This conversation took place between artist Damir Očko, curator Hannah Conroy and researcher Ruth Scott on Friday 7th May.
HC: Glad we can all make it; I want this to be a brief chat to create some additional information about the work you will be presenting for Castle & Elephant. As well as discussing previous work and ideas that parallel your practice.
DO: So, let’s talk.
HC: Ruth is joining us, because she will be researching projects that will relate to your work/ and developing the ideas and notions within your practice.
HC: I wanted to talk about the work you will be presenting; maybe we can start with ‘The Age of Happiness’.
DO: Sure, these two films I will be showing are quite different in relation to each other.
HC: I suppose this work relate quite easily to the first piece I saw of yours ‘The Boy with a Magic Horn’ maybe you could discuss the themes that run through your work leading up to ‘The Age of Happiness’.
DO: Yes, ‘The Age of Happiness’ is in a way close to my previous films and especially to ‘The Boy with a Magic Horn’ but it takes things a bit further. In ‘The Boy with a Magic Horn’ it is a much more closed situation, narrative is focused on a very specific idea and a fragment of history. ‘The Age of Happiness does not have one “grand” narrative.
RS: So different narratives intertwined?
DO: Yes, more or less. There is a narrative I worked with during the research concerning Scriabins project ‘Mysterium’, notably but in the film itself this is not the main plot. In ‘The Boy with a Magic Horn’ you have a distorted version of the Wagner scenario for ‘The Ring of Nibelung’, this is very strong in the film but without any indication of the Wagner.
HC: You mention Wagner - I remember when you were first talking about ‘The Boy with a Magic Horn’ when we were on an exchange in 2006(?) The first thing you said was that you were making an opera- I was really impressed.
DO: I was, and still am very interested in this form but over time I have learnt to approach this more carefully.
HC: What do you mean?
DO: I use music as a device to tell the story.
HC: So maybe we should talk about ‘The Age of Happiness’, can you give a brief synopsis of what it is about.
DO: Yes, to do it briefly is quite hard so I will start by mentioning some material I worked with. First of all this is a project by Alexander Scriabin “Mysterium” which the composer never finished. Scriabin planned some sort of a multimedia musical performance that would happen on the Himalayas and the climax would be an apocalypse.
RS: I think with this film you previously mentioned that’ there will be no spectators, all will become participants’. How does this fit in?
DO: Where all humans would change into higher human beings. This was the purpose of the project. No one is to look form a safe zone but all have to participate. I think this ‘utopia’ reflects very much problems we have today.
RS: So that everyone feels that level of discomfort?
DO: I would not say discomfort but maybe community. Another important thing for me was that Scriabin actually believed his project was realisable.
HC: That through the performance he will achieve a higher level of humanity?
DO: Yes, that was the point – to change a man, mankind with his art. Crazy!
So…. I asked myself a question, why cannot I think the same?
HC: Cult!
DO: Or even imagine this. I can imagine, no problem, but as soon as I do it, I “KNOW” it is impossible. And then I felt as I have lost something, and this is what I dealt with in film.
HC: I feel that to be an artist you have to have absolute belief in what you do.
DO: I think this is not the problem
HC: And maybe try to gain an innocence again.
DO: But we always assume what is possible and what is not possible.
HC: No we don’t –
RS: Do we really?
DO: Of course not but this is how our culture works.
HC: We make massive assumptions – remember they thought the works was flat for a long time.
DO: Yes, but we now know the world is not flat. If you think of the Moon before we landed on it, we could project so many different things on it.
HC: Cheese?
DO: Cheese yes
HC: So are you talking about expectations and disappointments?
DO: In a way, yes or more about projection and a failure of the realisation. Sometimes things are suspended in the air, in between – like in ‘The Boy with a Magic Horn’ or ‘The Age of Happiness’. But in this film I worked with some other materials, like a glass harmonica which was an instrument used in early hypnosis by Franz Messmer (Messmerised). The instrument was forbidden in the 19 century because it was believed to cause many strange things such as deaths (which was only partially true).
HC: These additional stories are so intriguing.
DO: Yes, I had a lot of time to work on that film.
RS: Where did you get the instrument?
DO: The French musician Thomas Bloch performs it. He is playing all the strange instruments including Matrenot Wawes (also in the soundtrack). M. Wawes were used by Messiaen to mimic birds.
HC: Do they create the soundtrack specifically for the film, or do you appropriate material that already exists?
DO: Most of the time they provide me with the instrumental samples and I make soundtrack and music on my own. This was the case in The Age of Happiness and The Moon shall never take my Voice. I compose music aswell.
RS: I like how you use the word layering when talking about your work, in some ways I like to visualise these elements even if they are not apparent straight away! I suppose timing is very important too… choosing the right instrument for the right visual.
DO: Yes, I work parallel on a sound design and image editing. It is done in the same time.
HC: Hence one year per project?
DO: Yes, that is why I make things slowly.
HC: I was surprised by your other work ‘The Moon’. It seems to be a step in another direction in relation to your other films, ‘The Age of Happiness’ and ‘The Boy with a Magic Horn’ are very filmic, where this is more theatrical.
DO: This was my agenda; to make something different, to avoid social gathering and the Moon was a very personal. With this film I worked with a different form, A “Lied” or “Das Lied”. It is a form of music for a singer and accompaniment developed for Salon Events in the 19th Century. However later it was far removed from this context and has become a way to “speak about things” in a very direct way. Three songs took place in this particular piece:
1). A Funeral Procession for a fireman:
This was observed by Mahler from his hotel room in New York where steps were counted only with large military drum strokes with a large pause in between. He actually realised that the strokes were so strong and loud, only because this “nothing in between” was so long. So this nothing has become a music.
2). How 4.33 by John Cage was imagined:
His famous visit to Harvard – an An-Echoing chamber, where he was expecting to hear nothing, but instead was disturbed by his own shadow…his nervous and blood systems working and sounding. He conceived this work as “absence” rather than “silence”.
3). Neil Armstrong Interviews (half imagined):
The interview is about his famous sentence, which he is known never to discuss. He failed to say “a man” but instead says only “man”. This vocal just slipped away. In this song the astronaut is trying to speak but he fails because on the Moon there is no air so it is impossible to have any kind of sound. At the end of this he imagines sounds and voices.
HC: Your ideas are very poetic
DO: You know, there is one little hint at the end of the last song. Beethoven wrote in one of his last letters describing his last string quartet:
“Only now when I am completely deaf, I hear a real music within me”
