Autopsia - Images Of The Silent Past by Autopsia Archive

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baroque music. Rudolph II didn’t create the history of states and peoples, but new European spirit of cosmopolitanism. His spirit gathered knowledge, from antiquity to contemporary times, thus making of Prague a place of new epoch, a new center of knowledge. Prague of that time was a huge research laboratory, which radiated the synergies of many arts. Similarity of pre-scientific systems of Rudolph’s age with principles of Autopsia is obvious. However, possibilities for all other similarities end here. Despite allusions and quotations Autopsia is concerned neither with alchemy nor mysticism. It simply uses their iconographies in a rather special way. In hybrid conjunctions it connects them with other components which have nothing in common with practices of Rudolphine age. “Geistzentrale der Welt” is supposed to be understood as a code for a place in which the identity of the work is built.

AUTOPSIA Interview 2008 Questions Roland Orcsik

Autopsia exists in Prague nowadays. In the town where Kafka, Rilke, Mucha and other icons of Monarchy and modernism lived. We might say: Prague is one of the thresholds of modernism. How does Autopsia experience the Prague of modernism? Autopsia experiences modernism as historicism. Autopsia started as a postmodern project based on standpoints which were radical deflections from modernism. Everything that is modernism Autopsia is not. But Autopsia makes use of modernism in order to show that it belongs to the history and that it gathers meanings from history which cannot be labeled in terms of historical periods. At the time when Autopsia emerged the phenomena which marked the distance between modernism and postmodernism hardly were able to be anticipated. Postmodernism of Autopsia is founded on the very turn towards oneself, towards one’s own experiences, opposite to lessons learned. One’s own values and one’s own criteria certainly were in confrontation with the paradigm of modernity on which leading authorities relied. Autopsia started with doubt in authorities and came across an entirely open realm which was perceived as a time “after modernity”. That is why Prague became such an important site for situating Autopsia – a place which revealed its forgotten faces alongside with the projects of Autopsia. At that time projects of Autopsia were a hundred percent reality which enabled hybrid conjunctions of different epochs, and thus the modernism as well.

Does Autopsia have a fatherland? Autopsia does not have a fatherland. It does not have any place nor the system outside of itself. All social relations in which Autopsia operates might be anywhere in the world. Home of Autopsia is the world. Fatherland is a fictitious concept, Autopsia operates in reality, outside “fatherlands”. It can produce a fatherland but cannot belong to it. Fatherland, motherland – these are projects, abstract notions which have nothing to do with homelandness. It is only a homeland which is the place for the world of individuality, it is not an abstract product. Individual experience of the world cannot be shared with the others. Homeland guarantees the certainty of the world prior to awareness of one own’s person. Homeland has the meaning for individuality, and fatherland, or motherland, for collectivity. Autopsia does not have neither the homeland nor the place. It is a pure thought about a mortality of the being. What a person can do within understanding of it’s own mortality is detachment, separateness from the ruling ideas about the world; meaning – it has to be detached from the collectivity. Only with collectivity death becomes an idea which turns into the weapon of self-destruction. Only individuality is mortal. Experience of one’s own mortality cannot be shared with others.

“... Mein Bruder suchet Kronen, ich den Stein der Weisen” – this sentence was ascribed to Rudolph II. During his time in Prague, more precisely in Rudolph’s palace, mystics and alchemists of the Renaissance period were gathering. In the work of Autopsia one can often find allusions to and quotations from alchemical tradition; the atmosphere of mystery is also present. Did Autopsia had in mind Prague mysticism, when it had chosen Prague as a “center” of its activity?

Autopsia originated in one country, Yugoslavia, which – like the Monarchy and the utopia of modernism – fell apart, and today it does not exist. What the ex-Yugoslav cultural space meant for Autopsia? How does Autopsia look at this part of Europe? /if Katalin Ladik, Balint Szombati, Boris Kovac, art groups KÔD, OHO, NSK, etc., meant something for Autopsia, not in terms of direct influence, but for the sake of presenting one cultural space, I would like these artists to be mentioned – me or maybe some other readers would be glad to do so/.

Autopsia proclaimed Prague to be the spiritual capital of the world. To this spirit and centrality certainly belongs the spirit of Rudolph II, as well as the history he created. Not only Rudolph II, for Autopsia Charles IV is perhaps even more important and interesting, also Czech baroque – especially

It would be wrong to think that Autopsia “originated in one country”, or a state. One might say that beginnings of Autopsia had a cartography which included several countries, it’s better to say, several cities. From the very beginning Autopsia didn’t belong to any state system. It’s history is a nomadic one. Artists that you mention, with exception of NSK, might be considered as last remnants of the avantguarde. Autopsia begins where avantguardes end. “Avantguarde” is today a historical relic with which Autopsia deals in a

kind of laboratory manner, but never “belonged” to it. It cannot be said that Autopsia operated within the frameworks of any kind of cultural spaces as historical categories. Autopsia passed through different cultural spaces as one passes through images of unexplored regions. If Autopsia came across some hidden “preciousnesses” during this journey, then those things have become impulses for creation of new projects. Autopsia is constantly moving through cultural spaces, thus places of residence are irrelevant. Autopsia has no “viewpoint” about political parts of Europe, there are no prejudices concerning where and when it will come across the impulses which will start the interests in new projects.

It is not a matter of death being dealt with as an object of consciousness. To speak about death in the manner of Autopsia means to speak from the closeness, the proximity of death as mortality, from the closeness of the Being itself. Among all other beings, only humans have consciousness about mortality, because they have the ability to comprehend the time itself. Time is what tells us that we are mortal. We can do our best trying to gain power over death, we can even work on its oblivion – and that’s what we most often do – but we cannot go out of time, beyond time, we cannot be outside of changes, permanent and timeless, as an image of God. And yet, within this dualism of changes and duration it is as if something is hidden which keeps them together so that thinking can endure such a fate at all. What puts them together is certainly something that lasts and which is eternal. Although hidden, we somehow participate in the image of God, as its inseparable part. After all, we consider ourselves godly creatures. Autopsia does not speak about death from the standpoint of individual experiences of death, nor its motives are directed towards some substitute. There are substitute concepts only if you think about death as an object. Death is not something that is represented, nor it is representable. We are mortal beings, mortality cannot be put in front of us and be observed. Our own mortality cannot be shared with anyone else. This feeling cannot be “communicated”. It can only be poetically expressed – it can be spoken of indirectly, by means of a specific language. And this is what Autopsia, in fact. does.

“Scars of Europa”, track on one of early CDs of Autopsia (Death is the Mother of Beauty, ’88-89) can be interpreted as a premonition about the death of Europe. Does this mean that we live today in post-Europe? Autopsia does not deal with predictions. It deals with reality, which means – the Death. “Scars of Europa” narrates about the new spirit of Europe which is filled with scars of the history. Such historical component also belongs to the new spirit of Europe. Death is the Mother of Beauty is presage of the world in becoming, or of the world to come. After domination of an all-encompassing simplified modernism, the world that could have been different was presaged, the world which, throughout the channels of its networks, will not reproduce the same. It could have been only the world aware of its history, the world of an individual which was known to such a history. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. Entire project of the new spirit slipped into a globalized network of technological modernism, while the only things that remained after particular histories were only images, appearances and illusions that were poured on us by media in order to cover the real condition – flow of money. It turned out almost immediately that there was no project of the new spirit at all. Such a thing is not possible anymore. Man finally gave up to think of himself/herself as of an individual, as of an unique, unrepeatable selfhood. His/her mind became a container of messages. But, there the death again has something to say, because the death is not a mere event in the epoch – terror or the genocide, conflict and destruction – at stake here is the epoch itself, death as time, the age of its reign, death from the perspective of the faith grounded in metaphysics, which encompasses the totality of being. Project Death is the Mother of Beauty can be translated into the domain of the political or the cultural, but it is not directed towards the presentation of something real, but towards an understanding of the homelandlessness (‘not-being-at-home; not-being-in-homeland’), which occurs in the catastrophic age of groundless faith. Since the messages cannot be checked anymore, one can only believe in them. The truth has lost its meaning, only belief remained, pure faith without religions and ideologies.

8 What kind of means music represents for Autopsia? Is it an instrument of the manifesto about the mortality of beings? Music is not a means for Autopsia. Music is neither an instrument nor a programmatic platform. Music is art, Autopsia does not stand for anything outside art. To be in art means to dwell in poetic discourse. There are no manifestos; iconographic messages of Autopsia should not be read directly. Autopsia operates with images as with a vocabulary of recycled cultural products. These images refer to the ways of musical composing, but are not their illustration, the sound and the image are linked only on the level of methodologies but not of meanings.

It is obvious that one of the cultural metaphors of Autopsia is: death. Is it possible that discourse about death can replace its individual experience? Is it not that the discourse, that is, any artistic act or ritual about death, becomes an unsatisfied wish, or even desire, to overcome death, to gain power over death?

10. In your works one can find various quotations: textual, musical, quotations from fine arts, from film, etc., ranging from high culture to popular one. Within this collage of quotations, by way of frequent repetitions, quotations become

self-quotations. There occurs a processing of cultural waste into a hybridism of signs, which leads to an “original” palimpsest. Does Autopsia accept postmodern ideology of quotationalism, that is, the blasphemy of the authority of the original work? There is no hierarchy in Autopsia, isn’t it?

is supposed to conceive the complex structure of the work which is based on the idea of the spectacle, and which will acquire its standard form in opera. Thus the baroque work is a total authorial project which originates in the symbiosis of music and other scenic forms – a project of total spectacularization. In different styles and different cultures the harmony is a matter of convention; harmony of one style and culture is a disharmony in the other culture or style. Trivial opinion that the avantguarde is disharmonious is just a trivial opinion and nothing else.

Correct, there is no hierarchy, no authority. In “Mirrors of Destruction” it is said that our world is founded on the idea of the center, which has the attributes of the source, the beginning, the truth, the ideal form, the essence, the god – the presence which guarantees meanings. Everything which is different from these notions, it is excluded. What interests Autopsia is exactly that which is “excluded”. Autopsia uses the language and its forms just as it uses musical phrases. To operate with representations means to use metaphorical features of language – like in poetry. Autopsia uses the image in so far as it is the meeting point of those characteristics which can easily turn out to be the forms of mass-media. In its visual products it carries out the procedure of montage of the trivial and the marginal. Autopsia creates images by means of which it nourishes what it destroys. Thus the doubled process is carried out – on one hand, through thematic and subject matter realm a relation towards the work is shown, and on the other, through manipulation of the image, of its essence, a testimony of death is displayed, which is nothing else but the image itself. Autopsia uses mediatic contents as containers of entire cultural realms, reduced to media patterns. 14. It seems that Autopsia’s musical experiment consists of baroque, minimalist, electronic, avantguarde, ambiental, pop and other music. In one of your answers you’ve mentioned that baroque is particularly important for you. Baroque, which is founded in the ideology of harmony. What attracts Autopsia in the art of baroque?

16. Autopsia’s work is not only music, but textual and visual art as well. Could we consider the works of Autopsia a verbo-voco-visual meditative objects? No, works of Autopsia are not verbo-voco-visual projects. Verbo-voco-visual is a notion derived from the arsenal of late avantguardes. It designates the hybrid of conceptual amalgams within the invention of art practices which at one time had the sign of “new”. The use of verbal statements, musical compositions, and visual representations is quite conventional for Autopsia. There is no intention to create any kind of synthesis which would be directed towards one particular hybrid product. All of these three ways of expression are quite autonomous, what links them is a common spiritual ground. Autopsia deals with music and is concerned with complete control over its own production.

19. Latest album of Autopsia “The Berlin Requiem” is rather interesting. This project evokes Berthold Brecht’s “Berliner Requiem”, and the inside cover refers perhaps to Himalaya, that is, the endeavour of human being to overcome his/her limits, to reach the peak of his/her existence, which in the context of Autopsia means – death. Is Autopsia attracted by Brecht’s poetics of quotationalism, the so called Verfremdungseffekt?

The list you have just made is inexhaustible, it is limited with nothing else but the creative interest. There is no focusing on just one sector of music, or on choosing one set of musical idioms. Autopsia is not interested in musical forms, but in their spiritual foundations. In baroque music for the first time there appears the work as a project. By this, one

In the context of “The Berlin Requiem”, Brecht’s “Berliner Requiem” might be seen as a quotation in its entirety. In

ual experience, irreplaceable one – outside of communication, and social order which is replaceable. It’s permissivity can be displayed by any other form of social construction. When we speak about capitalism, we speak about one of the known forms of totalitarianism. However, at stake here is not the fate of the individual in the society, nor is it the criticism of society, which is the usual opinion, but at stake is unrealizable desire to appropriate the other, that is, to eat oneself. Selfhood is substituted with the reflection of the other. This desire is projected into social relations and becomes a driving force of permissivity. How much such a scenario corresponds to reality, and how much to the interpretation, still remains the open question. Referring to “Lacanian gaze” perhaps helps to understand numerous fields in which the very way how we gaze at something, the gazing itself, becomes the enigma of the visible. Project of this single record is independent, it is not an introduction to some other product, nor is it a preview of what shall happen in the future.

the initial ground of Brecht’s poetics there is a concord with the poetics of Autopsia, otherwise “The Berlin Requiem” wouldn’t have happened at all. However, every similarity ends with this initial ground. Everything that can be heard in the requiem is not a quotation. The use of verbal statements and the creation of compositions do not match. One does not illustrate the other. They are in the relationship of the foreboding, of the potentiality, of some kind of inclination of one toward the other, on which the possibilities of “expanded” meanings rest. Sound images, photography and the text come from different areas, but in some special way they support each other and make the entire product more complex. Climbing up the mountain peak is not the strive to reach one’s own peak of existence in the figure of death. Although Autopsia was using the slogan “Our Goal Is Death”, it is not about the representation of death, it is a declaration phrase the object of which is substituted. Climbing up to the top points to the effort which man makes in order to explore the unknown. However, this strenuous walk does not lead to some determined goal, and thus neither to death. Rather, it tells about the courage to endure the solitude in the world.

In fact, Autopsia goes through a period of an interest which is reflected in exploration of the legacy of the last century. All projects from that period are connected in a certain way, but at the same time are completed entities. It has never been that one work opened the other. The method of repetition and extension of the material was used, but always within a framework of a single thematic totality. Projects of Autopsia were not conceived as series.

21. Recently Autopsia issued a small project in which Pasolini and Freud were put together, entitled “Silently The Wolves Are Watching / Porcile”. Is this work an intro into the conception of new works, which are, at the moment, in the phase of becoming? What are we to expect in these new projects?

First title comes from psychoanalysis, and the second one is the title of Pasolini’s film. The speech at the beginning of the track is from that movie. At www.autopsia.net both titles have direct links to the sources of the inspiration. But it is no accident that they are on two sides of the vinyl. There is a connection between “Lacanian gaze” and parallel narratives about cannibalism and capitalism. It is a matter of a paradoxical conjunction of completely individ-

Q. What part has gnosis, gnostic tradition and heresy in general played in the history of culture? What roles will they play?

AUTOPSIA INTERVIEW Questions: S. M. Blumfeld

Autopsia: In a way we have already replied to that question in the previous answer. It is a matter of available traditions. Since we use syncretism in our methods, gnostic tradition has its part in the creation of the work, in its character, but not as a fundamental point of departure for the work. For us it is interesting to see how things, seemingly incongruous, really function. Gnosticism is interesting for us because of its structural incompleteness; it is suitable for creating new illusions. There is no mysticism in the work of Autopsia but there is in the method, the forming of external images. In general terms there is some understanding of the mystical body but that is only insofar as we try to control certain forms, as for example, reaching an understanding of the vocabulary of forms itself.

Q. How does Autopsia view suicide and how does Autopsia view suicide in terms of ethic, philosophy, society and culture? Autopsia: Suicide is an act aimed against oneself, a self unable to endure mortality. Autopsia believes Suicide to be Human; Death belongs to the Divine. Q. Your work appears to embrace the concept of eternal repetition. What is Autopsia´s attitude towards the idea of reincarnation and carmic law in Eastern philosophies?

Q. Music composed by Autopsia contains a certain degree of ectasy. Do you believe ecstasy has some influence on human thought?

Autopsia: Eastern philosophies are of no interest for the work of Autopsia. We are rooted in European traditions of thought, traditions that stretch from the middle Europe back to the classical period. Although our work includes the concept of repetition this is not related to eternal repetition. The notions of eternal and idea are remote to us and we do not elaborate on philosophical ideas although it may appear we do. If philosophical ideas can serve our methods of creation then we merely use fragments of general notions and ignore the origin of their meaning. Notions already formulated are part of the evolution of culture and these form part of our work only because they are part of that vocabulary of culture. However, within the Autopsia work, the notions take on the role of creating new relationships. By being adopted into our work, the notions achieve a new identity which forms the essence of Autopsia´s work. We use established cultural patterns as codes which, in the new work, represent something new, something authentic. Do not expect Autopsia to produce formulated responses to those cultural phenomena outside of our own work. Autopsia actually encourages and maintains a distance form the process of creating culture. We relate to things as finished products, intuitively and not scientifically, attempting to understand, never to explain for we believe Autopsia´s aim is not to interpret but to examine origins.

Autopsia: If thinking is close to what is artistic, if it appears together with the work and not in the manipulation of the work, then it is essentially connected with the ecstatic. That which is ecstatic belongs, in essence, to art. Borders that we usually call areas of reality: art, philosophy, science, etc. disappear in fascination. Autopsia does not operate with the elements of ecstasy. Fascination is not achieved by the use of calculated tricks based on the content of the work. Although there are methods available, fascination in fact stands in the measure of our openness towards the work. We do not create our works to bring ecstasy to the listener, we simply create what we ourselves want to hear and that action is a way of giving and not a way of seducing. All manipulations are have their basis in the creation of the work as a methodological procedure and are not aimed to achieve controlled ends. Q. Psychoanalysts believe death to be as sting a force as sexual instinct. In Autopsia´s works death is the maximum but it does not appear that sex has the same importance, how do you explain this? Autopsia: Death sublimates but is not the ultimate. To talk about something that is measurable, comparable, with minima and maxima, means to talk about something that is already represented. We manipulate the representation of death but this does not yet mean that is, for us, something represented, in other words, something with the power of representation. We do not relate to death as something objective nor as scientific. Scientific attitudes towards death are, for us, irrelevant areas that embrace qestions of instinct, sexuality, homicide and destruction. In Autopsia´s work the discourse of death has a completely different function. We do not deal with death as a phenomenon amongst phenomena; we talk of the oblivion of death - this surpasses the objects of cultural interests. Q. What do you think about humour, “black humour” and irony?

Autopsia: Humour is an authentic feature of speech. Humour does not possess an object towards which it is directed, it is a way of ´responding´as coming-to speech. The origin of irony is in reflection, and of humour - intuition. Irony is not, by its functionality in language, a subject that interests Autopsia.

Autopsia: Our interest was in their self control, their programmed personalities. Each was absolutely aware of his place in the world and of his own capabilities. Individuality means the right to possess and dispose of one´s own identity; on one side towards people and on the other side towards God. Death happens only to the individual; collectively it is not mortality; one can only speak of this metaphorically. In Casanova, Mozart and Kafka it is a matter of a sufficiently recognizable level form the vocabulary of culture. Each of them is, in his own way, close to Autopsia´s attitude concerning the destiny of the individual. Since Prague offers a common ground for the fragments of the destinies of their lives it becomes possible to develop a paradigm pointing to its historical dimension, an awareness of the state of belonging. It is a matter of personal reading of cultural messages and making these concrete and actual. In one aspect the paradigm hides intrigues and temptation to disguise and change - it becomes a dance with masks.

Q. Do you think that various psychedelic materials and drugs enrich our culture or endanger it? Autopsia: There are things to which humans are exposed simply because they are there. Humans can choose whether to take advantage of the fact they are available; the same goes for drugs. Their effect is not to help within the sphere of culture, their function is as an instrument of achievement. All ´effects´ start and end within the individual and that is why, in many ways, the thing we call culture deals with the effects of narcotics: production, circulation, restrictions, persecutions are all parts of the domain by which the system maintains control over the individual. The same system has itself installed such notions as ´to enrich´ and ´to endanger´ in order to disguise the origin of the phenomenon.

Q. Is it not possible to think of death as a great mystification? Autopsia: Death can become an object of mystification but first of all it must become an ´object´. In what way anything becomes an object can be discovered through examining paradigms of our civilisation from the classical period to the present. We live a precise paradigm: the oblivion of death, the age of the greatest mystification - death which it is not. Everything Autopsia does exactly opposes the individual to that oblivion. This means to be in conflict with the very paradigm. However, we are completely aware that only efforts that seems useless do, in fact, contribute to the destruction of the paradigm.

Q. How would you react if the work of Autopsia suddenly and unexpectedly met with acclaim in the mass pop culture arena? Would you start another project or completely stop your activities? Autopsia: The work of Autopsia is exclusive and elite. This means that the very intention behind the work precludes any possibility of transforming an Autopsia work into a product of mass consumption. Even if an increase in sales of Autopsia´s products takes them over the limit of mass interest it does not indicate that the work was created with that intention. Basically Autopsia is oriented towards the production of the work; it is not directed towards the exposition of the personality which does, in fact, move it away from the phenomena whose production goes through mass media. The presence of Autopsia in mass media has its limits - we are aware of these.

Q. What do you think about war and the deaths in the former Yugoslavia? Autopsia: It is not the event of death that is at work here but fear and murder. Fear and murder are always led by an objective; in fact they do not occur unless that objective is established. The question ´what is the objective?´ is answered through politic, not through art. Death gets its teeth from words and if that were our aim we would, by now, be in uniforms and armed with knives and bombs and be mere agitators of destruction although not of death. Death, in our view, does not require agitators and the tools of destruction because its medium is life itself. Every individual must discover this for himself and always from beginning.

Q. What are Autopsia´s views on mummification, fetishism, idolatry in art and culture? Autopsia: Idolatry, fetishism etc. are phenomena of collective behaviour. The work of Autopsia is addressed to the individual and therefore not towards the masses. It is improper to define our work in relation to the standard notions of mass culture, mass media etc. These have their own rules whilst Autopsia has different principles directing its strategy.

Questions: S. M. Blumfield Prague, MCMXCII

Q. AutopsiA today works in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. You feel better there than in another location. Why? Autopsia: Prague is Geistzentrale der Welt. In Prague we feel electric and to be electric and divine is one. Q. The theme of your new project PARADIGM was Casanova-Mozart-Kafka. Can you enlighten us on the concept of this project and explain what is most important in these personalities,their works and their destinies?

in music, poetry and art are linked in a special way. Text and image have their relevance for an extended reading of music production. In a certain way they provide the historicity for the sound which is bodyless and placeless. Text and image embody music production, they are not external supplements, but they arise along with musical ideas. Thus, appliance of text and image is not some “other activity” of Autopsia, but an integral element of the project itself. There is a certain network of crossings, passages, between sound, text and image, which rests in their essential framework, their underlying structure. I make use of three media to the extent that this framework is sustainable and comprehensible, that the meaning of intertwining is preserved, or maintained.

AUTOPSIA INTERVIEW 2007 Questions: Maurizio Pustianz for Chain DLK

1) Your previous full length album before “The Berlin requiem” has been released into 1996 by Hyperium. What made you wait so long to do something new? Autopsia does not fit into the category of ‘album-production’. It is not necassary for albums to appear in some annual rhythm, or in any other kind of rhythm. There is no foreseeable schedule of producing a forseeable number of compositions. Since Autopsia has a complete control over its own production, there are no obligations which might come outside of authorial interest, which might require any forseeable terms of issuing new materials. Autopsia is not the part of music bussiness. Status of Autopsia is not supposed to be understood in terms of music production, but in terms of art, meaning that the relation of the work and the time of its appearance is measured according to completely different principles. Artist stands open for the emergence of the work of art, he is the one who listens, who has the ability to hear the call out of which the work appears. Artist is the one who follows this call. It is not a forseeable or a predictable process, and a year or a decade do not mean a lot when it comes to the inception of the idea which leads towards the work of art itself. I do not want at all to get into the situation in which terminal requirements will be posed to Autopsia outside of its own motifs. 2) During these eleven years you released two compilations: “Colonia” and “Le chant de la nuit”. We already talked about “Colonia” on our previous interview so let’s focus on the latter one. “Le chant de la nuit” is a CD with a rich Cd-rom multimedia section where people can find visuals, writings, interviews, etc. What was your intent with that release? “Le chant de la nuit” was a rather demanding project. It was not just the matter of collecting different materials from previous production of Autopsia. I didn’t want any kind of „backward gaze“. I wanted to explore a new form of production, in which sound and image could appear together, but in a very special way. The project itself was not retrospective but exploratory one. Digital technology enabled such direction of exploration. New relations between different materials were installed, and a possibility of not moving linearly through the material, as in printed media, was established. An ambience of different „chambers“ was created, which have their own particular keys, and which are connected in the manner of wandering, which means - of exploring. This „architecture“ of the project is essential for the understanding of it. Like in panopticon - there are new images opening, new ways of looking at things which appear familiar, but now they are in unfamiliar places. It is not the matter of the collection of old things, but of designing of a network which becomes the new event. There emerged new generations that read already issued materials in a different way. Thus “Le chant de la nuit” was for a part of the audience some kind of the end, and for the other part - it was the beginning. 3) Music is only a little part of your project, can you talk about your other activities? Autopsia is not a multi-media project, but its involvements

4) Each of your releases has a concept behind them, so they aren’t a simple collection of tracks. Your latest one “The Berlin Requiem” has been inspired by Bertold Brecht. What made you chose that author and that poem? Different aspects of 20th century avant-garde became, after 2000, a main interest of Autopsia. Avant-garde today is not only an experience of the past and from the past but also the subject, that is, the object, of history. Thus avant-garde is classified into same containers of culture in which other historical phenomena dwell. General notion of the progressiveness and innovativeness of the avant-garde is not sustainable today. It may be said for many Central-European avant-garde authors that they have been supporting some “regressive” ideas which were manifested in relation towards the world as totality. That was in opposition with modernistic rationalism, subjectivism and particularism of the West. This is why reaching for the heritage of the avant-garde can be understood as “newreading”. Historical patterns are one of the elements of the methodology of operative processes of Autopsia. In this sense no difference is made regarding historical sources. Genuine processes of avant-garde are completed operations. Renewal of their patterns and exploration of inspiring samples are the part of new creative cycle which is not in direct connivance with messages and aims of the avant-garde. With matrix of history in mind the avant-garde is just one of the possible re-

sources in which the beginning of a new creative process is placed. Bertold Brecht is unavoidable figure of the 20th century avant-garde. The choice is not accidental and it is not only because of the theme of the title song. Rather, the choice was made because of the spirit of Brecht’s avantgarde orchestrations in which a particular junction of sound, text and image occurred, and the result was the project of the new spectacle. Essentially it is the matter of a baroque idea with changed poles of perception. Scenes were not shown to a single person but to the populace, which assigned a political connotation to entire production. Project of Autopsia reverts the perception to the original state because it addresses the individual and not the collective. The same direction is visible in Brecht’s poem which was chosen. You cannot sing to the collective without it being the agitation, the propaganda. Poetizing is no longer addressed to particular individual, but to the person who is capable of receiving the message.

and about its projects/releases? Illuminating Technologies is the label already used for projects which were supposed to extend the operative domain of Autopsia. Now it became a label which will publish Autopsia in the future. Due to new digital media and Internet it is possible, in a very simple way, to start the new authorial label which shall support only its own projects. Some authors are already within such practice and it gives excellent results. Several limited editions, such as CD “Le Chant de la Nuit” and the single record “Radical Machine” were issued on the label Illuminating Tecnologies. The single “Silently the Wolves are Watching” is the first unlimited edition on my own label. 8) You sent me a 10 minutes video which is part of Autopsia’s “Non-spectacular videos”. What kind of series is that? It is an experimental film. It is not a video project, I was never interested in music-video projects. “The Winter” originated as an experiment with the medium of film. Although there appear the sound, the text and the image together, the basic, supporting structure of the project is film and that is why I speak about film experiment. Source material is film, and the ordering of the new structure is digital. I think that this experiment has the potential, and that it is possible to think about “the series”.

5) “The Berlin Requiem deals with what can scarcely be discerned by the senses, be heard, in the realm of the gelid nothingness”. Listening to the tracks I felt a sort of isolationist atmosphere as the tracks were tending to avoid rhythm and melody. Can you tell something about what you wanted to reach musically? “Just as the electricity was always there, before it was discovered, and just as everything undiscovered exists from the beginning, therefore, also now, so the universe itself is entirely fulfilled with forms, motifs and combinations of past and future musics. The composer seems to me as a gardener who was given to cultivate a smaller or larger part of land; his task is to harvest, to order, and to bind, in short, to transform that which grows on that part of land and the land itself into the garden”. This was written by Ferruccio Busoni in the text “On the essence of music”, which was published in 1924. At the beginning of 20th century, music experienced a fundamental change of its language, and from tonal it turned into atonal music, and it found its strongpoint in the ideas of avant-gardes. This is the area in which Autopsia “cultivates the garden” and draws ideas for current production. This interest is already indicated in several limited editions, and in “Berlin Requiem” it was realized completely. Impulses were looked for within the legacies of Schoenberg, Stockhausen and other avant-garde artists. I’ve experimented with dodecaphonic technique and particular, specific rhythmic structures. There is no change in Autopsia’s method of composing, but the new sample, new pattern was chosen. 6) Who the Dammerung Orchestra is? Sometimes projects of Autopsia involve collaborators from various domains. Dammerung Orchestra is a common title for different forms of their activities. They are “beings-performers”. The title Dammerung Orchestra is added to the notion of “the performers”. Their role is sometimes entirely concrete and defined and sometimes it is virtual, in some cases both. The title itself is what brings them together in one form of unstable community which constantly appears and disappears, as beings whom you cannot get acquainted with entirely nor give them a certain, defined place. You must “imagine” them.

9) On that video the shootings were showing natural seeings (rivers, snowy trees, etc). That “Non-spectacular vid-

7) Can you talk about Illuminating Technologies

ILLUMINATING TECHNOLOGIES IN DREAMS BEGINS RESPONSIBILITY

eo” made me think that nowadays people is used to being surprised by things they see on TV and nature is no more

spectacular for them...but, what is your interpretation? “The Winter” explores the possibilities of cutting “within the frame”. The perception of trivial sample is being changed - of the winter landscape, as we all know it. But, is this quite so? Do we know what is really happening here? “Reframing” has as its effect the new gaze at the same thing. Text and music take us additionally into an adventure whose initial point is a trivial realistic representation. Present-day people can look at the same thing, which they saw for thousand times, but in an absolutely transformed relation to the object of viewing. The perception of “nature” was changed, and the object remained the same. 10) Are you preparing new releases (audio or video)? Two 12” vinyl records for Illuminating Technologies. 11) What do you think you achieved with Autopsia during these 20 years? There was something you had to achieve or you just followed the creative flow? There is no “achievement”, nothing that could be kept for oneself, and that one can say: “this is the object of my achievement”. Certainly, there is a creative flow, I have said something about it in response to your first question. But the true achievement is peacefulness, stillness, , it is mine only, and one cannot dispossess nor trade with it. Peace and presence of mind are the real results of creative work which is controlled by the author. 12) Something more to add? This is the time in which Autopsia renovates, re-establishes itself. When you work for a long time then the creative motivation restores itself in cycles, as seasons of the year. When you say “I”, it seems it is something stable and permanent, but nonetheless you change along with what you do. It seems it is the same, but it changes.

The Berlin Requiem

recorded or comprehended.

Old Europa Cafe CD

And yet it is as if The Requiem belongs to a certain place and a certain time. This belonging is indicated through Berthold Brecht’s poem and through Berlin itself – it is designated by the name of the world in which the death really occurs. The poem itself praises the transience – the moment when we actually separate ourselves from the things that do not mean anything to us, the moment when we can placidly leave go away. However, we almost cannot tell anything about this “placidity”, maybe only that it is light, cold – virtually with no senses. What links the city and the frosty desert here is the unutterable inexpressible itself. In order to perceive this, one needs not to travel afar to the end of the world nor to climb high to mountain peaks.

When Mary Shelley makes a choice regarding the place on which Doctor Frankenstein will finally render to our memory the creature which he procreated, she opts for an icy wasteland. The place that looks like a perfect description of eternity, where everything is motionless, out of the senses, like a frozen image in which only a wind might be giving a promise of itself – a breath of death, something which remains at the very end, yet testifying that we are still here, on this side of the life.

Being of Frankenstein vanished in the white wasteland. We shall never learn if it crossed the frontier of death or is it still with us. It is as if The Requiem restores this ambiguity over and again, as if the sound is that which is still there – that which joins together the word and the unutterable unspeakable inexpressible. Vladimir Mattioni 19. 02. 2007.

It is as if The Berlin Requiem deals with conducts what can scarcely be discerned by the senses, be heard, in the realm of the very finiteness – a gelid nothingness. As if there faintly audible sounds of the alterations of crystals and frozen bodies are registered recorded. Duration Continuance of the sound is expanding to the very limits of articulation. Only the silent quiver of white light and cold motions is audible. The sound extends through the space that has neither the horizon, nor forms, nor boundaries. Perhaps it is the place where the change is the largest – one that cannot be uttered expressed spoken of. Such a large one that it cannot be registered 13

All Western thought is based on the idea of a center - an Origin, a Truth, an Ideal Form, an Essence, a God, a Presence that guarantees meaning. The problem with centres is that they attempt to exclude, ignore, repress, marginalize ‘the other’. There is no original text, no center. A text is made from other texts. Any element-sign or sub-text, by being placed into a ‘new’ text, adopts meanings that are different from its primary meanings or meanings in other texts. A text is not a line of words releasing a single’theological’ meaning (the message of the Author-God), but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture. A musical text is not an autonomous object. Explicitly more than in written texts, it is grounded in musical practice that a score only receives meaning through an active reading (which can be both kept in silence or realized in sound) and that a defi nitive version is an illusion. Our practice is: Making music on one’s own without having a preconceived goal, without holding on to already existing codes and rules.

Autopsia book O.G.I.D., serigraphy, 343mm x 6370mm, 1988

CD ROM LE CHANT DE LA NUIT

Autopsia short films

Reality can only be grasped indirectly - seen refl ected in a mirror, staged in the theater of the mind. + We make ghostly fi lms - haunted by great cinematic models: Hans-J. Syberberg, Chris Marker, Akira Kurosawa, and anti-models: Hollywood, MTV . + A posthumous fi lms, in the era of cinema’ s unprecedented mediocrity. + The key to Autopsia fi lms is beyond the narrative, beyond the ‘story’ that we witness. What provides the density of cinematic enjoyment is material from beyond interpretation.

Autopsia short films

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