interview for chronicart.com mi okt 22. 2003
http://www.poemproducer.com/any.php?id=16
From: agf <agf@poemproducer.com>
Date: Mi Okt 22, 2003 17:02:29 Europe/Berlin
To: "olivier lamm" <odot.lamm@wanadoo.fr>
Subject: Re: itw



hi olivier. i hope i am in time
with my answers
thank you very much for ur input
and interesting questions
i want to ask you. if you would support me and i could
put this interview online in my blog. that would be very nice

You previous work as AGF, Head Slash Bauch, was very much related, in terms
of intention, to that of numerous sonic poets who worked on the relation
between language as sound generator and as purveyor of meaning. Were you
aware of the works Letterists,

partly ... but only in a school knowledge way.
i didnt study anything like this

when i was a kid in east germany i was very much
obsessed with all kind of lyric and poesie and language art
like dadism and stuff. but without any higher education
just reading and eating the stuff

lately i didnt.

Dadaists such as Raoul Hausmann (who most
precisely expanded the sonic nature of the German idioms),

ok. i will check this.

and more
recently, Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck, etc., when you began to work on
your own ?


well i always worked on my own. but i started to perform and release solo work
around 2000. i wanted to have more freedom in music and a channel
where i can output freely my ideas. and dont bother anybody. with my ideas.
no compromises

first i started to play live and experimented approx one year to find out
what i want to do... i wanted to go away for a while from heavy content and the must
to say complex sense making sentences...

but still discovered that my voice is my instrument
its my weapon my sword to fight me throught the mass and noise of sound everywhere


Head Slash Bauch immediately sounded, aesthetically and structurally (sorry
for the big words) as unique and unprecedented and unrelated to any other
contemporary works.

thank you. that makes me happy

Did you begin to work with words and your voice (which
are, moreover, two different things) in a spontaneous way, or did you begin
to work with a precise idea in mind?

first there was the emotional... intuitive element i always work with
i support the creative kid (with expensive gear) in me more then the conceptualist....

i read lots and listen tons of music... i am dreaming a lot. while i travel or while i go walking
with music and hang out in kids playgrounds. when the kids are not there

and things ripen in me until they come out....

i said this often before.... as a vocalist you are connected to content
whenever you open ur mouth it says something more concrete then a melody does
it first reaches the brain and then it gets filtered prooved . accepted or not

even you use voice without words you have to talk about it ;))

and voice without concrete content or when its a foreign language makes
you cretae own things and fannatsies

its like when i listen to russian hip hop and once a while i understand a word
and otherwise i just listen to the energy the MCs and the music creates
its really interesting... gives freedom... on one hand on the other its sooo human !

its the nature if the voice that we expect that we understand...
or it wants to deliver something more than a sonic expierence

i wanted to use the language wich silently surrounds me and influences me
as a base for the tracks....

it was a personal situation also. i was studing manuals every day
and also concepted websites and worked with code... etc
started working with max/ msp etc.... so this was a big part of my world
which can be seen as dead ... i turned it into a friend and collected little presents
for it

You write on your website that "language is the most exciting form, learning
how to mean". Do you mention language as an abstract ensemble of semantic
signs (gestual, written, spoken, artistic etc.) or as a more precise object,
meaning the predefinite language that you use both as semantic and sonic
material of your music?

language can be many things of course. body language etc

i wonder if time has a language. do things have languages. like airports
or mountains.

.. its a challenge while living to discover how to communicate... with everything...
and its a base for advanced quality in things in life

of course of understanding. the base for freedom and peace i guess.
and the base for choices.

but in first place i mean language as a base of communication between humans
as the base to interact and share and express. this is limited by the interfaces.

we both communicate now in a language we both didnt grow up with
we never saw each other. i dont know how u smell and what you did in ur life
but i spent some preciouse time of my life with your questions...

all we have to understand is the language
(and use the amazing email technology)

maybe i should do a poem to the email
its one of the greatest things that got invented while i live
if i would have lived in the 1700s in a sibirian village. i would have been
most probably killing myself in lack of communication....

LANGUAGE to practise concrete communication

in the web i get emails every day from people i will never meet (newsgroups)
they tell their thoughts and knowledege... arguments. i try to understand them

they come from all corners of this planet and communicate
and exchange and fight and disagree and learn from each other...
for me this is preciouse though.... and they use the same words which are filled with
so different history. expierences etc



on HEAD SLASH BAUCH i used language more in a sonic way...
and created maybe another meaning overall with it...
in the new record i mainly use poetical and technical language
as a collection of quotes in a semantic way. to describe me
and my expierences. desires. dreams. observations.

Language involves both a producer of information and a receiver, and between
the two, misunderstanding very often occurs: as an imperfect purveyor of
data, language always implies a discrepancy between what is contained in the
original message and what is understood of it. It seems that this flaw that
is inherent to the nature of language in communication plays an important
role in your music. Would you agree?

;)

the misconception is high. in all places. between bush and osama
and me and my boyfriend. my parents... me and my distributer
and between you and me.... the thing is you have to be aware of it
it took me many years to even check this !!! simple thing

to include a high possibiliity that you misunderstand things

i mean nobody tells you that ! when u grow up. at least me
it took me a quarter of a century to discover it myself. THE basic idea
of beeing open minded. things can be misunderstood and perceived in the wrong way

and they mostly are ;)

when i observe my surroundings i witness permanent misunderstanding or misconception
which is also a little bit funny i think

my grandfather misunderstood lenin. my father misunderstood his own sentences.
my mother misunderstood her mother. my brother misunderstood his existance. and all of them
are beautiful human beeings with talents and specialities and all these got restricted SOOO MUCH
for several reasons and mainly for missing communication. lack of understanding than. sad

it makes me angry even i comprehend that of a matter of time.

Using language and altering it by cutting and modifying it seems a way to
emphasize the cryptic nature if your words.

yes its a cool technik. ;) i am working on it....

i use it as a compository technik
and then start performing it again... this is what i do live now

i am curiouse how the music will process


Do you think that your words function without the music?

mh. if its really silent maybe ya. maybe even here now in the budapest airport
surrounded by variouse nationalities noise and confusion

actually i think i could perform them or improvise them in any surrounding
not only the precisly composed tracks i release on the cd now

my music is very irregular like life. maybe thats why


How would you, if you do at all, value your work in terms of theory?

i dont. i dont even know how to do it.

Could you quickly explain how you used internet to craft your words? What is
this e-poetry you are presenting in "poem producer"?

for many of my recent works i collected words. expressions. sentences
from emails. websites. newsgroups etc. which where directed to me
or of my interest .... over month i filtered out of
daily arriving things... expressions i wanted to save

while recording i was reading randomly incoherent the little
picked up flowers and when they where audio already
i started to compose and to versify

that created very different and interesting results.

i had certain concepts with pieces.... i wanted to make something about drugs
and something about where i come from. something about communication
something about comforting and something that says GET UP GET UP
TAKE ME TO THE NEO TOKYO

also i wanted to do this <movie vs real> life frame.... which opens and ends the album
so there was some over all thoughts .... i combined with the technique of
COLLECTING RARE BERRIES FROM EVERY CORNER OF THIS ELECTRONIC PLANET


The act of opening the work of art to other people, or to use preexisting
words (like you do with emails) are old gestures of the avant-garde of the
XXth century. What to do you think they bring to your own sound art?


i hope i understand you right. the technik of remixing content ? brings me
slightly independance from my own brain and my own presets in thinking.

i am sorry i dont know old gestures of the avant garde...


Several sonic poets championed technology (at the time, mostly rudimentary
effects and the portable tape recorder) for how it demultiplied the
possibilities of their art. How do you think contemporary technology
(softwares, portable computer) influenced your music? Do you think it could
have directly provoked its elaboration? What AGF's music would have been
without technology?

probably very quiet minimal these days i guess

yes technology is a big part of my music. but on the other hand i use the same
software and powerbooks everybody uses. who can afford it and has interest

i worked with bands many many years and got some recognition with laub
and kitty-yo which aloud me to invest my little money i have as an artist in a good machine
and some software... its not much... its my working base. its all i own.
its very important to me... i kind of escaped happily from loud stinky rehearsal rooms
and rock guitars repeating themselfs .... a few years ago...
so i spent time on my own little studio and while travelling
getting inspired again and again. i love technology. it provides choices
(i know it also limits and has bad sites... but i intend to look forward)

i think it is absolutly necessary for me to once a while be on my own
and be able to express myself without restrictions.

and the modern portable technology is providing this preciouse possibility

Head Slash Bauch was much more simpler to "define" in that it mostly used
your voice as sonic material, and that the tracks were very related to sound
art. Westernization Completed is more ambiguous in that it borrows more to
proper songwriting, recognizable melodies and rhythms that are related to
preexisting forms of electronic and pop music (you even use some guitar on a
few tracks). Do you agree? Was it a conscious gesture to have your music
evolve that way?

not to repeat myself. discover new areas. mix my weird heavy content
with something light. trying to cook a different dish and use different spices.

doing minimal ambient noise... is beautiful... but also safe somehow
its a accepted and everybody agrees on it in contemporary music.
i wanted to find new things.



Your music always stands on a very thin line between chaos and structure.
How do work on tracks/songs: do you operate very spontaneously, or are you
of the control-freak kind?

i described that before in this interview. first i play with fantasie and material
and than i work until it tastes good and reaches a certain stadium which
i decide its worth to represent it to people.


The term "poem-producer" implies a mechanistic, almost robotic gesture of
creation, as if artistic creation was linked to the realm of industry and
manufacturing? Do you agree?

well producing to me is creation. the same thing.
you can write boring poems or manufacture boring clothes....

Do you think that our contemporary realm has
displaced the act of creation?

no ... hahhaa ;))) not at all... i never understood that thought ....
that technic would replace creativity

if you are a farmer and you use a pick axe to get ur fruits
or you use a funky cyber combine harvester to get ur potatoe

its ur decision what you plant. its ur life you put into it
its ur responsibility and ur care and effort its ur love in there

i dont think that modern things replace love
but i am an optimist ;)))

actually i think it gives more power and posibility to be creative
to more people... which is maybe taking the specialty of beeing an artist
or creator or producer away... its not that magic anymore to create.
but its also not such a privilege anymore...
(like having parents who put you with 5 on a piano etc)

but in terms of creativity i think it the field you work in doesnt matter at all.
maybe the time does.



What does the sentence "i'm only trying to be more human than human" mean?

;))


for me its an expression that i desire to use my life intensively as possible
dont get comftable and scared ... dont capitulate to my dreams and intentions
i maybe naively had when i was a kid. not giving up on myself
to go and use the potential of a human beeing to think
and feel and change and DO something... have high expectations
towards myself maybe


What do you think of your voice? Do you use it by default, or because you
like to use it as semantic purveyor and sonic material?

its part of me. i like myself. my voice is my main instrument...
i can most express musically and emotional... and i like the power of
language. and poems


thanks very much
best agf