‘We are moving into a post-art world’: an audience with Irvine Welsh

It’s now 30 years since the release of Trainspotting. How does that feel to you and do you think the themes still translate?

It’s quite mad to think about it like that because I don’t really consider it in terms of years. I’ve moved from project to project and you're always immersed in the one that you've got on. There's no real sense of kind looking back on it or of time passing.

You've always been known as a countercultural icon. Do you think that it's still possible to be truly countercultural in these modern times?

Not really, because we’re in a media culture now rather than a street culture, and that’s not lived-in thing. These days you get some brilliant dance music made by kids that have never danced. They've never really left the bedroom. Because they have all the technology there and they can look at everything, listen to it, sample and replicate and remix and redo it and rejig it. It's the same as writing now. 

We are living in the age of AI. What impact is that going to have the on the creative arts? 

It's going to be the death of humanity! Why are we choosing to make ourselves redundant? This is such a bizarre thing in terms of media output, because we've moved into a system now whereby we can't really monetise anything. We're heading towards the end of paid work. And that ties up interestingly with Trainspotting because it was one of the first books to look at a world without paid work among the industrial working classes. And now everybody’s in this situation because automation, technology and robotics are destroying paid work. And we have that existential crisis about what we actually do? Why are we here? I think we might be moving into a post cultural, post art world where creativity is essentially redundant.

House music has always been a big theme throughout your work. Where does that come from?

I started writing songs when I was younger and I realised quite quickly that they were mainly balls, because I didn't have any musical skills. I couldn't write the music, but I could write the stories. And it kind of grew out of that. I got obsessed with raving in the late eighties and with dance music. I resisted it at first because the music had no lyrics, no story. Then I really got into it through Ecstasy basically. That drug just changed everything and I just got obsessed. I started DJing, started running clubs in Edinburgh. One was one called the Invisible Insurrection with Kevin Williamson. And I just travelled everywhere to parties. I went to Back to Basics in Leeds and became pals with Dave Beer. I became close with all these different people in that scene, so when Trainspotting came out I had this ready-made network of people to read it, to talk about it, to pass it around. It was great, because there was no social media then. So it was all word of mouth, and that’s a very powerful thing. Nobody believes anything anymore because of social media – the whole purpose of digital age is some kind of manipulation.

Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with Ibiza?

I first came in either '84 or '85. It was pre house. I came with my girlfriend and I had a mate who had come here the year before. And he was such a fucking pain in the neck. He just went on about Ibiza all the time. The only way I could shut this fucker off is actually to go myself. So I did. So I went and I just was smitten basically, 'cause we were in the north of the island and it was just so beautiful. And Ibiza still aspires to be its best. The characters here, the old-school - they’ve got it right. Tony Pike had it right. He welcomed performers with open arms and made a second home for the likes of me. Javier at Mambo still does that – he really looks after his artists. Takes me to this bar, that sunset, that restaurant. He shares his world and welcomes you into the fold, makes you feel at home. That’s a real talent. Everything else in the world is being supplanted by the commercials and by the chains, by the corporations and all that, but Ibiza manages to stay cool.