Notas del episodio
A portrait by Michaela Schwentner (2016). Language: Deutsch
https://ima.or.at/de/projekt/imafiction_portrait08/
Her long-standing presence in DJ club scenes, conceptually experimental contexts, dancefloor-focused productions, and multimedia installation performances has repeatedly confirmed that Susanne Kirchmayr stands for an intelligent and outstanding interpretation of electronic music. By rejecting the common practice of splitting the creative self into project names and aliases, all facets of Kirchmayr's creative work form an artistic unity: Electric Indigo.
Electric Indigo's versatility has led them to niche scenes and groups in Vienna and Berlin, to traditional practices of stage, film, and opera, and to paradigm-breaking performances realized with forward-looking compositional techniques as sound art. Despite all these diverse forms of expression, interests, and developments, Kirchmayr never felt the need to split herself in the process. "everything I do is equally distributed between performances, working on experimental compositions, DJing, and club music."
Kirchmayr frequently employs intertextuality in her work; many of her sound art compositions and live performances are based on significant speeches or dialogue recordings. Her conceptual composition project – Barry Duffman – further develops this theme. Premiered at Wien Modern 2015, the source material for Barry Duffman consists of slick #1 pop chart hits.
In her performances, Kirchmayr developed a method of deconstructing and reassembling diverse source materials. Through her conscious engagement with space, she creates acoustic, musical, linguistic, and graphic details, and explores spatiotemporal manipulations in sound design. Another significant work is Kirchmayr's granular synthesis project MORPHEME, performed at CTM Festival 2015. The basic material for MORPHEME is a nine-second recording of a sentence by Sadie Plant: “To let noise into the system is a kind of fine art in both cybernetic terms and in terms of making music, too.”
Kirchmayr is constantly moving forward in her compositional process. "I'm totally counter-cyclical," she says, "I only go from hardware to software. I only use the computer and a few MIDI controllers, that's pretty much it."
Kirchmayr embraces the sonic aesthetics of bass and drums; the starting point for all her musical projects. While one cannot speak of a distinct sonic signature, Kirchmayr's productions are characterized by subtle moods and textures in space and time.
Kirchmayr is a veteran of the Viennese electronic music scene. Since her early days as a radio DJ in the 80s, she has explored hip hop, techno, experimental electronica, and sound art. She moved to Berlin in 1991, immersing herself in the burgeoning Berlin techno scene. Her first releases appeared in 1993 on Experimental and Disko B. In 1993, Kirchmayr founded indigo:inc recordings, while continuing to perform as a DJ in over 35 countries worldwide.
Kirchmayr has long been a fixture at panels addressing composition and performance practice within the context of social issues. Kirchmayr developed the digital network and platform female:pressure in 1998. With the goal of supporting female producers, it has evolved into an important resource encompassing a global database and network for female artists in music, with members from over 65 countries. Female:pressure received an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2009.
Regarding her future, Kirchmayr simply states that she continues to strive to reconcile her different selves. “I’m slowly reaching the point where my two main musical interests – techno on the one hand, and music that could be described as electro-acoustic/avant-garde on the other – come together and merge into a single composition.”