Caroline Picard, Green Lantern Press, Art Institute of Chicago. Interview with Jacqui Kuraj

Caroline: I am interested in the way you address a whole field of sensory experience in your work: in addition to composing  (I believe this is right? You are a composer as well?)

Jacqui: Yes, I am a composer in that I design tracks of music that I record in my studio and in the field and mix them into electroacoustic reels by using instrumentations and adding affects while processing. I layer field recordings with recordings of my voice, transverse flute, electric guitar, bass guitar and percussion instruments.

Caroline: The music that accompanies your work

Jacqui: Yes, for example In Asylum is a collaboration with Czech composer Karlo Kasteus. A recording session is set to a melody of a tone poem. In session we laid down tracks using different tonal emotions such as joy and sadness while reciting phonetic lead sheets in five Slavic languages. The lyrics are sung, spat, screamed, hissed and whispered. https://soundcloud.com/jacquelinekuraj/in-asylum. In post I use Ableton Live to compose canonical syllabic loop patterns. 
Caroline: you also choreograph the movements of performance.  

Jacqui: Yes, I come from a dance theatre background. I danced professionally with several modern dance companies and choreographed for members of the troupe.  

Caroline: I was thinking about this in regard to "Buchla Perdita" as well as in your performance “The Body as a Sacrificial Landscape.” In both instances I am struck by a discordance that nevertheless hangs together in a single composition. 

Jacqui: Let’s just say that I establish and control shot duration, pace and rhythm musically in the rough cut and then perfect the sound sync in the final cut edit. In The Year of Blame, the Body as a Sacrificial Landscape  

https://vimeo.com/jacquelinekuraj/httpvimeocomjacquelinekurajblame and in the music video Buchla Perdita. https://vimeo.com/jacquelinekuraj/httpvimeocomjacquelinekurajbuchlaperdita

Caroline: So in BP, the music seems to exist in an almost accidental harmony (o! it's brilliant), which is then reflected, I think by the multi-channel video that fuzzes in and out of focus. Similarly in TBASL each element at first alienated from the rest, but then ultimately reintegrates into the whole. 
Jacqui: I create visual disturbances as musical dialogue in a post production picture edit.

As in the case of Buchla Perdita I manipulate the tonal range of the primary video colors;

cyan, yellow, magenta and black and in Blame by stylizing the use of red, white and black as visual elements, as in the dance theatre of Butoh. 

Caroline: So, for instance, the foot is somehow alienated from the self in the act of mutilation (you, the "I" inflict the foot with pain), but the effects of trauma (via blood) and, even that initial alienation, a key to the whole performance. The self-inflicted wound becomes a ritualistic movement and (at least, I found) imbued the whole piece with meaning. The dancing feet are particular, because they are wounded but still dancing. In another instance the body is never seen in its entirety; we do not see the face and feet in the same shot, but I find my empathy comes from integrating the two in my imagination: assuming that the face and feet belong to one another. Similarly, the experimental saxophone seems to mirror the physical discord. Can you talk about how you at once alienate and integrate these different facets? Perhaps also in terms of composition, how you build these different facets independently and then integrate them…

Jacqui: Yes, in distance and proximity, estrangement and intimacy, I am strongly connected to the interrogation of issues that concern biography, gender, identity, and memory, all of which are framed against the backdrop of the symbolic aesthetic of ritual and sacrifice. 

Caroline: What is the relationship between the human body and the animal body?  (I am thinking here about your almost diaristic photographs of animals in meat markets) Does blood always have the same resonant quality in your work? Or, what does blood mean to you? (also curious because the animal photographs are so bloodless, as compared to your performances). 

 Jacqui: Blood resonates with my understanding of Synesthesia, where one relates a color to other sensations. Thus the color red creates visceral sensations and a tangible correlation between color and music. In chromesthesia, or sound to color synesthesia, the discordancy of the sax and contrabass in The Year of Blame pushes along the ritualized mutilation of the bloody feet that leave a trail of blood in meanings being played out through the medium of the human body in each human sacrifice.

Caroline: How do you use trance in your work? How do you enter a trance state? And what does a trance state enable? Does this imply a separation of consciousness (or a self-splitting)? Is your trance state more or less subject to predominant (and often unconscious) power structures in society?

Jacqui: The iterative process of movement induces a trance like state. That is the portal into the trance. Intensified by the saturation of sound played by musician George Bishop’s circular breathing on soprano and alto sax and contrabass. 
Caroline: This made me additionally curious in Siempre Semillas which seems to challenge the historical divide between humans and plants (with the voices in the background and the energy of the wind blowing through the landscape, everything feels charged and awake and alive, not quite anthropomorphic, but somehow accessible). I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you use sound to hybridize (forgive me if that's not a real word, I just don't know how else to say it) our expectations of the world?

Jacqui: My hybridization of sound comes from my Animist roots; the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. In Siempre Semillas the plants are animated and alive with breath, spirit and life.