The story of Arsenij Jovanović (1932), director, writer, composer, translator and photographer, award-winning author of numerous radio works, audio-ambient installations, and significant television and theater productions - could only be long, rich and extremely instructive for all generations. How to continuously create, (and) last and dream, literally for decades, and still resist the harshness of everyday life in the name of art and only art? His total creativity, without the slightest exaggeration, could be Holy Bible total creations for all those young men who are called artists today. Therefore, it is not at all unusual that one of the fans of his music is the greatest master of cinematic transcendence, the genius American director Terrence Malick. Can it get any better than that?
"WEATHER": We would like to ask you something at the very beginning: did we make that one Antiserum for the future, How are you around after 5?. recommended in October? Or they are small fish still pulled through?
ARSENIJE JOVANOVIĆ: For a long time I have been haunted by the image of a lost and confused flock. Decades have passed since I have tried, with more or less success, to look at this national, earthly and social panopticon of ours from a great distance, as if I were observing this corral of ours from the stratosphere. At one time, during the creation of various names-parties and associations, unfortunately, more half-jokingly than decisively and confidently, I suggested to my colleague and painter Dušan Petričić that we found an association Sky watcher. Someone who heard this announced it, I think on the radio or in the newspaper in some short news, so I started receiving invitations and offers from all over, many wanted to become members of the party Sky gazers. And the rules were clear and extremely simple: all members of the association, when meeting on the street, were supposed to look up above their heads for a moment and silently continue on their way. I thought that looking from a long distance would clearly show the senseless behavior of people stuck to the surface of the earth and the follies that have taken over society. Unfortunately, my fault, until the establishment Sky watcher it didn't come, but Petričić and I still greet each other with a look above our heads when we meet to this day.
In order to understand what kind of cauldron of wedge soup we have found ourselves in, we must step away from everyday life and look at what is happening to us, observing ourselves from a heavenly perspective. Let me say that for weeks and months I have been trying to see us and our people from that distance. I see it as a scattered herd that has lost all orientation, and there are no good sheepdogs and good shepherds, not even because of the weeds, so the sheep wander headlessly here and there. There is no sheepdog, no shepherd, and no sign of the messiah. The tragic truth about our people is that we have no hope that a charismatic leader will appear, unfortunately, there have been few of them in Serbian history. I hope historians don't hang me for this.
In such a lack of charismatic personalities who would take the leadership of the messiah, in the pond you mention or in the lost stray flock, any evil is possible, it is a common occurrence of the mechanism of anarchy. Milošević gathered a large part of the scattered decapitated people, but in the worst possible way, and led them on the path to evil and not to good. He was the messiah of evil. I do not foresee the Messiah of good either in sight or in my dreams. Those smarter people who raise their voices today, even when they think well and write well, as some of my respected colleagues do, it seems to me that they are doing it in vain, with their apparently brave words they cannot gather the flock, and without that gathering nothing happens can achieve. We should address the people, not the rulers.
I have to admit, however painful it may be, that I have no hope. Nor can I be comforted by the fact that there are many people, indeed many individuals, virtuous, well-meaning and intelligent, but they are silent, their mouths are stopped or they have a spasm that prevents them from speaking. Their words wouldn't even be heard, they would go into the wind like many good words, they could only speak into that hole like in the story In the Trojan emperor's goat ears. Or that for their own sake they release the valves in the back galleries of this terrifying circus in all its variants. They were not born to be successful shepherds of a scattered flock, for that requires messianic power. They can't even be good watchdogs because, among other insurmountable obstacles, the self-proclaimed messiahs of evil won't let them. We only have to imagine a big earthquake that would destroy everything, so that the sheep and some new good shepherds and self-sacrificing watchdogs would return to their saving work. Or if we dream of some good, powerful army, whose commanders with the brains and morals of Mišić or the Traveler, instead of attacking enemies with weapons, would attack enemies without brains and without morals. But these are all just dreams, as the great poet Tin said.
Let no one, please, misunderstand my comparisons of people with sheep. And they are only martyrs and good creatures of God. They also mentioned small fish. Of course, they slip through the cracks and commit various minor and major evils, but I wouldn't attach any particular importance to that. After all, there are no big fish. They are all tiny fish and poor creatures that floated to the surface and inflated like whales. There is emptiness and desolation in them.
I found it in the novel Nobel laureates Olga Tokarčuk's story about four types of readers: the sponge reader, the funnel reader, the sieve reader and the sieve reader. The sponge absorbs everything, catches in flight; it's clear that he remembers everything after that, but he can't get the most important things out. Left-handed - he accepts at one end, but everything he has read comes out at the other end. Đevđir lets the wine through, but keeps the wine lees, he should not read at all and should do some other craft. The sieve separates the chaff to keep the best grain (end of quote). How can we be like a sieve and not retain what is ugly? And who would hold that sieve and separate good from evil?
And how we fought with good and evil? You said a long time ago that it was double even a bit boring, and the imagination is more playful before break, and so much so that some devils can be made almost adorable?
That so-called lovely devil is present everywhere. The people and the audience, I'm talking about the significant overwhelming mass, are so forgiven that they see the devil as an entertainer, and not the cause of their humiliation and descent to the lowest levels of civilization. That devil fills the empty spiritual life of the layers that make up the people. I don't blame those spiritually deformed people, I feel sorry for them and I consider them innocent and damaged, in some imaginary court of justice they would get an acquittal because since childhood, those who send and support these freaks, keep them further and further away from what we call culture and decency, and worst of all, they drag the new generation into that abyss and make miserable all those helpless individuals who resist it.
You have been talked about for some time, primarily as a composer of electro-acoustic music - how would you define this profession of yours?
Instead of defining my current profession, I will remind you that at the very beginning of my career, I started working in the arts as a theater director, a little later also as a television director, and then as a film director, but not even radio bypassed me along the way. These media manipulations are nothing unusual, many of my colleagues did the same. What could be called an exception in my case, is that I left the theater after walking with successes and failures on the stages of the National Theatre, JDP, Atelier 212, "Boško Buha", Zadar and Šibenik, one theater in England, the theater "Ivan Vazov" in Sofia, Performing Arts center in Albany, New York State and possibly elsewhere. All those experiences left indelible traces in me, but unlike the theater, from which I physically distanced myself, I did not leave the radio. When I say radio, I mean a territory in which there is also theater and film and music in all its countless forms. I started directing dramatic works, and then, step by step, I left working with actors and texts of different genres and stepped into a world of pure sound where there were no more words, or words were rare and boundless, and meant something other than what they meant. were meant in replicas of dramatic and other texts. By entering that acoustic abyss, my theater and other previous experiences came with me, as well as images and all that I called indelible traces. If I hadn't been in the theater, what I do today would not be the same. Why did I mention pictures? Here, by pictures I do not mean what a camera or camera could capture, pictures with frames, pictures that are frozen and immobile. The images I am thinking of are not visible from the outside, they are woven into a mosaic that moves and changes size and shape like some distant cosmic magma, reachable more by our inner, difficult to describe or perhaps indescribable senses, than by our eyes and our superficial reason. These are the mechanisms of dreams.
Your compositions will soon be released in Poland as a CD The parade, while the label Pentiments will release the vinyl under the name The Art of Speech. How this discographic explosion came about? Is the kind of sound art you're doing very appealing to people today?, perhaps even necessary? And why?
I don't know how to answer that. If everything that preceded in my earlier period of life is erased, I feel somehow crippled, it seems as if I didn't even exist before that period, as if I hadn't directed so many theater plays, some of which were historical, as if I hadn't, for example, shot the 15-episode series "Fresco Time" and many other television and film productions, as if I hadn't written three books, as if I hadn't taken dozens of photographs published in the most important publications on Serbian history as a photographer arts in the country and abroad. A man is not made of what he is doing right now, but of everything he has done in his life. Of course, I am happy that it will be published in Poland The parade, which is an international 24-hour marathon SatiePandémie finished with my small humble work Senza titolo, and I am especially happy that there will be a vinyl release in Chicago The Art of Speech, because I worked on that job for almost twenty years recording my daughter's language development from the day she was born until she came of age, but it loses its meaning for me if everything that preceded it is erased. My working life is over six decades long, it is a collage in which everything is embedded, what I have done in the last period could not have been realized without everything that came before. After so many years, the theater still lives on in me, my play lives on Superintendent in Atelier 212, which was literally Atelier 212 because there were 212 chairs in it at the time - incidentally, it was the first Pinter piece to be performed outside of his England.
You are in the middle of May, therefore, with composition Senza titolo participated in the program in honor of Eric Satie's birthday, adequately named SatiePandémie, as the current situation with the corona virus dictated - What an experience it was.? What do you think about the online music promotions that have become a real trend in the last couple of months?
As for online music promotions, they may have become part of the fashion, but let's not forget the compulsion caused by the pandemic. Regardless of fashion and the coercion of the pandemic, I fear that such musical and other performances will be what awaits us in the future. Concerts with live performers on the concert podiums will be exclusive for the privileged few. Money has always been the master of men, but not to the extent that it becomes today, an era has begun deification money, the supreme lord of the world who, it seems to me, is creating a gap between the poor and the rich more than ever. I dare say - as a non-expert in this field - that I think the world is getting poorer despite apparent technological and other progress, so those who have the opportunity recklessly grab everything they can for themselves, leaving billions of others to sink into poverty and misery . The former will live longer and happier, the latter shorter and more miserable. Online content is intended for the latter, the door will still be open to the former Metropolitan i Garnier opera in Paris, the rest will have to make do with screens and cheap mobile phones. Lives are largely becoming artificial.
To what extent does a creator today have to fight to preserve bits of humanity in himself and his environment? What do you personally do?, as some distinctly humane dimensions, memories from the artistic creations that were created before the brutal season of warfare around the world and, finally, in Europe itself, ie. the former SFRY at the end of the 20th century. veka? Do you still recognize that humanity somewhere today??
If a creator doesn't keep bits of humanity in him, I wouldn't call him a creator, I would look for another word for him. I'm having a hard time figuring out what you mean by that, though humanity. Honesty? Morality? Many great people, not only writers, were very bad people, sometimes they did severe evil to many people around them, but their works preserved their eternal glory. A pearl in a shell.
Kind of very much usually it sounds like you are known for your long-term collaboration with the iconic American director Terrence Malick, who included parts of your compositions in his films such as Thin red line, Tree of Life, To a miracle, Knight of Cups, Sailing through time: the way of life... Your music was also in Malik's new film Stolen life. How do you actually interact with this unusual creator of very complex films-slika? how are you, in a word, you two captured?
I would call it a miracle of chance, which rarely happens, but, well, it happened to me. I used the word miracle because I didn't find Malik, he found me. I was during the war and wars in exile with my wife in the wonderful place of Chioggia in the Venetian lagoon. And we went there because before, in times of peace, I often sailed to the Lagoon in my boat "Galiola", I made many friends in Chioggia, so when the war started, I stayed at the house of one of my friends with his wife, who was expecting a baby . It is this baby that is responsible for my vinyl today The Art of Speech. She was born in Chioggia, the place where Carlo Goldoni once wrote Fishing disputes. Here, the theater again. And so one day I received a fax from America saying that a director, I didn't know who, wanted mine Creman prophecy to use in his film. It was Terrence Malick. And how they found me so far from my home address will be an eternal puzzle for me. I found out that Malik was listening American Public Radio and heard mine Creman prophecy and that he liked it very much. He got the cassette, analog of course, from APR when he was preparing it A thin red line. It happened more than twenty years ago. The relationship and cooperation with him has not been interrupted to this day. These days I received a warm letter from him, an answer to mine: he will try, he says, to use parts of my latest composition in the film - the shooting of which will be completed in November this year Tuning instrument A440 Prolepsis. I worked on that part from June last year until June this year. Terrence Malick - we his associates and those close to him call him Terry - is a wonderful man. He is a legendary film great, but what seems to me no less significant is his character, his kindness and his extraordinary modesty. Such cases are extremely rare among the greats.
In a past life we knew you as a theater person, radio and television director. Do you continue to do all that today, only in sound? Can sound serve as your stage?, the mechanism by which the film is unwound and unfolded? How important music and sound were in general for your previous achievements?
An electroacoustic or radiophonic work, or whatever it is called in many ways, is an esoteric variant of the stage, a stage without portals and everything physically tangible, the stage is like some distant cosmic fog at the bottom of our consciousness and constantly moves and changes, and individual sounds are that challenge that drives the images in that kaleidoscope. Those events are indescribable, a film that is dreams in its own right dreamlike processed in a way, most often in elusive indications when we try to "see" it. More rarely, it is some kind of clear frame from a movie, as if we woke up for a moment and came out of a dream, and then quickly plunged back into an intoxicating abyss, a combined alchemy of elusive layers of consciousness initiated by the miracle of music and sound, which reaches us from the outside, and then everything again rush deep into the unreachable depths to continue the miracle there. From this small attempt to penetrate into the abysses and secrets of what constitutes music and sound, I return to one of my more easily describable experiences that I will never forget. It was a dress rehearsal Dead queens with the legendary Raš Plaović at the National Theatre. I left the auditorium, walked behind the scenes on the stage while Rasha, like the best Stradivarius forehead, cooed his interminably long Monterlan monologue. I came across a hanging xylophone with a series of long pipes used by an opera. I stopped and listened to how the ethereal river of Raša Plaović's Stradivarius voice calmly bubbled through the entire space of the stage and auditorium and, when I waited for one of his rare breaks, I easily struck one of the bells. The space was filled with a small big sound. When I went down to the auditorium, the unforgettable scenographer Duško Ristić told me that he heard a sound glockenspiel and that sound miraculously filled the stage. From that time to this day, I have never again used composed music for theater, television, or radio. I was looking for sounds that can only be combined with the scene that is happening at the very moment, on the screen, on the stage, in radio works. These connections cannot be predicted. One of the many wonders of music in collaboration with our deepest layers of consciousness.
What is your main theme in creation today? Do you think that all dedicated, serious creators once come to the same deep and at the same time simple guiding idea? Is it nature?, philanthropy, true…?
I don't have what is meant by main theme. I even feel a certain resistance in relation to main topics. In the course of time, something attracts me in a moment, so I stop there, move on or stay in that place. Let's say that I stopped at one topic, that it attracted me, so I started to get closer to it, to penetrate deeper and deeper into it. So one extremely quiet winter I was washing dishes in my summer house kitchen in Rovinj. I was attracted by the sound of two hanging glasses gently swinging and hitting each other gently and for a long time, slower and slower, until the last barely audible ringing. Wonderful decreasing. I was mesmerized by that gentle clinking of two ordinary wine glasses. Somehow around that time I read something about the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu from the 4th century BC, one of the interpreters of Taoism. It happened that his wife died. When a friend came to offer his condolences, he found him sitting with his legs spread carefree and tapping a cup of tea with a stick, enjoying the sound. Let me not talk now about what one said to the other on that occasion and how the philosopher explained his behavior to his friend, that is a topic for philosophers. That's how the composition was created Chuangtse's cup of tea. I spent the whole winter researching and recording the sounds of the objects I had in the kitchen, and then by the end of spring I worked on the final design of the piece from the hundreds and hundreds of sounds obtained. That's how I get to the point.
I'm not attracted to daily current events, except for two times quite a long time ago - Homo Politicus Vulgaris i White city. When my daughter was born, I decided to follow the development of the newborn child's voice until its full maturity. That job lasted for years, two whole decades. When I went to the Holy Mountain, I wanted to make Sound testament of Mount Athos and he did it. When I visited the Resava Cave, I was mesmerized by the sound of a magnificent whitefish, a sculpture like no other museum in the world. When I gently touched her, I knew in an instant that I would create something out of it. It took two years of work in the studio and searching until it was created Resava Cave, awarded at the biggest festivals. Themes are found and happen as things happen to us unpredictably in life. The essence is recognition, and recognition is not a matter of knowledge, experience, professional dexterity and maturity, perhaps not even talent so much, but something that an individual carries within himself as a unique personal sensor that is activated at an unpredictable moment for unexpected things. Our surface consciousness does not have much, if any, part in it. I could write tens of pages about Resava Cave and my relationship with it, maybe even a whole book. The first time I was in her lobby was as a child, and the encounter with the sig happened when I became, as they say - a mature man, but I want to add that I am not really sure that I know what a mature man is, I believe that I know more what it is that child.
Is there, finally, future for today's man and art, or in the coming decades both will undergo an unimaginable metamorphosis?
I am not a prophet, I can only imagine, but I still know that art, or the need for artistic expression, is a part of the human body and his mind, like his internal organs, kidneys, heart, glands, as well as some parts of his brain. That's why all young children are artists. That is why the artists are the natives of the Amazon, the Australian Aborigines, our ancient ancestors, maybe even the animals. For some it is clearly manifested, for others it is not. Just as the need for deities is innate in all peoples, so it is with art. In the first case, religions arise, in the second, art. And how technology will affect artistic expression is a matter of the future, what is happening today clearly heralds these new forms of expression. Instincts are molded into imposed forms, the individual submits to it in one way or another, but that deep inherited urge does not change or changes evolutionarily as man changes.
