Intense and deep life produces intense and deep art, and the many subjective and collective subconscious whispers and choirs of her (and our) ancestors and cultures can be heard and seen in the amazing art channelled through Darja Kazimira. This interview was a real pleasure.
Sveiki & Gamarjoba Darja! How are you on this day in May of 2022? Where are writing this from, and how is the spring over there?
Salami, Antti! Oh, I'm in Tbilisi right now. May this year turned out to be very changeable and not typical for the local latitudes. Nature seemed to be immersed in an excitement identical to the anxiety frozen in the world of people at this time. In a short period, we had several earthquakes, the weather swirled from more typical conditions in early autumn to the merciless summer sun here.
Most of all I like to watch Mtkvari now. In the mountains, all the waterfalls and streams opened, rainwater came down from the heights and they all rushed into the river. Now the water is full of clay, stones, collapsed trees, and bones which went through our city in a powerful stream threatening to overflow its banks. Thanks to the water roads in the mountain forests, you can find many valuable things: skins from cow carcasses, skulls, horns of forest goats, skeletons of stray dogs. Swamp grasses and mountain flowers rose from the ground. In general, everything that I love. Spring is a sacred time for me. I always perceive it through the prism of some ecstatic state. There is an amazing power of life and death in it, when all living things are trying to get out of a dream, and something in this dream has died.
The roots and fruits of a new life are spreading over the dead bodies. New landscapes appear because somewhere mountains continue their formation. It always seems to me that this intensity is inaccessible for our human nature, such a large-scale experience of its beginning and end, as an endless act of transformation. We are so sewn to our existence, to our consciousness and knowledge, that this is the unceremonious march of nature between different phases, states of own body. This is all largely closed and inaccessible to us.
You are originally from Latvia (if I've understood correctly), but now reside in Tbilisi, Georgia? What can you tell me of your road though life, from childhood to where you are now? How would you compare these two countries and cultures in general?
Yes, I was born in Latvia, in Jelgava, beyond a favorable life. I was a problem, a troubled teenager, a marginal among the same marginals. I've done a lot of unpleasant things. I played with all the stages of radical ideas. Creating "evil" in parallel, I constantly wrote music. I have been through all kinds of violence - from sexual to domestic. And I created it myself too, among other things. I saw a lot of death. By the age of 15, I fell "ill" with nihilism and the ideas of Alexei Kirillov (a character from Dostoevsky's Demons who glorified suicide as the main ontological protest). At the initiative of the school administration, for all my "ideological merits" I was exiled to the arms of the masters of mental health. So, there my therapist took over for me, like her own child. She took me to live and study in Riga. There I became interested in sience-research activities (such contests for schoolchildren) and every year I unexpectedly began to write victorious works on the philosophy of the XX century and Russian literature of the same period. In addition, in Riga, there was a good place for my music in the theatrical and new poetic environment. At the lyceum where I studied, I was even given two halls specifically for my music practices.
Then I went to study in St. Petersburg, at the Department of Art History. On the very first day of my studies, I met a beautiful girl who persuaded her parents (gallery owners) to give me the night-time in their space for my music. However, at that moment a new plague seized me and I began to play hard with alcoholism, drugs, and extreme sexual practices. Kirillov's company was replenished with Maldoror, Gods, and my "friends". I think I was looking for my end in them and each situation was like a knife edge. I was just collecting some marginal monsters. The funniest thing is that after all my "satanic" nights, I always came back to the academy with some research works and was known there as a cool young specialist in my field. Although, in essence, I was just simulating on paper the value of my thoughts, flirting with the world of humanities, exploiting its weaknesses.
By the way, the main dictator in my mind was my music which required some radical turns, big thoughts, and I decided that I would just bury it, but this idea ended with ecstatic self-devouring, as you can see. Because I was stupid, lazy, I was not ready. So, I once again saw enough deaths, craziness and tragedies. I made my sacrifices, and decided that this time the choice of the path should be unambiguous and radical. It took several years. Tbilisi in this chain of events became exactly the final place where my mind found itself after going a long way toward liberation from the convulsive contractions of self-destruction. I want to say right away that I really appreciate my path and am not ready to give up any of its chapters. Being dirt is sometimes very useful. My story could only be like this, I am absolutely convinced of it.
Your first releases under your name are from 2016 (according to my findings), but I assume you have been doing music before that as well? What kind of music were you into as child and in your teens, for example?
Yes, I've been doing music all my life. My relationship with sound was very specific. They are best characterized by an extremely comical story of my mother about how in infancy only the hum of an old Soviet vacuum cleaner could put me to sleep. Over time, this tendency has only developed. I didn't like listening to the music around me. It was disgusting, such as Pugacheva, Malilin, Kadysheva. I only remember the stupid romance about the death of Isadora Duncan and gypsy songs, which I really liked at a young age. As it was, I only listened to the environment in which the music was placed. Let's say a car is driving and a song is playing in it. The sound rushes, bounces off the surrounding buildings, flies down the street and it excited me to goosebumps. This sound lived its random life so organically and fully. And it was these constructions that I used for my first recordings. I have never been interested in straightforward musicality, music, or its thoughtful writing (musical notation). I have always lived in the eidos of improvisation.
I remember that I heard in my first recordings an endless number of "melodies", "sound compositions", although in fact it probably differed little from white noise. And my grandmother and mother also sang very beautifully. These are two women with difficult destinies. And some days, sometimes they are standing behind household chores, and as if in this routine there is a cherished moment for spiritual sadness. Suddenly a song is heard from their lips, this sound was poured with such depth and despair, and since then I have definitely realized for myself that this song form performed by a human voice is such full-fledged music that it does not need additional music, but it is in dire need of a sound environment. And then I was just looking for that very environment, for my voice, for my thoughts. I went through a lot of experimentation with genres, forms and eventually came to what you can hear today.
Your latest album deals with topics such as the relationship of Medea and Jason, sacred and primitive violence, polarities, balance and chaos. And violence is something that comes across in your art in a very spiritual way, being one of the most ancient ways of producing trancelike states of course. As pain can be sexual in nature, but also purifying, cathartic, ego-shattering and so much more, you are dealing with all of these with your art?
Violence and pain really have many faces. I think that I immerse myself in each of the hypostases of these phenomena, sometimes considering some of them individually, and somewhere the totality is important to me because this is the organic state of a particular phenomenon. Let's use a primitive example: in physical pain, sexual ecstasy can very often be found, because one and the other are the apotheoses of physicality, tools for achieving affectivity. As you correctly noted, mostly I still study violence and pain in my art in the context of the concepts of "sacred" and "ritual". However, this differentiation objectively relates only to the ancient world in connection with the paradigmatic features of our ancestor's thinking. But these days, these edges are already excessively blurred.
After all, we no longer use spiritual contracts with ancestors and Gods, subjecting ourselves to painful initiations, and sacrificing our children to an immaterial voice, for the benefit of the stability and development of the body of our society, identity, etc.
You know, I have studied a lot of materials about modern cannibalism. In a large number of cannibals, a lot of ritual-mythological features can be observed in the pathological model of their thinking. Nevertheless, upon in-depth analysis, we see that this is an illusion, a space created by delirium, primitiveness, cruelty, and a low level of intellect. But in the eyes of a cannibal, this is a ritual of devouring the Mother, strength, energy, the gift of death, the cult of purification, etc. Well, how can we navigate in this situation and what terms should we use?! And this is where my favorite part begins. Because, as I noted above, every facet of violence and pain is important to me, including the most primitive brutality. And when I immerse it in my contexts, in my art, I don't solve any questions here, I don't answer them, I don't ask final characteristics, ontological spheres. I just record every stage, starting from delirium, ending with sacred ecstasy, catharsis. But they can also be illusory, it can be the fruit of an inflamed psyche.
I want to clarify: dealing with the topic of violence, I do not revel in it, I do not give it approval, I do not want it. In my value system, violence is an integral part of existence, like life and death. It does not need a special invitation or our consent. We will never be able to escape from it or get rid of it. Such is our tragedy, such is our fate and it embraces everything that exists. In my art, I also regularly emphasize this very idea. The idea of endless, vulnerability of every second, in front of a huge, intangible force that performs its transformations, and often it is not at all different from a meat grinder. Gods, we don't even need significant examples here. For example, it has already been proven that insects experience pain and fear no different from human ones. But we continue to poison them, to kill them consciously or unconsciously. And we also pull out weeds, behead flowers, dismember trees, eat the meat of slaughtered animals and commit other violent acts against the environment, and I sincerely do not believe that any living being is capable of living differently. I just don't believe in the idea of a God-man, but I believe in the commonality of all things, and this is where the concept of equivalence comes from. Only this is not a manifesto for the equal rights of everything and everyone, but a tale that we are all the same in the grave - we need to understand the difference here.
Relating to the previous question, the description of your latest album also mentions the twins which are in some way present most likely in mythologies all over the world, among them the areas touched by the so-called Proto-Indo-Europeans in the form of the "Divine twins". Are you usually deliberately touching upon something very universal and very "European" (most familiar to us) at the same time with your art?
I love European thinkers, I love the ancient philosophical classics and, of course, they have become the system of symbols, and landmarks that I use. So, this is a very logical, natural "consequence". In the case of Medea, it's not even about the tragedy itself or the divine twins. This is just one of the facets. A clear, distinct symbol.
For me, Medea was an important point in the middle of the path through Euripides, which for many years I could not mark, or emphasize. The researcher of the philosophy of anarchism, Pyotr Ryabov, said that the tragedies of Euripides are purely sadistic in nature and all the characters in the works of the ancient tragedian are infected with this act of sadism: gods, people, fate. In turn, Nietzsche saw in Euripides the end of the Greek tragedy. After all, it was Euripides who rejected the pathos and ontology of Aeschylus and Sophocles, turned the sublime, tragic treasury of the Hellenes into a harsh existential realism, where the main characters are now equal to their words and correspond to their actions like everyday life, and not the metaphorical world of myth that still exists in the cosmos of Euripides, but as the German philosopher rightly said, we can already see here is the disassembled body of ontology in the hands of a pathologist. But Euripides still revered ontology, just as if washing it from the Hellenic pathos, admitting that the poverty and horror of human existence and the divine meaning do not contradict each other, but echo each other. There is an identity in them.
And as I mentioned above, this is the thought that I am trying to put into the body of my creativity every time. The concept of suffering in his universe is a very lonely feeling, it does not always meet its catharsis, it does not always discover God in itself. Suffering can be divine fun, it can be meaningless, it may not imply anabasis (ascent). And so, starting from Monochromia and ending with Medea Forgives Jason, I tried to express this.
At the same time, you need to understand that now we are discussing the conceptual pillars of my brainchild. But I constantly emphasize that this process is completely separate from the actual process of "creating" my music. When I'm immersed in sound, my head just turns off, I lose all connection with reality, and even more so with thought. It's like a black hole appears in my head and I fall into it. There are no time, space, or themes. Coming out of there, I probably feel something close to amnesia, which leads me to the highest point of mental and spiritual fatigue. Sometimes it can even be like a dream with open eyes. And all the ideas, thoughts, concepts - they live in another world where I can think. That is, far beyond the music.
Speaking of Proto-Indo-European mythology, those twins are still present even here in Finland for example in various designs of jewelry, usually depicted as or with horses. I'm sure this is familiar to you from Latvia as well, as we share many mythological and etymological similarities together, from the Kokles (Kantele) to the Sky God Deivas (the Finnish word for sky is "Taivas") and the Storm God Perkons (here known as "Perkele"). From our perspective, this is due to the Finno-Ugrians merging with the Balts (who were of Indo-European origin) at some point before travelling further north, but how much have you studied the ancient Latvian culture, as I believe the studies have progressed a lot during the last twenty years, in the form of published books and so on?
Oh, I'm afraid that if I start actively engaging in the topic of discussion of Proto-Indo-European mythology now, then we will come to a whole free monograph in our discussions. At the end of which it will be necessary to point out that the study and interpretation of myth today is one of the most illusory activities in the world because myth is the fruit of the emerging human consciousness (the process of cognition of the world) and it seems to me that we will never be able to touch it to the full extent.
I'll digress from the topic a little now, but I want to show clearly what I'm trying to say. I have a friend who is an Egyptologist professor at Tbilisi State University. However, the erudition of this person covers other cultures, including, of course, Georgian. And thanks to him, I only found out this year that the main Georgian epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin, which was written by Shota Rustaveli in the 12th century - today translated into many languages of the world - is still partially not responding to decoding, because the figurative and semantic keys are lost. A literary monument of the Middle Ages, separated from us by only nine centuries. And now imagine, what can we really say objectively about earlier materials?!
But I will return to the answer to your question. Yes, I study Latvian mythology and regularly try to collect materials, artifacts, the keepers of which are also members of my family. My ancestors were very unusual people and were representatives of a variety of nationalities - Ukrainians, Latvians, Russians, Romanians, Germans, etc. But on my mother's side, through her father, we got a huge Latgale cultural heritage, almost from the time of the founding of Latgale itself. These people were icon painters, priests, healers, masters of traditional linen and wool products, including sacred purposes. And I just couldn't let this story die. Especially after ideology carefully worked on it in Soviet times, turning it into a kind of shameful past of our kind and attempts to issue a ticket to Siberia.
My grandmother also brought a lot of materials. Her parents were dispossessed Russian nobles who fled to the forests of Latgale. They settled in Voynovo. There she managed to find pagan village rituals, traditions, and also get acquainted with authentic Latgalian folklore. Well, in general, Latvian culture tends to return to its roots. Just a few weeks ago I saw an official neo-pagan sanctuary almost near my house, with a full schedule of holidays, important days and related gods, reconstruction of idols, etc. Another vivid example from my memory is a place in Latgale called "The Mountain of the King of Christ". It seems that we should be talking about a Christian monument, but in essence, it is a hill completely filled with huge wooden idols, as if you are falling into another pagan sanctuary. It seems to me that this place perfectly demonstrates the conflict between the spirit of this land, entirely woven from myths, gods, spells, sacred song forms, and on the other hand, attempts to put on the clothes of secular Christianity.
But books and research. Yes, of course, there are more and more of them form the last 10 years. These are mostly monographs. I prefer to pay more attention to works about music and burial traditions. I can mention among them the book by Anda Beitane dedicated to the ancient vocal Latvian music. In 2016, an interesting book by Martinsh Grauda, Kopa Kapos, was published, dedicated to the Latvian tradition of cemetery holidays in our days and the consideration of ancient origins. An excellent book was written by Laura Uzule and Vita Zelche, Latvian Cemetery Holiday: Identification Ritual. Then I recently accidentally found a collection of Latvian authentic songs about dying and spirits, with a full-fledged musical adaptation, but the author is unknown. It would be funny if it was written by the dead themselves. A great topic for modern internet mythology, creepypasta.
Your work often reflects the Greek myths especially, and while Georgia can be placed in the area of ancient Hellenic influence, what other personal relationship do you have with this particular language of metaphors of describing the psyche of the human animal?
This is a completely unconscious story. Since early childhood I have been having very vivid dreams about gods, spirits, myths, rituals, etc. It is like a second life, into which I plunge from the mundane. Sometimes they (life and sleep) mix and I begin to dwell in a strange cathartic stupor. For example, when I'm on the bus, a blackout happens, and visual panoramas spill out in front of my eyes. Symbolic and filled about some kind of antiquity, spirits, transformations, something very sacred. But in childhood, after all, everything began simply with very strange night scenes. And so many of the symbols and iconography from these dreams were almost identical to the plots from Greek mythology. So I didn't really choose anything, didn't think about it. Roughly speaking, this is how life has turned out. As an adult, I do not use Greek mythology not so much as a synthesis between myth and tragedy. I really love the existential horror that envelops the matter of these images and literary works. I always revel in the contemplation of man's struggle with the Demiurge, which sooner or later leads to a struggle with himself. And this is again the topic that I have already talked about above. We want to touch God so much that sometimes we don't notice how we make our own shit sacred. However, with a global understanding, even in this case, you will not find a logical contradiction, and this is the whole cosmos of this thought, perhaps.
I personally resonate with your audial art creationwise, as I remember having a great urge just to create something deeply spiritual, ritualistic and trance-inducing in my teens, and with no professional equipment available, I used whatever I could find, a tape recorder, hand drums, flutes, sticks, strings and stones. At what point in your life did you realize you have a special need and talent for creating the kind of audial art you do?
In the middle of my childhood dreams, sometimes I heard something like auditory hallucinations. These were some kind of choral ceremonies held in languages unknown to me. Shouts, mass whispers, songs. They really influenced me. They brought me some kind of ecstatic feeling. I was trying to find something similar in the environment, in the sound of trains, stations, cars. Because it is their sound that is inherent in such a phantom hum, in which you can also hear these endless components, resembling voices, screams, incredible bourdons, etc. I summed up various timbres, auditory moments, impressions in my head, and not finding this sound materialized, I began to strive to reproduce it myself. And I can honestly say that I don't think about my talents in this area and I can't take it that way at all. You see, I just have a very clear inner feeling that this is the sound I should be making. This is the way I have to go, that's what I need to look for.
It feels like I know that this is what I was born for, live for, and exist for. I take the instruments in my hands because that's what I need to take. This is a process in which for me there have never been contradictions, large-scale issues, ontological search. It's clear that, like any musician, I love to sit for hours and look for "that very sound". But this is not a global task, it's just a road, a path to what is inevitable.
Speaking of trancelike states, what are to you the most effective (or favourite) ways of trancending your ego, such as dance, meditation, music, performance, psycho-drama, psychedelics etc. of unifying with your surroundings, or on the other hand going deep into your subconscious, in the caverns where our earliest memories and programmings lie?
It seems to me that I inherited from one of my ancestors the ability to fall in the correct state in most random situations and circumstances. He was a priest in the Old Believer church, but his essence was deeply heretical. He considered the funeral and seeing off of a person on his last journey as his main mission. My great-great-grandfather devoted all his time, giving all his strength and consciousness to this process. He also loved the theme of the divine destiny of suffering, which is undoubtedly a classic theme for Christianity. However, my great-great-grandfather considered it a way to measure the human itself, to know his limitations, as an eternal reminder from God that a person does not know himself and therefore his inner dimensions are inaccessible to his knowledge. Well, that is, so you can seem to yourself immeasurable, God-man. But the suffering, it puts everything back in its place.
Yes, some incredible thoughts, terrifying in their scale and depth, poured out of his mouth. Basically, he recorded them on paper because it was this method that allowed him to go as deep as possible, to go into a trance state. He could start writing down the beginning of a phrase or keywords many times, and it was a long process for him. But he didn't always have the paper in the right place at the right time. And then he began to draw thoughts in the air with hand. Whether it's during meals, walks, each day during work, etc. And his thought, his knowledge, when they were gushing: Konstantin existed not in the material world at that moment. He was completely lost in his guessing. Here, and I guess. I can bake pies, and then something comes and immediately drags me to the very bottom. So, it's a very independent process.
And speaking of methods of achieving the desired outcome, of the most important aspects of your art is physicality in the way you use and interact with your body, and the space where the ritual is taking place. Does this mean the spaces where you record or perform your art must be quite specific or at least pleasing to you, or can you theoretically transform any place into a sacred ritual space if needed?
Yes, space plays a huge role for me. If there is no contact between us, then there will be no music in it. I can probably make any of the spaces my own, but it takes time and the process of interaction. I always start with the organization of a sanctuary or some kind of altar center. I make idols for him, bring various attributes that have a sacred meaning for me personally. I try to show my respect to the new place in every possible way.
For example, I improve an abandoned garden, take care of weak or old trees, repair breakdowns, feed animals sheltered in this place, burn my favorite herbs, etc. It is important for me that I feel that we are becoming one with this place, we communicate, we are an extension of each other. Then I bring my music. Gradually, the point is transformed according to my needs and then I can calmly "switch off", going into my bodily or musical acts. Of course, this is almost impossible if we are talking about the venue of the performance. For this reason, I try to avoid this process.
You have also traveled with your improvisation shows. What are the most memorable (positive and negative) experiences you would like to share during your time as a touring artist so to speak? What are your favourite places on this planet where you have visited, and where would you like to visit where you haven't already?
In fact, I very little and rarely appear somewhere with live improvisations. As I remember, I have performed no more than five times in my entire life, not counting small collaborative performances. And I didn't like almost all of them, because I'm very far from public representation, I'm not comfortable on stage and I very quickly fall into a state of boredom there, when I just want to say into the microphone, "well, you guys, this is some nonsense, a simulation of my presence, I'm tired, goodbye".
In my music, I really don't like prying eyes, I don't need them, they're just superfluous there. The only performance that really resonated with me was my last improvisational act with the Latvian opera singer Ieva Parsha (a brilliant woman, without exaggeration and embellishment), held under the auspices of the No New Idols festival. This project was supervised by people close to me, who invested a lot of effort so that I could appear in the environment necessary for my music. I was given the space of the lower deck of the floating gallery of the NOASS, standing on our sacred river Daugava (I have a special lifelong history with it), and completely fenced off this place from the audience. They were simply forbidden to come down to me. I made for myself a large percussion stand made of metal sheets, made a steel cello. And in complete darkness, loneliness, isolation, I was able to be myself, and therefore my music was able to appear in its proper guise. I am immensely grateful to all those who helped bring my ideal to life. Kristiana and Oliver - you are the saints!
I also remember my performance at the Annenkirche very well. This is a burnt-out temple in the center of St. Petersburg, which at that time was experiencing reincarnation. By some technical accident, the audience could not get to the place of my performance, which occupied the point at the central analoi, and so they had to ascend to the kliros. Consequently, only the middle part (the ruined hall of the church) remained before my eyes. Beauty, outstanding beauty! It was an improvisational cycle about Sofia's metamorphoses, in which I tried to comprehend her path of transformation through the centuries. The performance "Sofia. Metamorphosis" became the starting point for Monochromia which was one of the first completed albums created by me.
And of course, I really want to mention the performance that you have yet to see and hear. It's about my work for the outstanding Irish director Juana Robles. It was a unique story about how I was sent a script with an offer to "play the role" of a being from the ritual matriarchal system responsible for rebirth (the real, transcendental, violent), constantly arriving in the world of his own dreams. And yet Juana didn't know anything about me, she just happened to hear my music somewhere. The recording of music and performance had to be carried out in a live, improvisational mode, in an organic location for the artist. I realized the musical part at home (temple), of course. And the performative-corporeal part was performed on the ruins of the Karmir Monastery, in Tbilisi.
My colleague, the amazing Georgian percussionist Zura Makharadze, helped me in the implementation of this project. This was his first experience in the space of experimental music. We started to work together half a year ago. For him, this underworld is the starting point, and he is still shocked. We have experienced so much in this performance that it is now impossible to formulate it. You can only wait for the upcoming materials.
Your work is also accompanied by amazing visual art in the form of photography, painting, collages and videos. Is this something you have done as long as you have been recording music, or is this something that comes naturally as a byproduct of the internet age of promoting music? And considering this, would you say you are primarily an audial artist, or a multimedia artist (or even mixed media artist) with all the different creative techniques in harmony?
Thank you very much, Antti, for the kind words! No, for the last 5 years I have been doing everything at the same time, because I think in all forms at once and have never dismembered them, but the adaptation of such thinking to material realization itself took half of my life. And what term to apply to me. I don't know, I'm probably not interested in thinking about it at all.
To be honest, I don't think that in general the form of expression inherent to me is capable of claiming acts of "promotion stimulation". Listen, watch / don't listen, don't look - one bullshit. Personally, this does not change anything for my art, because statistics cannot help it.
For me, only my work is important, only its intensity, only new depths, and fortresses. This is possible if I once again smash my skull with a hammer, chop off my hand, disembowel my body.
Modern technologies help me only in one thing - communication. I don't know how to communicate in real life, I don't talk about my art with others, I don't give links to my social networks, or music platforms, and very often I prefer to impersonate another nonexistent person if I speak with some stranger that tries to find out something about me. In everyday life even if people find out that I am connected with music or art, then I can simply refuse to provide them with any additional information about it, regardless of the degree of their interest. And I've always had big problems with socialization. For this reason, for a very long time, I was a completely lonely person who had nothing to communicate with except my own creativity. However, due to the fact that I once thought of starting to publish my art materials, with time very interesting people began to come to me, whom I sincerely appreciate.
I must honestly admit that I still do not know how to build close, long, friendly relations with people. I'm just learning, I try very hard the past few years and have had some results. Yes, of course, I almost always communicate with my cats and, according to the classics, I share with them all the saddest moments of my existence, which is a superb funny thing. But the fact that I start to interact emotionally with other people is huge progress for me. And as I mentioned above, this progress is entirely related to the representation of my work on various platforms that allow communication between me and the viewer/listener/stranger.
Altho the world of improvised, ritualistic and often "violent" music is not well known for the general larger audiences (for obvious reasons), one can spot similarities with your work and artists such Diamanda Galas, besides the ancient folk vibes of course. Your voice also often reminds me of Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance. What would you say your biggest influences are, considering the audial landscapes you produce?
I always say that the only musician who influenced me in this life was and remains Yan Nikitin and his project Theater of Poison. I was still a teenager when I heard about it and since then I have not parted with this music. Yan's brilliant poetic forms, musical searches, flexible intelligence and unique voice. For me, he will always be a canonical example of modern shamanism. These are real spell forms and formulas. This needs to be heard. I'll just translate a couple of lines from his opuses for you.
The death of the ray claims the flesh, and the flesh is exactly in meat, on fried oil of the hook. Let's raise on the star-armed sickle the human... too thin... too tender... too perishable... or:
I am fulfilling an excessive order, with a severed body under a sheet, in silent wolf urine, in the scraps of raw genitals - tank spread out in the field.
An incredible man! In those years when I listened to him. It really was the closest being to me, whose music was able to communicate in a language I understood. And while the world around me was constantly spewing some shit, the work of Yan Nikitin held me like the most reliable hands in the world.
When it comes to other forms of art, such as works of literature, cinema, paintings etc. what would you say are the creations which have influenced you the most during this lifetime?
Probably literature occupies the next place after music. I don't really like movies. I dabble in visual art, but very rarely. I absolutely hate the theater. I love books on archaeology, ethnography, religious studies, anthropology, criminology, and other scientific literature. Toxicology has recently started to attract me. The history of poisons is absolutely a mesmerizing field.
My relationship with fiction is much more strained. Over the years, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to find the books that interest me. It needs to pull a piece of meat out of me so that I would respond. But there is very little such literature. Recently, I have been interested only by some works that came from the counterculture. For example I was pleasantly surprised by Matthew Stokoe's work Cows. It seems to me that he certainly borrowed a lot from the 120 days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade. However, Stokoe managed to turn sadism, bestiality, coprophagia, anthropophagy, and sexual violence into an act of purification, but not through the plot, but through the sensations that come after reading. In general, it's just important for me to see something that can grind my bones into powder, erase me as a being, destroy me, be stronger than me. Like Greek tragedy, Lautréamont, Dostoevsky, Unica Zürn, Heraclitus, Schopenhauer, etc.
And also, I can randomly list the other points of inspiration, that is difficult to categorize: ancient art, ritual masks, funeral dolls, offerings, clothes, architecture of sanctuaries, sexual practices in the ritual life of ancient civilizations, attributes and aesthetics of hierogamy. I've also always loved art brut. I love art artifacts from psychiatric clinics. I love Viennese Actionism, German Expressionism. As you can see, it is difficult to single out something specific and concrete here. A fairly typical set of "intellectual nerd", perhaps.
You have a sense of certain queerness and anarchy present in your aesthetic outlook, which gives me vibes of punk shamanism (my term). How much would you say those categorizations desribe you as a person, and how would you describe yourself as an extremely individualistic entity living for example in the modern Tblisi today? Is there a social scene of your liking there?
I hate to call myself something, to describe myself somehow, because I associate this activity with some kind of importance, and I don't think about myself in this way. I am fulfilling the responsibility assigned to me and this is more than enough for me to identify myself. I am very often annoyed in the sphere of "dark" art by all this unjustified act of exalting and deliberately individualizing ego as a unique object that has at least the qualities of a personality who possesses sacred knowledge.
It seems to me that when we encounter on the street the very cherished brick that suddenly breaks our head, it once again becomes obvious that we are all equal and vulnerable in front of existence, regardless of whether my third eye sees an impending brick, or it sleeps in obscurity.
And all these personal qualities rather resemble a large dressing room from which we snatch what we like, what resonates. We try to be someone, but from the other side these things are so flexible. It is much more important to remember about silence, about its obviousness. You know, the other day I was sitting with one of my wonderful friends in the wee hours of the morning. We see each other once a year when I go to Latvia. It would seem so much time, so many events happened through this period. But we started the conversation by remembering the Logos, then we agreed that now we need to perform an act of exchanging emotions and thoughts because this is a very social, good-natured act. We need to show each other affection, the strength of our connection. We talked for three hours. And our conversation ended with voicing the fact that everything said was already obvious, it always inevitably rests on the Logos, in silence.
I can hardly say anything about my influence on Tbilisi and Georgia either. Maybe I naturally and organically transform young, musical minds. People just become interested in what kind of monster came to live with them and for someone what they saw becomes a fire driving to transformation. After all, the local underground is an almost non-existent dimension. The experiments carried out in this space are often too small, and too outdated, which is especially offensive when contemplating the full potential of Georgian culture. Of course, sooner or later it will spew out unique, iconic fruits. But so far everything is too quiet. Often you can see creators leaving Georgia because they simply do not find a place and possibilities for themselves and their art. I am very lucky, probably, that my internal structure is directed entirely into the depth of my own space and the existing situation does not affect me personally.
Thank you very much for this interview with an actual artist in the very sense of the term! What are your plants for the rest of this year of 2022?
Oh, thank you very much, Antti, for this opportunity! I really like what you are doing and your Sammas project. I have even returned to your interview with Hayyim Rothman many times... And not only. I really hope that your "Sammas" will grow and be replenished with a lot of materials because an independent press capable of addressing all planes of human thought is truly rare. Usually, everyone cares so much about their neutrality, safety, and the comfort of thought expression that the word "independence" in this context acquires the property of an oxymoron, damn it. Therefore, I am very glad about your invitation and interest.
It's completely useless to ask me about my plans. Even at the moment when I create to-do lists, try to fix my plans in notebooks, and weigh down the walls with this information, everything turns out differently. I can only say unequivocally that this year I really hope to see a Juana Robles film with my music, release all parts of my film based on the album "Medea Forgives Jason", as well as finish another animation work. I think this is enough.
