A U T O P S I A I M A G E S O F T H E S I L E N T P A S T

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AUTOPSIA Interview 2008Questions Roland Orcsik

Autopsia exists in Prague nowadays. In the town where Kaf-ka, Rilke, Mucha and other icons of Monarchy and modern-ism 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. Autop-sia started as a postmodern project based on standpoints which were radical defl ections 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 Au-topsia 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 experi-ences, 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 “af-ter modernity”. That is why Prague became such an impor-tant 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 real-ity which enabled hybrid conjunctions of different epochs, and thus the modernism as well.

“... 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 fi nd allusions to and quota-tions 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 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

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 contempo-rary 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-scientifi c systems of Rudolph’s age with principles of Autopsia is obvious. However, possibili-ties 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 spe-cial 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.

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 fi ctitious concept, Autopsia operates in reality, outside “fatherlands”. It can produce a fatherland but cannot belong to it. Fa-therland, 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 guar-antees the certainty of the world prior to awareness of one own’s person. Homeland has the meaning for individual-ity, 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 detach-ment, 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.

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 Au-topsia, not in terms of direct infl uence, 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/.

It would be wrong to think that Autopsia “originated in one country”, or a state. One might say that beginnings of Au-topsia had a cartography which included several countries, it’s better to say, several cities. From the very beginning Au-topsia didn’t belong to any state system. It’s history is a no-madic 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

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kind of laboratory manner, but never “belonged” to it. It cannot be said that Autopsia operated within the frame-works 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 jour-ney, 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 proj-ects.

“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 real-ity, which means – the Death. “Scars of Europa” narrates about the new spirit of Europe which is fi lled with scars of the history. Such historical component also belongs to the new spirit of Europe. Death is the Mother of Beauty is pres-age of the world in becoming, or of the world to come. After domination of an all-encompassing simplifi ed 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 me-dia in order to cover the real condition – fl ow 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 fi nally 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, confl ict and destruction – at stake here is the ep-och itself, death as time, the age of its reign, death from the perspective of the faith grounded in metaphysics, which en-compasses 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 presenta-tion of something real, but towards an understanding of the homelandlessness (‘not-being-at-home; not-being-in-home-land’), 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 ide-ologies.

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

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 compre-hend 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 par-ticipate 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 some-thing 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 specifi c language. And this is what Autopsia, in fact. does.

8 What kind of means music represents for Autopsia? Is it an instrument of the manifesto about the mortality of be-ings?

Music is not a means for Autopsia. Music is neither an instru-ment 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; icono-graphic messages of Autopsia should not be read directly. Autopsia operates with images as with a vocabulary of re-cycled 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.

10. In your works one can fi nd various quotations: textual, musical, quotations from fi ne arts, from fi lm, etc., ranging from high culture to popular one. Within this collage of quo-tations, by way of frequent repetitions, quotations become

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self-quotations. There occurs a processing of cultural waste into a hybridism of signs, which leads to an “original” pa-limpsest. 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?

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 be-ginning, 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. Au-topsia 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. Au-topsia 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 ma-nipulation of the image, of its essence, a testimony of death is displayed, which is nothing else but the image itself. Au-topsia 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 men-tioned that baroque is particularly important for you. Ba-roque, which is founded in the ideology of harmony. What attracts Autopsia in the art of baroque?

The list you have just made is inexhaustible, it is limited with nothing else but the creative interest. There is no focus-ing 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 fi rst time there appears the work as a project. By this, one

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 spec-tacularization. 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.

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 expres-sion are quite autonomous, what links them is a common spiritual ground. Autopsia deals with music and is con-cerned 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 Verfrem-dungseffekt?

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

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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 state-ments 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 inclina-tion 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 fi gure 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.

21. Recently Autopsia issued a small project in which Pa-solini 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 fi lm. 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 par-allel narratives about cannibalism and capitalism. It is a matter of a paradoxical conjunction of completely individ-

ual experience, irreplaceable one – outside of communica-tion, 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 refl ection 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 fi elds 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.

In fact, Autopsia goes through a period of an interest which is refl ected 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 rep-etition 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.

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AUTOPSIA INTERVIEWQuestions: S. M. Blumfeld

Q. How does Autopsia view suicide and how does Autop-sia 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?

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 rep-etition. 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 gen-eral 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 relation-ships. 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. Autop-sia actually encourages and maintains a distance form the process of creating culture. We relate to things as fi nished products, intuitively and not scientifi cally, attempting to un-derstand, never to explain for we believe Autopsia´s aim is not to interpret but to examine origins.

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

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

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 min-ima 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 ob-jective nor as scientifi c. Scientifi c attitudes towards death are, for us, irrelevant areas that embrace qestions of in-stinct, sexuality, homicide and destruction. In Autopsia´s work the discourse of death has a completely different func-tion. 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?

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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 refl ection, and of humour - intuition. Irony is not, by its functionality in language, a subject that interests Autopsia.

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. 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 prod-uct of mass consumption. Even if an increase in sales of Autopsia´s products takes them over the limit of mass inter-est it does not indicate that the work was created with that intention. Basically Autopsia is oriented towards the produc-tion 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 are Autopsia´s views on mummifi cation, fetishism, idolatry in art and culture?

Autopsia: Idolatry, fetishism etc. are phenomena of collec-tive behaviour. The work of Autopsia is addressed to the individual and therefore not towards the masses. It is im-proper to defi ne 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 strat-egy.

Q. AutopsiA today works in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. You feel better there than in another loca-tion. 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 Casa-nova-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?

Autopsia: Our interest was in their self control, their pro-grammed 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 suffi ciently recognizable level form the vocabulary of culture. Each of them is, in his own way, close to Autopsia´s attitude con-cerning 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 belong-ing. 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. Is it not possible to think of death as a great mystifi ca-tion?

Autopsia: Death can become an object of mystifi cation but fi rst 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 mystifi cation - death which it is not. Everything Autopsia does exactly opposes the individual to that oblivion. This means to be in confl ict with the very para-digm. However, we are completely aware that only efforts that seems useless do, in fact, contribute to the destruction of the paradigm.

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 an-swered 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 dis-cover this for himself and always from beginning.

Questions: S. M. Blumfi eld Prague, MCMXCII

AUTOPSIA INTERVIEW 2007Questions: Maurizio Pustianz for Chain DLK

1) Your previous full length album before “The Berlinrequiem” has been released into 1996 by Hyperium.What made you wait so long to do something new?

Autopsia does not fi t into the category of ‘album-produc-tion’. It is not necassary for albums to appear in some an-nual 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 sup-posed 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 talkedabout “Colonia” on our previous interview so let’s focuson the latter one. “Le chant de la nuit” is a CD with a richCd-rom multimedia section where people can fi nd visuals,writings, interviews, etc. What was your intent with that release? “Le chant de la nuit” was a rather demanding proj-ect. 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 ofproduction, in which sound and image could appear to-gether, but in a very special way. The project itself was notretrospective but exploratory one. Digital technology en-abled 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 de-signing of a network which becomes the new event. There emerged new generations that read already issued materi-als 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 talkabout your other activities?

Autopsia is not a multi-media project, but its involvements

in music, poetry and art are linked in a special way. Textand image have their relevance for an extended reading of music production. In a certain way they provide the his-toricity 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 frame-work, their underlying structure. I make use of three media to the extent that this framework is sustainable and compre-hensible, that the meaning of intertwining is preserved, or maintained.

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 alsothe subject, that is, the object, of history. Thus avant-garde is classifi ed into same containers of culture in which other historical phenomena dwell. General notion of the pro-gressiveness and innovativeness of the avant-garde is not sustainable today. It may be said for many Central-Euro-pean 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”. Histori-cal 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 his-tory in mind the avant-garde is just one of the possible re-

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sources in which the beginning of a new creative process is placed. Bertold Brecht is unavoidable fi gure 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 avant-garde 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 baroqueidea with changed poles of perception. Scenes were not shown to a single person but to the populace, which as-signed a political connotation to entire production. Proj-ect 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 ad-dressed to particular individual, but to the person who is capable of receiving the message.

5) “The Berlin Requiem deals with what can scarcely bediscerned by the senses, be heard, in the realm of the gelid nothingness”. Listening to the tracks I felt a sort of isolation-ist atmosphere as the tracks were tending to avoid rhythm and melody. Can you tell something about what youwanted to reach musically?

“Just as the electricity was always there, before it wasdiscovered, and just as everything undiscovered exists from the beginning, therefore, also now, so the universe itselfis entirely fulfi lled with forms, motifs and combinations ofpast and future musics. The composer seems to me as agardener who was given to cultivate a smaller or larger part of land; his task is to harvest, to order, and to bind, inshort, to transform that which grows on that part of landand the land itself into the garden”. This was written byFerruccio Busoni in the text “On the essence of music”,which was published in 1924. At the beginning of 20thcentury, music experienced a fundamental change of itslanguage, and from tonal it turned into atonal music, and it found its strongpoint in the ideas of avant-gardes. This isthe area in which Autopsia “cultivates the garden” anddraws ideas for current production. This interest is alreadyindicated in several limited editions, and in “BerlinRequiem” it was realized completely. Impulses were looked for within the legacies of Schoenberg, Stockhausen and other avant-garde artists. I’ve experimented with dodecaph-onic technique and particular, specifi c 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 fromvarious domains. Dammerung Orchestra is a common title for different forms of their activities. They are “beings-per-formers”. The title Dammerung Orchestra is added to the notion of “the performers”. Their role is sometimes entirely concrete and defi ned 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 acquaint-ed with entirely nor give them a certain, defi ned place. You must “imagine” them.

7) Can you talk about Illuminating Technologies

and about its projects/releases?

Illuminating Technologies is the label already used forprojects which were supposed to extend the operative do-main of Autopsia. Now it became a label which will publish Autopsia in the future. Due to new digital media andInternet it is possible, in a very simple way, to start thenew authorial label which shall support only its ownprojects. 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 fi rst unlimited edition on my own label.8) You sent me a 10 minutes video which is part ofAutopsia’s “Non-spectacular videos”.What kind of series is that?It is an experimental fi lm. It is not a video project, I wasnever interested in music-video projects. “The Winter”originated as an experiment with the medium of fi lm.Although there appear the sound, the text and the imagetogether, the basic, supporting structure of the project isfi lm and that is why I speak about fi lm experiment. Sourcematerial is fi lm, and the ordering of the new structure isdigital. I think that this experiment has the potential, andthat it is possible to think about “the series”.

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

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I L L U M I N A T I N G T E C H N O L O G I E S I N D R E A M S B E G I N S R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y

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? “Refram-ing” 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 thou-sand 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 duringthese 20 years? There was something you had to achieveor you just followed the creative fl ow?

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 fl ow, I have said something about it in response to your fi rst 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-establishesitself. 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 per-manent, but nonetheless you change along with what you do. It seems it is the same, but it changes.

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The Berlin Requiem Old Europa Cafe CD

When Mary Shelley makes a choice regard-ing the place on which Doctor Frankenstein will fi nally 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.

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 fi niteness – a gelid nothingness. As if there faintly audible sounds of the alterations of crystals and frozen bodies are registered recorded. Duration Con-tinuance 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

recorded or comprehended.

And yet it is as if The Requiem belongs to a certain place and a certain time. This belong-ing 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 oc-curs. 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.

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 unutter-able unspeakable inexpressible.Vladimir Mattioni19. 02. 2007.

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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 othertexts. Any element-sign or sub-text, by being placed into a ‘new’

text, adopts meanings that are different from its primarymeanings 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 inmusical practice that a score only receives meaning through

an active reading (which can be both kept in silence orrealized in sound) and that a defi nitive version is an illusion.

Our practice is: Making music on one’s own without having a preconceivedgoal, without holding on to already existing codes and rules.

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

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CD ROM LE CHANT DE LA NUIT

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CD ROM LE CHANT DE LA NUIT

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Autopsia short fi lms

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Autopsia short fi lms

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 enjoymentis material from beyond interpretation.

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Autopsia short fi lms

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W E C R E A T E T H E W O R L D F R O M T H E I M A G E S O F T H E W O R L D