The Power of Sound: Vicky Krieps, Andrea Mancini and Every Island

0:04Welcome to Chanel Connects, the Venice Biennale Edition. It's important to be free So who was the fool who didn't recognize it all that time ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it is seduction, oh absolutely Just another woman trying to survive So who of them is lying? I wish that were the case Well let's face the terror of the new work then And this is what art is so good at I don't, do you prepare? No No, no In this season of Chanel Connects we've taken up residence in Italy to go to the center of the art world. Listen in to the artists, curators, thinkers, and makers behind the Venice Biennale, the world's most important exhibition of contemporary art, now in its 60th edition.

0:50Each of our guests is focused on what matters most and what happens next. And now we get to listen in. I'm Yana Peele, Global Head of Arts and Culture at Chanel. Thank you for connecting with us. Could you tell where my head was at when you found me. Me and you went to hell and got just a fine piece. Nietzsche once mused, when I seek another word for music, I never find any other word than Venice. Music connects in this episode with internationally acclaimed actor Vicky Creeps, artist and musician Andrea Mancini, and Martina Genovese of Every Island Design Collective and the Luxembourg Pavilion.

1:32They meet in the beautiful Conservatorio di Musica in Venice. Together, they share the vital role that music plays in their practices. For Vicky, as a tool to better understand the characters she embodies, for Andrea on every island, music is an opportunity to create collective dialogues and challenge the distinctions between artists and audiences. Oh, and do keep an ear out for an impromptu musical performance by Vicky. Penny Martin moderated the conversation and began by asking Vicky what the importance of music is to her.

2:13Oh, it's a big importance. I think there's two. One is private and one is professional. Private, I would say, like many people, it may have saved my life, beginning in my childhood where there was always music in the house. And I think music is the only force that can go through time and connect. It's just a universal vehicle and energy that can feel silence, it can feel heartache, it can transport you, it can take you in like an embrace, you know. So on a private level, it was always my most comforting friend, maybe. Yeah, and then in my work, it became an important tool, I would say. As an actress, I realized that I was missing some sort of ritual or something to help me get back to my normal life.

3:02I don't know how you feel as artists, but I, having children very early, realized that I needed something to get me back to just being me faster and not taking weeks of, oh, I'm this character now and I'm heartbroken. In order to create a work, you bring a whole world into it and then in the end you have one form. If it's a painting or if it's a role I portray, But there's so much more to the character. And so I went out and I bought a guitar, a cheap one. And I'm not a musician. I have to say that first. I mean, people correct me and say there's no such thing. So you are a musician, whatever.

3:39I didn't go to conservatory that much, I can tell you. And I didn't take a lesson. So I looked at other people playing and just copied the sound. And just enough so I could transport my words. So if it's a tool of transformation, Can you give an example of something that you put on to bring you out of work? Yes, it's more to get out. So it was specifically on the work on Phantom Thread that was very intense as a film. And it helped me go somewhere with my feelings that it's just me. And when I finish a film, I finish the song. And my character then goes into the song as in like a portrait gallery or I wouldn't say cemetery because it's not really saying goodbye.

4:25It's more like taking it and putting it somewhere so the work stays alive within me and there's a place I can go back to my work in a way. Andrea and Martina with your collective Every Island, both of your practices incorporate sound and music and language. And this is, of course, the focus of your exhibition here at the Biennale. What is the importance or power of sound in the abstract for you? I think for us, it was important to open a dialogue between multiple artists, guest artists that we would invite. And like in the digital age that we're living in right now, we really wanted to go back to the origins of sharing knowledge, which is vocal or oral transmission.

5:09So I think it was an obvious choice for us to use sound in our project. What is it about sound that makes it more primal for you then or more essential? I think sound has this capacity of ambiguity. So you can really try to find your own meaning and bridge meanings through sounds. And how about you? From our side, I'm going to speak a lot plural because, as you said, I'm here representing a collective that is actually made of different voices and different minds. So together with me, Julianne Zeehawer and Katerina Malavolti and Alessandro Kugola are part of this project and this collective. So there are four of you.

5:53Yeah. And we are all having a background in architecture, actually. So our first approach is spatial. And for us, it was really interesting because we experiment a lot in our design with the connotation of performance inside of space. This is because as architects we are taught about looking at space and always people are defined as user, but we always felt like this definition was cold and a bit detached from the reality. We see people as activators. We like to play on the fact that actually inside a space there is no difference between who is going to visit the space and who is going to actually perform in it.

6:35Can you both walk us through it? Paint me a picture of it. What's it like to attend the exhibition that you've called a comparative dialogue act? First of all, it's an ever-changing exhibition. So whoever is going to step into the space will not see the same that the person before and after is going to see. What we wanted to play with was a six-month temporality that is given by the Biennale and the fact that therefore the space will evolve with it. And this evolution is out of our control. What we ask is for four performative artists to do residency inside the pavilion. Who are they? Bella Baghena, Céline Young, Céline Davass and Stina Force.

7:19They have multiple different identities or ways of communicating through sound. And with this project, we asked them to try common language, actually. And so we asked them in the months before the Biennale to create a sound library. That represents their practice, but also their background. And this becomes actually a shared tool for the others to co-create. So we ask them during their residency to work on a performance, but with the pieces of the others. And then I believe they add to it, becomes a kind of iterative experience. Exactly. By the use of the residency that every performative artist is going to do during the course of the six months, the sound of the pavilion will change.

8:06That's so interesting because I feel like what you're describing as an architect and having the need to re-question, you know, what is the space? Who owns the space? What is my role as an architect? I think that's like maybe something like a zeitgeist because I feel very much the same and I think it came from the same origin of needing to change my own perception of my own work. But what I find interesting of what you say and what you say with making people connect in their art. You invite people to rediscover their own ownership of space in a way. You know, that space is not owned by whoever puts it up, but also by the person entering the space or defined by that.

8:49You're precisely grasping the topic of the pavilion. Because, yeah, like both us, as Avril and both Andrea, we were so intrigued by two main factors. One is letting go of control, letting go of what is going to be the result. And that could be achieved only by sharing this experience with other artists, but also to leave an open-ended process to the pavilion. And it's perhaps no surprise that an actor such as yourself might be touched by that moment because it seems to me that that's what you do, isn't it? You spend as much time as you possibly can preparing and then you're finally on the precipice of exposure and vulnerability perhaps?

9:40Yes, exactly. And I consider myself almost like a scientist or experimentator in the same sense because over the years I've been trying to push myself to a place where I let go and I can only let go if I almost unprepare. and it's a tricky thing because sometimes there are moments I really truly do not know what is going to happen with me, with the scene, with what is going to be said and it's these moments that I go for, you know, and I might have just only a few, every movie maybe just has like a few of those moments. Can you give an example? I will give an example that is maybe the most famous people know is Phantom Threat and there are a few of those moments And one is when it's about poisoning and asking someone to eat something.

10:26And that was a scene that I entered completely oblivious of. I mean, I did know my lines, but I intentionally didn't try to understand the scene. Sometimes you can bring yourself to not understanding the situation you're going to enter. I did the same today. I did know your work a little bit, but I refrained from trying to find out too much about your work. So I would enter something new in a way and I have to let go of my control that I believe is an illusion anyway. So grand, you know, in what I'm saying. But maybe we are ready to accept that parts of this control that we had over our life, you know, the way we build society and architecture or in social structure is an illusion.

11:10And that we are ready to, you know, let go of that illusion in a way. In our practice, we're really intrigued about the word contamination in the sense that it's usually having a really bad connotation as a word, but I'm so intrigued by actually the potentiality that it has. Because in the moment, as you're saying, a creative practice or mind or simply an individual put themselves in the position of being able of being contaminated. That's the moment in which something interesting can come out. This all said, there was an allusion to a moment of preparation that I shouldn't let go past. And you talked a little bit about some elements of preparation that you do in order to get into the sensibility, if not the kind of understanding of a role.

11:58And that is you create a song for a character in order that you understand them fully. And I see we have a guitar in the room. Yes, this is not actually my favorite guitar to play because I couldn't bring my other guitar because it's so difficult now with airlines to transport a guitar. And it was fully booked and I couldn't get a seat for my guitar. So now I had to put it down in the way you put the bags. And so I didn't want my favorite, favorite guitar to be damaged. So I have this one, which is not perfect, but it's also going to work. If there's something you would care to share, we would love it.

12:33Yeah, I would, just only if you really agree. And you are not going to judge me on the premise of like, this is so that I'm good at something. Well, we all just agreed that we wanted to be contaminated by the unexpected. Less contaminated. Okay. Judge ourselves on performance. I'll play a song, which is maybe the best example of like the letting go, like the not expectation, because I did a movie called Old, and it's a horror movie. And it really has nothing to do with this song. But for me, every character is just another woman trying to survive life. so actually I make these songs and I myself I get surprised by what they are you know so it's not like I prepare and I think oh what song could go it's really more like closing your eyes and what is going to spill out of me as a feeling of the character or whatever I hope I remember the lyrics you break open the heart You let in all of this light And then you forget And I slip away Out of sound and out of sight Out of life And into another round Of loneliness Cause here I am Out in the open sea Oh, swimming, arms wide open for memories

14:17Now what if it killed you? What if I do? Oh, winning is losing Now what if that's true? You only find peace in the one lover's hand Oh, that bird never quite landed here with me Out in the open sea Oh, swimming, arms wide open Looking out for me The god of the ocean He painted it all black And my father once told me There's no coming back From life or from love Or from all of this noise All powerful potions Made so we go sleep Deep, deep under the open sea Oh, dreaming eyes wide open for some memories

15:38Now what if I told you you were always my man All of those years of water and sand I was holding on so tightly Like a secret song While you were living your life And I was living alone Out here Out in the open sea

16:09Swimming Something like that. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. It's incredible. I made myself the promise because, you know, I don't have the musical education. Somehow I feel something in me. I don't know what it is, wanting to do this. And so I said to myself that from now on, whenever I go somewhere, I enter the space and I will try and play. So far I played in the U-Bahn in Berlin, like in the subway. I played in so many different places but never I thought I would have to play in a conservatory the opposite of what I am, you know it's like, oh my god bringing the letting go in the most rule-based place of music ever Andrea Martina that idea about self-expression and the singularity of someone's voice and sharing it, expressing themselves of course is part of all your practices as individual artists but how does it then work in every island in a collective?

17:16I think actually working as a collective is a continuous self-exploring and group-exploring process because in the end it's not at all about putting down the expression of the individuality but trying to find a collective voice. And this takes time, this takes compromise, letting go of a lot of barrier, a lot of confrontation on a peaceful way and on a more heated up way. Yeah, let's get to that. Because, of course, collaboration can sound very polite and kind of compromising, but actually it can be quite radical. It can be a punk act, can't it? Totally. But I have to say, for example, from our side, it was always useful in doing this self-exploration process as a group to always involve other people.

18:06Because normally we started as the founders of the collective, But in the end, in every process, we always felt like this kind of relationship that we were sharing had to be shared also with someone else to feed and to explore and to evolve as much as possible. It's a way of working that becomes really intimate and really challenging, but that we think leads to the best result in the end. So describe for us what your collaboration with a director might look like, Vicky. Does it sound anything similar? Yeah. You know, I'm a big fan of talking about my collaboration in the sense that it's more like a confrontation.

18:49Because I'm a fan of the friction and I think, you know, it's when you create more. But interesting enough, people don't really like me talking about it like that. Like it's very interesting whenever I have interviews or so, I keep feeling like I'm being, you know, whistled back into my box because we are supposed to say, oh, it was so nice working with XY and I loved working on this. And we were such, and I don't get it why this should be interesting to talk about because everything that is artistic is never created by pure agreement, you know. So I really, I think with all my directors, I have these confrontations.

19:27And even if they're women who even carry the same experience in life, so they will know where I'm coming from, I even challenge that. Just because I want that friction, I will not do what they ask me to do. And if you're seeking out that dream counterpart, who have you heard is feisty enough? I don't know. maybe someone from the street just like I would love to take the camera go on the street and the next person we meet that's who we have to make the movie with that would probably be the person I would have the best Vicky and Andrea, although you both live in Germany and Brussels respectively, you mentioned that you were born and grew up in Luxembourg if you were to close your eyes and describe it to me what picture would you paint?

20:18What is the essence of Luxembourg? I can only tell you what I know from people seeing it. So it's quite pittoresque and medieval in a sense. And it has this postcard look to it. You know, it's like a little bit, a lot of the rings in tiny. With a pinch of industrial in the south. Post-industrial, yeah. Which was influenced by a lot of Italians actually, because we had a lot of Italians coming, working in the industry. Yeah, my family comes from that phase of emigration, actually. But for me, also, Luxembourg represents also the spirit of openness to its neighbors, also by necessity. Because it's such a tiny country, surrounded by such strong neighbors, France, Germany, but also being in the center, in the heart of Europe.

21:03So it has to embrace our cross-border spirit. That we are open-minded by necessity, really. I think I grew up thinking I'm European. I didn't even know that it's not the same for other people. And growing up, I was like, what? These guys still have borders? They still believe in that? It was really, really shocking for me because I grew up like you and I thought, oh, we're all Europeans. We're all one. But also like the fact that Luxembourg has given, in our case, this opportunity to represent the country by a collective, which is not Luxembourgish. So actually it's only one person out of five that is Luxembourgish.

21:47It really is also a stand to this openness. It is. Vicky, I read that as executive producer on the film Corsage, you wanted to film in Venice, but ultimately that had been prevented. Yeah, we needed the boat and the harbour. and that was very difficult and expensive. So we ended up shooting in Ancona. Oh, wow. Which was funny because it's a very industrial harbor. That's really an industrial harbor. So to try and make it look like old school was not easy. But I mean, the whole movie is also embracing what is history. And that said, didn't your character have a tattoo that was meant to have been made in Venice?

22:26Yeah, and the funny thing is that people watch the movie and they think, wait a minute, that's not historically correct, which is why it's in the movie. It's to challenge your perspective of history because we perceive history only out of a time of history. You know, someone who writes about 1850 in the 50s has a different kind of 1850 than someone writing about it in the 80s, right? So it's all relative. And that was the whole movie. And then they go, oh, so but what is real, what's not real? And the tattoo is actually real. I mean, not that particular tattoo, but she was said to have made a tattoo.

22:59Of an anchor, is that right? Yes, but originally in Amsterdam in a sailor's bar, yeah. Andrea, Martina and every island, tell me what happens to the art after the show? I believe there's to be a physical record of what you collect. Is that correct? Yeah, that was a topic we thought about a lot. So how do you frame the ever-changing material of this experience? And we decided to frame it with a vinyl record that is going to be produced in November for the closing of the pavilion. And the idea is indeed, it's impossible to frame what is going to happen in six months. But we wanted to kind of frame a moment in which the dialogue between the different performing artists and the crowd is going to be put together in a physical object.

23:47For the rest, we're really hoping to be able to make this experience repeatable in other places. We would love to have more artists involved in this format. So it's actually an infrastructure that we've created. So if this is only your second trip to Venice, what do you hope to see? Are there pavilions you would love to see? Well, I want to see the Luxembourg pavilion for sure. Please come. That's on top of my list. That's the only thing I said. If I go, I have to see that. And we're going to close all of our conversations on Chanel Connects with the same question. what are you excited about for the future of art?

24:26I think it will be interesting to open up a dialogue about multidisciplinary about emerging artists versus already affirmed artists and about cross-nationality so I think that for us will be the most interesting topic to open about What about for you Andrea, what's exciting you? I mean I couldn't agree more with every island's stand on this But also for me, on a personal level, I think what's important for the future of art is reconnecting with the local realities. This, the music scene where I come from, has happened since COVID. Since you couldn't travel outside of your country, you had to reconnect with your locals.

25:11And this gave more and more opportunities. And there's so much hidden talent. people that don't know how to get to opportunities. And I think it should be more and more like this, opening up to the local realities. Vicky, you've got one day in Venice to experience all this future of art. What's exciting you? I think maybe that art will come back to art because now it's in this weird pyramid of capitalistic construction and it's running away towards a goal that doesn't really exist, It's built on this model of growth. And I also believe in this kind of resistance because, you know, what I do is so small, but I know that I'm doing it out of the same need.

25:54You know, I need to resist how art is perceived. So I believe that through people like me who don't do these things out of a concept, but out of emotional need to come back to the source of art, I think a lot of people are feeling that way. And that to me is what is exciting about the future. That feels like a very hopeful place to end. Vicky, Andrea, Martina and Evre Island, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you so much, Vicky, Martina and Andrea for that fascinating conversation. On the theme of music, we asked some of the Biennale's attendees what songs and sounds they most associate with Venice.

26:38Here is what they had to say. When I think of Venice, the sound that I think of the most are video installations, art installations. There's quite a lot of them. So I would say it's an accumulation of sounds. I think for me, the sound that I think of when I think of Venice is a kind of collective groan when people realize that they're not on the guest list for something. The sound of water kind of lapping, obviously sliving canals, and I guess kind of ricocheting off the buildings. it's a very particular sound. It's not just water, it's like the combination of water and architecture, which I suppose is Venice.

27:14When I think of Venice, I think of the water and the boats but also the light. What strikes me the most in Venice is the light every time I come again. The quiet at night when you walk across a palazzo is the most beautiful thing in the world. Your footsteps echoing and people laughing and talking and the clatter of silverware on plates and the clinking of glasses. Thank you so much to all of our contributors who joined us in Venice for the 60th edition of the Biennale. Thank you for listening to Chanel Connects, the Venice Biennale edition. Now the number five is very important in the house of Chanel, so please consider giving us five stars on whatever platform you're listening to us.

27:55Please follow the show so you don't miss an episode. Other episodes in the Chanel Connects archive touch on music and collaboration. Why not listen back to Honey Dijon discussing the Chicago house scene that shaped her genius or Grimes in conversation with Maisie Williams in season two. You can find them and all previous episodes at chanel.com. Next time on Chanel Connects, renowned gallerist Sadie Coles, known for her work with leading contemporary artists including Sarah Lucas and fellow London-based gallery owner Angelina Folk talk about selling your artist's work, the current gallery scene, and what the Venice Biennale offers them.

28:38It's just a very, very, very large, increasingly large and rich platter from which you can look at things. I'll see you next week.

28:57Thank you.