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SWITCHBLADE GRASSLAND
Well-toned and balanced voice is seductive, it invites to succumb to a lightweight melancholia. Its gradual, steady trance-like pace warps me in, echoing a surrender inside my mind - did I just get unwillingly subscribed to a guided meditation after all. Reminded of own endless wanderings around spaces inhabited by everyone else but me, I’m left with a breezy feeling of detachment, bordering alienation. Although these feelings are no strangers, the video reminds me to stay lenient, to accept such state of affairs as natural. Maybe it’s generational, maybe not.
CONVERSATION BETWEEN
CELYN JUNE, MONIKA JANULEVIČIŪTĖ AND PVS
p_v_s:
It’s tempting to start off by asking your whereabouts and how this work came to life?
monika_januleviciute:
For some time already, I’ve been working within an understanding of The Great Outdoors. An ultimate ground for unknown yet all possible. There, numerous explorations—booklets, graphic novels, installations, performances, scents, readings, series of photographs and gamescapes—took me towards the film.
monika_januleviciute:
I used to listen to Celyn June’s Location in the yard, and there was an unbearably strong connection of it with the sunny and clear sky, or parallelly with Yuna Kim.
monika_januleviciute:
This became a starting point of the conversation.
cj:
We began collaborating on visuals for a live show. At that point, I'd started working on what would become “Portion Park”, and about half of the tracks were done.
monika_januleviciute:
Yeah, there were several drafts of lines and clips at hand, that we discussed. In the end, I had a strong urge to use only my content no matter what—no found images or videos, no internet folklore, no stocks.
cj:
Monika’s footage and text resonated with what I was trying to communicate or achieve with that material. It was like I found a space and a narrative for the compositions and it evolved into becoming “Switchblade Grassland”.
monika_januleviciute:
The piece itself was stretching and contracting a lot throughout the time.
cj:
This should not merely be seen as the video or alternative version of “Portion Park” but as a work on its own, or more likely a work that co-exists, reflects and builds on/with the release. At least, from my perspective.
monika_januleviciute:
True; I still wonder about the connection or the gap between these locations, what is—or would be—the arrival time between them.
p_v_s:
What does the name “Switchblade Grasslands” stand for?
monika_januleviciute:
It stands for The Switchblade Grassland Highway, that traverses the city. I was as much troubled as excited how some of the translations or adaptations of road names would appear to be English. Nevertheless, I could never make any sense of it. The name for me is a play with the sensation of mowed and dried pasture, a field, where leftover stems scratch the soles.
monika_januleviciute:
It would surprise you how quickly they might shoot and grow back, like a flick of the switchblade knife.
p_v_s:
What are the origins, no matter true or imagined, of the video material?
monika_januleviciute:
So, the most of the footage is compulsive videos taken with the phone (or camera, but mostly phone)—walking around cities, within its transport systems, enclosed condominiums, parks, temple complexes and jungles—very innervated environments.
p_v_s:
The portrayed spaces seem empty, void of action, hinting towards infrastructure or an architecture as a sole perpetrator of activity happening somewhere else, as if below the surface.
cj:
The absence of humans in the footage was something that struck me.
p_v_s:
Yes! But additionally, to that, I was struck by the aura of helplessness conveyed through the voice.
p_v_s:
In one of the moments when through a window, nearby an unmade bed, we see a highway, the voice remarks that a promise of a city, of a metropolis, is in its readiness to expose our own wishes and desires.
p_v_s:
I can relate to this a lot.
monika_januleviciute:
monika_januleviciute:
I think it’s only seen or felt so violently in metropolises. I and same goes for the film’s narrator were struggling to come to terms with oneself—energy, compassion and time. That strikes strong and reverberates in the bedroom. I was failing my understanding of what is real and how I am able to live with it and soak that in.
p_v_s:
The real as in your everyday life, or more generally in the genesis of your surroundings, or maybe something altogether else?
monika_januleviciute:
Generally, the Mundane, the Uneventful would be perceived as some kind of bridge, a filler to more singular instances, occasions, happenings. I lingered for accidents to take control of both imaginary and real timelines. I think I urged for the singularity, the specialness, but was too anxious to specify and have the alternatives cut off.
monika_januleviciute:
In the filmmaking process, these shots for me felt singular. I knew I will only relive and share them through the mediation of a screen or a story. Otherwise, they will just vanish.
monika_januleviciute:
monika_januleviciute:
p_v_s:
If I had to give a name to the photography in the work, it would be something like foregrounding of a mise en scene.
monika_januleviciute:
I have a slightly distorted vision in photography, I seek and capture kind of standardised, crude scenes and sets.
cj:
I’m also drawn to empty spaces in general. It suggests a set environment akin to that of certain types of video games or virtual spaces that I find interesting. A somehow limited infinity and randomness.
monika_januleviciute:
There is an ambition to look closely, hover above and avoid being ultimately guided by entertainment, but the function of seeing. That generally led to the avoidance of direct portraiture in the shots.
cj:
As far as I’m concerned, and that might relate to your "distorted vision” concerning photography, portraiture in photography as such is dead. For most people that is still the very essence of photography, but I believe the medium is moving on to be something that we have a hard time to grasp.
monika_januleviciute:
Yes, it kind of merged with this idea of the RPG or even MMORPG and accidental persons in the frame becoming NPCs, activating just the sense of time, nothing more, highlighting either the monologue and goals or lack of them.
cj:
That's the beauty and importance of video games. I would say my music is very much influenced by the concept of a virtual space where that space itself would act as the sole narrative. In an environment like that music and sound often plays a crucial role in storytelling as well as atmosphere and navigation, but it is not in focus.
monika_januleviciute:
monika_januleviciute:
It is kind of just staring, standing still. Also exercise of an undemanding vision or same goes with listening.
cj:
It is what most people might refer to as ambient.
monika_januleviciute:
Happening, still ringing, droning when you are not looking when you are upstairs or away—that nothing is asleep or empty.
cj:
Many people would call my music ambient in lack of another word, but for me, that doesn’t really make any sense. Perhaps in its components (a generalisation of sounds or moods often represented in this particular genre) but rarely in its composition. There might be this set environment, but there is always a constant movement. For me, ambient music is fixed to a certain place or purpose. That’s its very being, which I love, but it is not what I am trying to do with Celyn June.
p_v_s:
CJ, you mention movement as an important aspect, and it makes me think of your music as akin to sculpture, indifferent to the listener as if one is just an unnecessary interference, not required for music to exist, to live a life of its own. How do you approach the functional aspect of sound, its ability to change, affect the body? For example, dance music, besides its aesthetic component, is always tinted by its implicit goal to shake any stiffness out of tendons.
cj:
I'm drawn to music that dares to resist those functional sounds I guess. Part of this “functionality” comes from tradition, a posture of tracing elements and influences, following a timeline, paying respect, etc. I get that, but I'm interested in doing something else. The physical aspect of the functionality you might refer to is something else I guess, like a kick. It's physical. But I make music with headphones 99% of the time, it is not music designed for the club. I’ve come to understand that my process of making music differs from any conventional approach. That indifference to the listener you mention might come from that. It is all samples, but you can’t trace them. Rooms that you fill with stuff, and then you leave. Eventually, it might become an entity of sorts.
p_v_s:
Despite the seductive tone of “Switchblade Grassland”, after watching it I was left with a feeling of being an intrusive voyeur, who had just roamed through someone’s private (mind-)spaces. Maybe the video would have been better without me watching it...
monika_januleviciute:
I understand that. I think this is the very source of fascination with storytelling or narration, which depends on the way we balance between what is private or public, intimate or familiar.
p_v_s:
Have you and CJ ever met IRL?
monika_januleviciute:
No
monika_januleviciute:
Not yet
2018
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