Arvo Pärt Centre Residency: Part 2
APC Residency Diary - Part 2
When I applied for the residency I said I wanted to find a new way of combining my creative practices. I have had exhibitions of my visual art along with my music, I have created visuals for concerts where I also played and initially my scores’ covers were my paintings (we are working on making that possible with UE as well). Last December I had a premiere of a piece which was supposed to go along with olfactory compositions, but due to covid there was no audience allowed and thus no way to incorporate smell other than naming the movements. It is definitely on my agenda to continue with my “Olfactospheres” - musical miniatures with according smells. Last year I spent months thinking about the logistics and found a solution which preserves the listener’s intimacy and adds an exciting participatory element.
So why multidisciplinarity? I have synaesthesia, a neurological condition where the experience of one sensory perception triggers one or multiple other sensory or cognitive perceptions. The experience of sound, colour, shape, texture and smell are very connected for me - focusing on one is still an act of constant translation, because there is not one without the other. This happens automatically and involuntarily and leads to an innate feeling of something being right in proportion or not. And while I love intellectual work, this is the reason why I am bound to my intuition, it’s the programming of my physis. I will always choose aesthetics over ratio.
While it is so natural to experience life this way, it is hard to translate into my creative work to a degree that feels satisfying for myself. The goal is to become the axis between micro- and macrocosm or like looking into a mirrored room, basically understanding that one self is a springboard into infinity. This lead me to architecture and furthermore to the withdrawal of my finished application to study it at university, because I feared learning it the “proper” way would inhibit my ability to think outside the box, so again more autodidacticity. Learning about architecture is like learning about music, in fact this is the intention for my music: creating spaces.
Spending time in this architectural jewel which blurs the experience of a defined inside and outside is special. Looking outside means looking inside without the need of a mirror. The chapel here is a wonderful example of a space in a space in a space, yet being inside does not feel claustrophobic but triggers the experience of being beyond everything. Like a drop falling into water and creating ripples, the drop merges with the water. This is also part of Arvo Pärt’s wisdom: us all being the same when looking deep enough inside.
