Architecture, Sound & Transformative Powers: An Interview With Lena Pozdnyakova and Eldar Tagi
Dive into the world of multimedia artist duo The 2vvo. Based in Los Angeles musician Eldar Tagi and architect Lena Pozdnyakova weave together their influences to create and perform evocative and expressive audio-visual sets. Their work spans from minimal electro-acoustic ambient to raw techno and industrial noise. Apart from live performances they also record and release music and build spacial installations that are often interactive.
Here they share an insight into their fascinating practice and details about upcoming projects.
Image courtesy of The 2vvo.SAH: Can you use 3 words to describe your work?
Lena: Play, improvisation, collaboration.
Eldar: I would add to this observation, listening, and change.
Image courtesy of The 2vvo.
Image courtesy of The 2vvo.SAH: Your work takes the form of acoustic expressions, sculptures, and live audio performances.
Can you give us some background on how arrived at this point? How did your artistic journey begin?
Lena: I was always into visual art. Drawing and making things when I was a child, then went into architecture because the art field was too scary and too unstable to be considered a viable career choice. Our family history had an artist who died of starvation during WWII and I think this affects everyone in my family to this day.
In architecture school, I found an avenue to apply things that interested me – model-making from found objects, sewing plans on fabric, making zines and booklets, as well as making final presentations and building installations. This, surprisingly, was always met with great enthusiasm and provided me with opportunities to study abroad, participate in competitions and win prizes.
Perhaps it is natural that we notice things that stand out because they don’t follow conventional rules. On the other hand, all of the achievements in the field were holding me back from my artistic practice.
Regarding the sound, almost all of my architectural proposals were having a media component, be it film, performance or sound. Cage was always an inspiration in terms of bending rules and expanding the practice and in one of the projects I acknowledged it directly – the theater was intended to be full of noise and its back-end props were supposed to be exposed to the public in various forms and places.
So I always wanted to combine my work with sound directly.
This became possible when I met Eldar and we realized that both want to take on experimental work in-between genres. So yes, since then, I learned how to combine my academic research, work in art, and play in collaboration with people. For the past 10 years, we have been experimenting with different formats, and mediums, trying to incorporate all of our skills and interests into our artistic work, and travel the world when opportunities arise.
Eldar: From my side, I have always been fascinated with sound and its transformative power. There was always something grabbing, very direct, and continuously present about sonic experiences for me. I feel that it manifests in our very biology, as our ears don’t have an equivalent to eyelids. This is a common thread in sound studies. Of course, like it is with many, my active exploration of sound started with listening to, and playing music. However, since I can remember, I have always gravitated toward sounds and music that were somehow outlandish and weird.
These types of sounds were like an alarm clock that could wake me up from a general slumberous state, and at the same time, they had that mystical quality to them. I started with acoustic, and electroacoustic instruments, but then got into sound synthesis by means of analog equipment, and computers which significantly expanded the possibilities of what I could do with sound. It also helped me to test and challenge my ideas and preconceptions not only about sound, and music, but a lot of natural phenomena and our perception mechanisms.
With that said, I have always loved collaborating with people, and around the time I met Lena, I was particularly interested in working with non-musicians. So her practice and an impressive set of skills allowed me to add a very different dimension to what do, and I am very thankful for that.
Image courtesy of The 2vvo.SAH: What are you working on at the moment?
Eldar: We have a few recording projects that we are slowly working through. One is a collaborative record with our friend, Japanese-American composer/improviser Patrick Shiroishi. We had a session last July before we took off to Europe, and I would say with incremental editing that I could dedicate to it in the craziness of the months since it is halfway there. There are also some solo and duo pieces that are in the works.
Lena: Besides that, we are now preparing a show schedule for fall 2022 in Innsbruck, Austria. The project is called Hello Void!.
It is being developed in collaboration with Distant Realities – two artists and architects from Europe. Hello Void! looks at the role of ritual within the current post-religious paradigm. It will be a multimedia installation – a hybrid of sound, new media, and sculptural form.
The project explores the notion of constructed beliefs that give meaning to humanity in the face of its mortality, with “culture” as a supernatural force. This project is particularly interesting for us because Vorbrenner is a platform dedicated to works and contemporary formats that specifically address process-oriented work with a focus on cross-disciplinary ideas.
We have been always suspicious about the fuzzy genre boundaries, which are often difficult to pinpoint in works that use several media. Plus, we are often on the go and have never been to Austria, so we are looking forward to this trip! They say mountains surround Innsbruck and we love mountains. We grew up in a city at the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountain range.
SAH: Music and art often evolve from the environment we are part of. How has travel impacted your work?
Lena: The fact that we are from the same city and share the same culture, definitely helped us to click in many aspects. But our whole creative journey together started with us being influenced by the difference of the environments. At the time, we both were located away from Almaty, Kazakhstan – the place where we were born and raised.
One of us was in Los Angeles, pursuing a degree in music, and the other was in Shanghai, working in architecture. A project that we were both a part of required us to be in close touch over distance. It was then that we realized that our interests matched and our views on how music and visual art could manifest in exploratory projects led us to the first residency that we undertook.
This artist residency was in Nairobi, Kenya and we were lucky to be supported by the German Embassy in Nairobi. We worked on a multimedia project in one of the art communities – Kuona Trust Arts Center. It was a mind-opening experience and since then we decided that we will continue to travel, learn about new cultures and do projects together. From then on, we have traveled in India, lived in the US, and in Germany. In short, the surrounding environment with its diversity continues to shape us.
Eldar: I see a distinct parallel between artistic practices and traveling. Both effectively alter perspectives and allow us to transform our understanding of the world, its workings, and its inhabitants. In both cases, there is a great sense of facing the unfamiliar, fears, and working through the discomfort.
Image courtesy of The 2vvo.SAH: How do you go about transforming an idea like into a physical/audio piece?
Lena: This is different from one work to the other. Sometimes we work with the brief that is given to us – this is the most common scenario with some artist residencies, open calls, and some group shows.
When the theme is given, we evaluate whether the topic is interesting to us and then have conversations about the ideas that emerge out of it. However, in all of our works we improvise – in both sculpture-making and work with sound. Play is an important part of our practice and we always bring it to our projects.
Expanding on the discussion of ideas, perhaps, an interesting question could be about the lifespan of an idea. For instance, how long does an idea live if the artist doesn’t engage with it in his work? We have noticed that there is a trajectory of energy that exists with the emergence of new ideas and if we don’t catch this energy, some projects can take years (if at all) to be accomplished.
There is nothing wrong with this. Artists used to and continue to document their unfulfilled ideas in their notes. Perhaps that’s why sketchbooks and ideas of artists, studied in art history, become a valuable asset in understanding their time. Maybe those ideas that were never fulfilled have, at times, even greater value because they raise questions.
Eldar: Speaking of sketchbooks, we do maintain an ongoing database of our sonic experiments, field recordings, improvisations, and so on. The same is true for physical objects that have future sculptural potential. Lena has an eye for these things, and we often have a corner in our place, where these objects are collected.
Then there comes a time—a project, a performance, or a recording session—where these things end up being used. After all, you never really know when, what, how, and why things fall into place. But they do somehow, and that is very much the spirit of improvisation.
SAH: Who are your biggest influences? Is there a particular artist that inspired your practice?
Lena: I have mentioned Cage before. I admire his open mind, and interest in bridging life and art. I particularly like the way with which he incorporated ordinary objects, situations, and processes into his work. He is such an inspiration because he was also such a humble person and was in-between practice and academia as well.
Considering that each of these domains has its own rules, he achieved an impossible – sabotaged both and stayed in history as a person who played with objects, trusted chance, and listened to silence.
In terms of visual art, there are so many references!
Judith Scott’s work is stunning! Her story is so interesting too – she has spent her life in institutions due to Down syndrome and deafness and began working on art when she was over 40. Despite her confined physical condition, her sculptures are so dynamic and free.
Jeffrey Gibson’s work is amazing too. So inspiring to see how he works with color, texture, and various forms of objects.
Charles Harlan’s work, from an artist/architecture point of view, is very interesting. He works with materials and piles them up and eventually they become sculptures in space. The qualities of the materials he chooses are particularly interesting to me because they are ordinary industrial-use pieces.
This creates a unique juxtaposition between refined white-cube spaces and the nature of the sculptures. I think this points to the distance between the world outside of the gallery (with its low-paid labor, dust, and dirt) and the art world (elitist and exclusive). Yet, by combining the two, the artist seems to talk about the capitalistic system to which they both belong perfectly.
In terms of participatory and visual work combined, I really like the work of Lauren Halsey. She is from Compton, CA.
In her projects, she speaks about her community – its life, its problems, its joys, and struggles. Many of her works, which sometimes take the form of environments-sculptures, are created with the help of her community – people literally bring in their things, put parts together, and participate by actually working on site. She shares her culture in a brilliant way! I think there is a distinct sense of pride, belonging, and respect, as well as chaotic nature and bright diversity of languages in the work that translates to the wider public.
I should stop here.
Eldar: This is always a difficult question, particularly because there are so many people that influence me. The list is also always changing, and depending on a period in my life I certainly resonate with some ideas and practices more than the others.
In terms of things that persist, I’d say in the domain of music I have a deep fondness for various free improvisation scenes that have been emerging since the 1960s. This involves people like Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchel, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Keith Rowe, Fred Frith, Jennifer Walshe, Crys Cole, and Oren Ambarchi.
I love the work of a diverse range of composers such as Annea Lockwood, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Dick Raaijmakers, Terry Riley, and Alvin Lucier. I also have a soft spot for off-kilter psychedelic and experimental outfits, specifically Sun City Girls, and Secret Chiefs 3. I am also very influenced by the works of instrument builders like Hans Reichel, Don Buchla, Serge Tscherepnin, Rob Hordijk, Jessica Rylan, Peter Blasser, and Bart Hopkin.
Anyway, the more I think about it, the less I am sure I can name all of the inspirations and influences. There are simply too many amazing people, and captivating ideas out there.
Image courtesy of The 2vvo.SAH: What kind of impact do you hope that your work has?
Lena: We hope it can inspire someone. That’s why we love when we perform during the events – this gives an immediate experience both to us and to the public. A live event is an irreplaceable format and we missed going to performances and concerts during the COVID-19 lockdown. We think that emotionally this really affected artists. It definitely affected us.
In terms of the other work, written texts, and some of the works set within thematic frames, we write about the issues that touch us – changes in the environment, new cultures, nomadic life, and technology that we work with. Maybe these works are there to be food for thought if people choose to engage with them.
Eldar: I think the single most important impact I hope to achieve with our work is to evoke a sense of freedom in people.
I hope that people feel that a certain weight has dropped from their shoulders, a sort of relief, and ease of being. I know, it may sound strange given that our pieces may often seem cryptic, and chaotic. But I believe, this chaos provides an opportunity for re-assembling, and re-becoming.
SAH: What’s the best way for someone to check out your work?
Lena: Probably check our website or follow us on social media. While we publish updates on social media, our website has a portfolio of our past work.
SAH: What advice would you give somebody who has just started their artistic career?
Lena: Our advice would be to find the community. Working with people who are interested in similar things, or those who appreciate your work, and whose work you appreciate, is the most valuable asset that you can have. Working around people and learning about their practices will allow you to grow naturally and become part of the bigger flow of energy around something you are into.
And of course, to practice and learn new about the field and the skill that you have chosen to work with. And don’t shy away to show your work. This is something that many artists, including us, are struggling with but we are all on the journey of learning about ourselves so it’s okay to progress gradually.
If you think about it, this is probably pieces of advice suitable to anyone who practices anything in the world :)
Eldar: I would also stress that it is important to actively find ways of being inspired, and not settling. Lena once told me a simple thing, that I found to be very powerful: “If you are unhappy about something, it is time for a change”.