

Cold War Steve

Well, you can call me either, really, but I think at the moment, I get called Steve, probably 50% of the time and then Chris, the other 50%. Even my wife and kids start calling me Steve as well, so it really doesn’t matter.

Kit de Waal

Well, I'm gonna call you Cold War Steve because that, for me, encapsulates who you are. What a privilege for me to get to interview you, I have admired your work. In fact, when did you start these pictures? How long ago?

Cold War Steve

It was March 2016.

Kit de Waal

Right. And what made you start doing them?

Cold War Steve

So Cold War Steve, my alter ego, began in March 2016. I'd done quite a few different parody type things on Twitter, just for something to do really, then that time, February, March 2016, was a quite a low point for me. I had, you know, suffered with pretty poor mental health most of my adult life, but that period was, you know, I was hospitalized. And then coming out of hospital, part of my new focus and therapy really was to channel more of my anxiety and stuff into just creating these images, quite crude at first just putting Phil Mitchell in a famous Cold War scene and just uploading it on Twitter and seeing what happened, but it got really popular really quickly. And it really, you know, that gave me something that I could focus on that was positive. And it certainly helped me enormously with my mental health and it kind of grew from there really and it didn't start becoming the kind of satirical thing that it is now, until the Brexit referendum happened. So, none of my pieces were particularly political or satirical. But then the night that the result came in, it was, you know, just felt so crushing for me. And I've diverted my anxieties into more and more satirical pieces and it's just grown from there, the more inept the government have been, the more material I've got, and it's kind of grown hand in hand with their ineptitude.

Kit de Waal

Absolutely, I can remember that I saw an interview that you gave, I think it was just after Brexit, but before the pandemic, and before the abomination that is the present government, the reincarnation as it is now and you said, yeah, you know, we'll have to see what happens, I don't think I’m going to run out of material. You could not have predicted how bad things would get because, you know, obviously, I know, so many of your pictures that were very Brexit focused, but you could actually lift some of those, you know, motifs that you've done there and it would apply to the current chaos.

Cold War Steve

Oh completely, yeah, it's just, it's almost seamless because Brexit happened, and I was always gonna keep shining a light on the government, regardless, but a lot of people were saying, look, it's done now what are you gonna do and then bang, pandemic arrived. So I was, how do I deal with this?

Kit de Waal

You couldn't have predicted that it would be this catastrophic.

Cold War Steve

And you're right in saying that it's, you know, the parallels between the two, it's almost like you've got the same people that were, you know, lying to people about getting the Brexit vote and pro Brexit and everything. They've all now moved on to being disastrous in managing you know, the country's responses to this pandemic. So, a lot the pieces are, you know, I sometimes just retweet one from Brexit days and people go, ‘oh, yeah, so on the money’ but that was like a year ago.

Kit de Waal

Yes. And it's amazing that they’re at least as much, at least as applicable now as they were then. And I saw the other day one of the tweets that you’d done, which said, ‘I've just spent an hour blocking fascists’ and a couple of choice words, which I completely applaud, which I won't say. But tell me about being attacked online by the fascists who clearly can feel the power and strength of your work.

Cold War Steve

Well, thank you for saying that because, initially when I first got people sending not particularly nice things. It was always Brexiters or Tories and stuff. And the first ones are quite jarring because I get lots, you know, I might get hundred that say ‘oh that's brilliant’, but then just one that says, you know, lefty this that and the other and it seems to have more power and it really, you know, I’ve found it quite difficult. But then I thought no, it's not going to stop me. The person I detest probably more than any in the world is Nigel Farage and what he’s done and what he continues to do and these things where he’s going out in his boat in the channel, you know, infuriates me. So, I was doing pictures that obviously send up that, and compare him...