Slavek Kwi is an Irish-based musician who often works with field recordings. He was born in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, a regime which required the first of his many escapes. Categories and controlled behaviours are not his friend. His dense, luxurious and prolific output in music is characterized by listening and empathy. His singularly unique work, which spans decades, is interested in presence, collaboration, improvisation. It is conceptual and mythic. He publishes under many names including alfa00, Artificial Memory Trace and uni.Sol where nature recordings often play a pivotal role. His instruments are sometimes home-made, hacked, overlapping and domestic. His home is also a studio, though he has many homes, names, characters.
His sonic performances have a peculiiar metallic and percussive character, which reminds his originary past as industrial printer, revealing at the same time the right and impacting attitude for an emotionally full-immersed creative approach.
Below the interview with Slaver Kwi about his origins and the relative artistical developments.
Do you feel you are part of a field recording or sound art community? If you had to use one word to describe that community, what would it be?
Slavek Kwi: “Fragmented. There are a lot of trends people follow. In general, interesting art is hijacked by businesslike ways of thinking. I am interested in how to escape from creating templates that lead to the same results. There is a lot of collective mimicking which can be called inspiration.
“When I came to Belgium in 1986 I felt quite lonely and wanted to meet other people making interesting music. I was in my early 20s, and went to the director of the Conservatoire Royal in Liege. I told him I was completely self-taught and wanted to look into “the kitchen of real musicians.” He laughed, but accepted me.
“I was very lucky to be speaking with Frederic Rzewski, he was teaching composition there. He was part of Musica Electronica Viva (MEV), in the 60s and 70s they were very active staging improvised events. He was filled with stories like Pink Floyd came to see us about our synthesizers… Unfortunately he died last year. He was a very supportive and interesting person. He said yes you can come here.
“I could not write notes so he assigned me to a composer (Baudeoin de Jaer) who taught me how to write music. It’s quite simple, a mathematical thing. I don’t hear notes like a trained composer, I hear in textures, C sharp on violin is a completely different sound as C sharp on piano. But I understood the system and experimented with it.
“I went to the class of electroacoustic music in a studio in Liège, connected to IRCAM. Their work was very specific, they did mixed pieces using acoustic instruments and synthesizers and tape. Later, thanks to them, I went to Brussels where there was a little studio (in Ohain, near Waterloo) run by Annette Vande Gorne who was very connected to the Canadian electroacoustic scene. She was doing acousmatic stuff, only tape, more connected to GRM. You had different schools producing very specific things, if you don’t fit, you don’t fit. I was already doing my own stuff, I just wanted to meet people and explore possibilities.
“In the beginning of the 90s digital studios were starting, everyone wanted to work with digital editors like early ProTools, there was a big cue for students. Studios using tape were abandoned so that’s where I worked. Sometimes I mentioned that similar music came from people like Nurse with Wound or Throbbing Gristle but they said no, that’s very different. Each studio followed trends produced by classical education and basically ignored the rest.
“Then I went to the big improvised scene in Antwerp, free-jazz-like stuff. This was between 1988-95. It was very interesting, I found people to play with. But they said no tapes, only live music. And you need music education, you have to know how to play jazz, and then you can play this. In field recording it’s the same, it’s a question of safety.
“People don’t like venturing into the unknown. They like having groups of people who do similar stuff. Every system of belief is a coping mechanism. You create templates and parameters, field recordings should be pure unfiltered recording, if it is edited it is not pure. This creates segregation. It’s not about the music itself, but how we deal with perception. It shows how we segregate experience according to resemblances instead of accepting that diversity is automatic, natural, which is much more interesting.”
“My practice is more connected to spiritual development than art or music. Art is a space that allows me to explore freely the unknown. Art used to be about skills, how to play aninstrument for instance, but it became more open and conceptual, offering us new spiritual spaces where we can feel free.”
You’ve worked for years with autistic children, could you talk about how your practice of listening and presence enters the classroom?
Slavek Kwi: “In 1990-91 I was in Belgium and needed money. Friends encouraged me to make workshops for people with Down syndrome. I didn’t know even what a workshop was. I was told I had to create situations and make music with them to help them express themselves. So I collected all sorts of rubbish and made a big heap, with a tape recorder at the bottom playing strange sounds. When my clients came they wondered what was this big heap of rubbish? I invited them to explore what objects they could make music with, and decide what is not a musical object. They made two heaps—musical and non-musical. I asked why is this object non musical? In the end we wound up with one heap again. Everything could be music.
“We created simple instruments with pieces of wood, resonant boxes like xylophones and metallic objects. We made a large construction and hung stuff from it and played it. They could play for hours, with sometimes synchronized or overlapping rhythms. It was so beautiful. I didn’t impose on them any type of music. They loved it and I was delighted and got hooked by the situation.
“Slowly I started to find more work in that environment. When I returned they didn’t have a job for me, but the director was kind and said I could help another musician. I was horrified, though I don’t blame him, he was a very nice man. He would hand somebody an electric guitar that had been tuned and tell them, “You do like this,”…” (motions arm up and down) “… but you can’t touch up here, on the neck. He gives another one a drum and says “When I tell you, you do this rhythm (up and down).” He used them like puppets. We don’t respect people with special needs when we tell them they have to behave a certain way. I felt what they needed was a space to feel free and explore their creativity. I become interested in creating frameworks that could accommodate that.
“By accident I started to work for the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation on a project called Mus-e. It brings art to schools. Because I already had some experience, they assigned me to a school with special needs kids. It was a mixed group with most on the autistic spectrum. I brought chaotic ways of working that made teachers wonder: what is he doing? I created a safe place to let them explore. Problems were only connected to safety, I didn’t want them to hit each other with drum sticks. Aesthetics were not imposed and I communicated with them mostly non-verbally. They could play whatever kind of music they wanted. I played with them, supporting their rhythms, like we were having a discussion. When they stopped, I stopped. I did this for a long time and suddenly I became a specialist in autism. I was just observing, letting them do what they wanted.
“I met Helen Blackhurst, a writer, at a conference in Athens, and moved to Ireland where she lived. I was soon contacted by the National Concert Hall. They had an outreach program and were looking for someone who had experience with autism. I worked 17 years for them. I discovered that other people called it music therapy. I just called myself an artist-in-residence. I thought maybe I should get a diploma so I called a course director but disagreed with her straight away.” (laughs) “She said they have to be able to play from notes. I insisted that they didn’t need to play an instrument in order to do music therapy. What you need is to be sensitive and make sounds.”
Why did you leave the Czech Republic?
Slavek Kwi: “I couldn’t live there. There was an oppressive Soviet-style regime, very controlled. When I was growing up I was happy and lived often with my grandparents in the mountains close to the Polish border. My parents didn’t abandon me, they just wanted to give me a nice preschool experience in nature. I was there for months at a time and loved it. That’s where my interest in nature and field recordings comes from. I loved the sounds of insects and frogs. I didn’t have friends, so it’s not surprising I wound up befriending beetles and lizards.” (laughs) “I have synaethesia, I can see sounds.”
What does it mean that you can see sound?
Slavek Kwi: “Synaethesia mixes the senses. I have visions all the time. I thought everyone saw the same way, but when I met the director of the Conservatoire in Belgium I talked with him about colours and showed him my graphical scores and he asked: what are you talking about? I was convinced that everyone would understand the scores but he said no, I don’t see colours. Synaethesia is a psychological condition and no one really knows exactly how it works because it manifests in different ways. It could be an illusion but that’s irrelevant because it’s how I perceive the world. What if I asked you to describe taste? You are familiar with taste. But how to describe it to someone who has never tasted?”
Could you help someone else experience it?
Slavek Kwi: “No. Maybe through my compositions the way I organize sounds. I have a tendency to create very dense environments. It could evoke feelings which are close to it. But you can’t actually transfer experience, it’s impossible. Everyone interprets differently. We have different perceiving tools. You can simply bring people together to experience freely. We need to accept that we don’t need to be understood.”
You were going to tell me about why you left the Czech Republic.
Slavek Kwi: “There are many reasons. I never liked eating meat, it was instinctive, I didn’t like the killing of creatures. But our culture is very meat-based. Eating well means having a piece of meat and something with that. I was forced both by parents and culture to eat meat. Later on I discovered that Southern India is completely vegetarian, that there are vegetarian cultures. I thought: this is amazing, I will become vegetarian! But I was told I couldn’t do that because it’s associated with belonging to a sect. The Communist regime was atheist, everything spiritual was completely oppressed. To be interested in Hinduism or Buddhism was forbidden or completely frowned upon. When I expressed interest in these things I started to get in trouble. It alienated people around me and it was difficult to do these things without being judged.
“I always wanted to play guitar. I thought about playing guitar at a campfire and attracting girls” (laughs). “I laid it out flat and hit it with sticks and different things. I enjoyed myself and had a really good time. I recorded this stuff on reel-to-reel with an old square microphone. I was told no, first you have to learn how to play “properly,” then you can make stuff like that. But if I have to learn it will take me ages and I’d like to make music now. Why can’t I learn on the way?
“Years later, I brought this situation into my workshops with autistic children. What’s the problem with playing? It’s harmless to make sounds. On the way you suddenly arrive somewhere else. If you want some technique, you learn it on the way. The idea is very simple: with one sound you can make music. When you consciously start to organize this sound—it can be just hitting a table with a stick—you make different punctuation, dynamics and so on. It’s already music because you’re organizing sounds by the way you’re listening to them. If you add another sound you are expanding your vocabulary, therefore you are creating technique. I was interested in this simple kind of… I can’t say teaching, but supporting, facilitating.”
You were not allowed to leave Czechoslovakia?
Slavek Kwi: “From early childhood I was very interested in nature, so my parents wanted me to study biology, of course. I used to collect beetles, which means basically killing them and pinning them in boxes. However, one day I had an epiphany encountering one beetle, Morimus funereus. I didn’t wanted to continue this way, I sold my collection and bought a camera and tape recorder. I said no, I want to take pictures and make music. I became suddenly the black sheep of the family.
“I was interested in visual art so my father thought I could go back to school and learn how to be an industrial printer. I went because I had to. That led to all kinds of creative work. The regime was extremely corrupt so you could print anything. I had been making cassettes and could now print covers. I was printing stuff for Hare Krishna that were forbidden but nobody cared. You could print Mein Kampf and they wouldn’t care. Corruption was normality. I was being paid for my printing work, and besides that, I was taking paper and printing different things, it was basically stealing and that brought me more troubles. In the end, I had to do compulsory military service. I worked in a factory printing communist newspapers, 6 nights per week, 12 hours per shift. It was like hell. The machines were 120 decibels loud, without headphones you would go deaf, and it was 35 degrees Celsius. That’s where I started making “industrial” noise music.
“I worked there for a year and a half. I was 23 years old, very naïve, and some of what I printed backfired. I was questioned by the secret police. I felt that if I stayed I would be ground down by all this pressure. But I didn’t feel like being in an anti-communist group, I didn’t believe it could change. I had a friend who knew a couple of women from Holland who liked punk music and visited, wanting to know more about Czech underground music. He asked me to help and I showed them what I could. They asked, “Why don’t you leave?” I’d never thought about it before. I was doing military service, it seemed impossible.
“At that time, traveling was complicated, you had two options. One was called something like “a promise from bank,” it is hard to explain. Buying western money required a special permit, police check you out thoroughly and it was expensive. Then you get a special passport valid only for your trip. This was for people who had money and were more connected.
“The second possibility was designed trips that were sold one time per year. There were long cues, people camped for days. I chose a less popular trip, to Vienna in the winter. When I arrived there were many people so I left, the second day was the same and by the third day everything was sold out. I put myself on standby, in case someone canceled.
“Two weeks later I got a call. I didn’t have a passport because it had expired, and when I asked for another they gave me a letter that read, “It is not in the interest of the republic that your passport is renewed.” Usually when you’re in military service you can’t travel, but they gave me all the permits, no problem—it was like a miracle. I applied for a passport again when the police were moving and they gave me one, probably some administrator error. I took some western money with me but at the last minute I gave it to somebody else which was lucky because they stripped me naked at the border. Everything fell together and I was gone.
“I went to Vienna on a boat and saw a city covered with snow, everything was white, tabula rasa. The first thing I saw was a sign sprayed on a wall: “We don’t want immigrants from socialist countries.” And a Nazi sign.” (laughs) “Welcome to Western Europe! Freedom! I was petrified and stayed in Vienna for a week, then attempted to cross the border to Germany through the mountains where I was caught and put in a refugee camp for six months. I escaped camp and went to Holland. I didn’t have a passport, I became illegal and basically homeless.
“In Holland there were a lot of squats, I was helped by many people living there illegally, especially from South America. They helped each other, it was relatively easy. Sometimes I stayed in the Hare Krishna temple. I had a friend in Belgium who found out that I could ask for asylum from the United Nations in Brussels, so I went straight away. I was stuck there for 14 years and never got political asylum. I entered a “Kafka situation loop,” I never got a work permit and they never threw me out of the country. I have a pile of papers this high. That’s how I left Czechoslovakia.” (laughs)
What an incredible story. You don’t seem filled with the bitterness and anger that so many older people carry from their unwanted past. I know folks from the Czech Republic who are deeply scarred from their time under the Communist regime, and they can’t stop talking about it. I’m glad you made it out of that place.
Slavek Kwi: “When the Czech revolution came in 1989 I didn’t believe it, I thought it was propaganda. It took me three years to go back just to look. Vaclav Havel granted amnesty to all emigrants who didn’t commit crimes but I was still nervous. When I returned I met people from my past, and it was as if time had stopped because they hadn’t changed. When I met my family they treated me the same as before but I felt like I was someone else.
“Music is integral. What I’m interested is to connect with my immediate sound environment in order to connect to something “higher,” which for me is “the unknown,” mystery. I have impression it makes me feel more sensitive. I actually don’t care what I’m listening to. Obviously there are sounds I’m more attracted to, I love the sounds of insects and underwater sounds, but the main purpose is the connection. The environment is not for decoration. I’m looking for my part in this bigger organism. It changes every day, that’s why I record so much. The alfa00 audio zine project is like putting out a newspaper. You read it, throw it away because it’s not needed anymore, then there’s another one. Each recording is another attempt to be here, now, in this moment.”
You record a lot in your Irish countryside home. For nearly every other field recordist travel is a prerequisite for work, so your domestic efforts come as surprise and relief, perhaps because I am reluctant to leave my apartment universe. Can you talk about how you turn your home into a studio, what exactly you are recording, and how you’ve managed to blur the line between life and art?
Slavek Kwi: “Usually I play at night because I have two little boys—family life; I can’t concentrate in the daytime. I have various microphones placed in the garden and “weather sensitive installation” which I am adjusting or changing according to the atmospheric conditions. I have wind harps and gongs with contact microphones there, and on the gongs I have different objects that move in the wind, like pieces of plastic, ping pong balls, polystyrene foam and various chimes. I use also ultrasonic microphones so I can hear the bats. I have very long cables that run into the studio beside my house.
“In the studio the first thing I have to do is quiet myself. I set up all these microphones, put my headphones on and listen to what’s happening. I use EQs to make it clearer, and to create an interesting listening situation. Inside the studio I have an aquarium with different bubbling machines and hydrophones. I use electromagnetic sensors on lights. Recently I discovered plasma balls, they are made of glass and inside there is electricity. The way I touch them shifts their sound, which works a little bit like a theremin. I can put them in different constellations, I look like Gandalf with his spheres. I also use a Tesla coils. All of these combined are incredibly sensitive, like playing with live electricity. I don’t use synthesizers or computers anymore for live recording or performances.
“Ultrasound and electromagnetic microphones help me tune into my environment. You don’t hear this outside, only inside the studio. I prefer playing where I am not disturbing the environment. I listen and then start to play.
“Everything is amplified around me on every level, I become a tiny creature trying to fit in. Every movement of my body changes everything. I had to make new clothes with dry zippers—what is it called?—Velcro. I attach to my elbows little bells or pieces of plastic and this is highly amplified with an ultrasonic detector. It’s really sensitive, I move just a tiny bit and everything changes. I’m inside a giant detector of the world all around me. I do these sessions nearly every day. It is very important for me and my mental survival.
“I would like to find a way for us to connect where there are no demands. You can be yourself, and we can find a way to be together. For me this is urgent, the planet is so negative, we don’t trust each other. We always try to connect with ideas, we create clubs of ideas, but we need connection through emotions because they are common for everyone, it doesn’t matter what you think. We have to abandon the need that everyone should agree. We have to let people be, then we can be together. This creates energetic freedom. When you feel good you are much more open to communication. It’s like a loop. All my work is about this.”
August, 2023.