Personal update 21/04/2020

The world is in crisis, the prospects of which are in many ways grave and horrifying. I will not write about these events directly - enough ink has been and continues to be spilled on this. I’ll however pick up the note of the perspectival shift this has lead to, it is really increasingly obvious how the Corona outbreak was a threshold - a change of mode - of many things but in this case for the life of the individual; the everyday experience. For me it’s been a strong push towards a focus on the present, an acceptance of structurelessness.

At the same time I am working to wrap up my first proper musical project. It’s a digital hardcore rap project under the name of SVAVEL - a 5 track EP but with 2 interludes all together totaling about 23 minutes. In current parlor this could very well pass for an album, but the whole approach is something of a testing the waters and as such it really feels like an EP to me and I will release it as such. At times it feels kind of insane and delusional - that I can just pick up music production and singing / rapping and expect to release something worth peoples time - but on the other hand it’s really just the first attempt to plant a foot in the general form of music, a preparatory work for not only further sonic works but also sculptural and installational works that incorporate sound. Either way I’m having a lot of fun with music, recently I’ve felt more motivated to work on that rather than painting or sculpture. There’s something with entering a new field, of being naive of the rules and space of possibilities that is just so exciting, refreshing. It seems creativity requires a certain naivete - mastery is then conversely limiting. This is another reason for the line of an expanding and wandering intermedial practice that I have argued for time and again - to keep the flame alive there’s a need to throw oneself into the unknown; remaining within the narrow field of experience and mastery is cooling.

Beyond that my creative outlet is oil painting. No big project that really takes my visual art forward is underway, though plenty of ideas have been brewing, plans are forming - but it’s not yet time to commence. For the last 5 years or so I’ve incessantly thrown myself from one project to the next, and now I am actively trying to savour the inbetween time. I’ve learned through experience that to begin haphazardly can lead to a lot of extra work further down the line, then again I’ve always felt drawn to the sentiment of “working when iron is hot” - when you come upon an idea, in that sort of all at once way where you can just pour out pages and pages of specifications from one moment of insight, then you enter a special kind of elevated mood. I’ve long felt a strong urge to take this mood and put it to action right away, but again, this can then lead to haphazardous beginnings, of sort of just grabbing whatever is at hand. So now I am actively abstaining from beginning, to see if how these ideas, which have already appeared in considerable detail, will develop on paper, given time. It also helps that my current situation does not really afford the space to execute what I have in mind. Thus this also to some degree justifies my current focusing on music I hope. Do what you’re good at sure - but not always: you weren’t always good at the thing you’re good at so to say.

The SVAVEL EP (as of yet untitled) will hopefully release within a month. I turn 28 on the 14th of May and I am hoping to be able to release on my birthday, but we’ll see. The current situation also severely limits my ability to record vocals, and mixing is a lot of work. My time at the preparatory art school Gerlesborg is over soon, and I will have to move, while probably remaining within Stockholm. All of these things, together with of course the global turn of events point towards that a lot will change in the near future for the trajectory of my work. While it can feel utterly banal in the face of global catastrophy it’s hard for me to see any other course of action than powering on, creative work is by its nature affirming hope for the future, and through that if not in other ways I hope it can be meaningful.