SCHALLFRONT presents

SCHALLFRONT: Can you tell us how you came to be involved in Neue Musik?

MARIJANA JANEVSKA: Before my composition studies, I studied violin-performance for many years. Like all violinists I was playing a lot of classical and romantic music. Of course, at this point I am attending many contemporary music concerts, but the first few times I went to those concerts I was very surprised and quite puzzled by them – by the noises and sounds that were used, by the different “weird” ways in which the instruments were being played. I was curious and wanted to know more about it. So, I went to study composition in order to understand new music better, and not just new music, but every type of music. Eventually I liked it so much that I stopped performing entirely: I was solely composing for a few years. It is when I came to Germany that these two artistic activities, composing and performing, merged – and that happened exactly in the field of Neue Musik.

Marijana, a substantial part of the program that you are presenting makes use of vocalization techniques. How has the practice and use of these vocalization techniques, both as an interpreter of other composers' work and through your own compositional practice influenced you?

MARIJANA JANEVSKA: I was interested in using text in my pieces. What I found especially compelling was the space between the meaning of words and the raw gesture of their sound – their rhythm, pitch deviation, articulation … I was searching for different ways to use text to produce musical material, so I began to experiment with my own voice and to perform my own pieces including vocalization, electronics, and violin. Then I started to perform pieces by other composers and collaborate with them. This helped me to expand my understanding of how other composers use text and voice, not just to see the score on paper and to listen to it, but to experience it as a performer, as a physical experience. It enriches my imagination of what can be done with voice, it opens up new doors, new possibilities.

Working with both the human voice and electronics opens up an uncanny category between presence and absence of the human body. Hopes for the possibility to communicate with the dead have been prevalent since the beginning of sound recordings. At the same time, the electronically produced voices in advertisement, films, radio and pop culture are actively shaping our image of the human being as such. How do you relate your different practices to this dichotomy?

MARIJANA JANEVSKA: We are living in a time where there is such a strong presence of an absence. It has never been easier to communicate and at the same time we have never been more isolated, more individuated. The overuse of electronics and human voice in mass media and pop culture makes it especially challenging to work with both, but I would say that what gives meaning to sounds is the context in which they are used, the context of the piece. Every piece has to teach the listener a new way how to listen to it.

The theme of our concert series is “reverie(s)”. This relates to a certain dreamy characteristic, how does this play a role in your music?

MARIJANA JANEVSKA: I think that we, as people, are in a constant tension between being an individual (with our eyes turned inward, experiencing our personal reality), and at the same time being part of a group, a collective (turned outwards and having the responsibility to react to a troubled society, to the reality we live in). I believe art has the potential to open a third realm (reality), a space that is in-between, like a dream-state (with personal and shared histories), like a bridge between the other two realities, that works on the edge of our consciousness.

As we have experienced in the last years with our extraordinary situation, art can often be used as a pleasant escape from reality. On the other hand, art can be used as a medium to bring reality into a more understandable and relatable form. The analysis of the dream itself can be used as a way of understanding and processing our struggles in a safe and non-real environment. Do you use either of these methods in your music and how might they be used?

MARIJANA JANEVSKA: Composing (being any kind of an artist, really) is a very intimate and self-reflective process. You can not escape yourself, you have to ask yourself many questions, make decisions, face your doubts and fears. At the same time you want to communicate, you want to be heard, you want to express something. It offers some kind of a consolation. I think the most beautiful thing in art is that you can allow yourself to be completely vulnerable and at the same time be completely untouchable. I also think that art should be political - as a reflection, reaction and criticism of our society in the times we live in. This allows for a meaning into a work of art, without it becoming something purely abstract or self-referential.

How does interaction with artists and listeners, either directly through collaboration, through conversation, or by attending concerts influence you as an artist?

MARIJANA JANEVSKA: I think that interacting, collaborating and sharing ideas, thoughts and experiences with other artists and listeners is very important for the development of one’s own work because even though art is very subjective and personal, it doesn’t belong to just one person. The artist desires to express something, to communicate, to give her/his ideas space, the possibility to exist, and to be heard and seen by others.

What is your vision for your artistic development?

MARIJANA JANEVSKA: I love composing for other people and I love performing pieces by other composers and I will definitely continue doing that, but at the moment I feel that I have just started to merge composition and performance together, so I am especially interested in exploring further possibilities in performance with voice, violin, and electronics as one meta-instrument.