Son[i]a #304
Céline Gillain
Belgian artist and musician Céline Gillain (b. 1979) split her time between working as a high school art teacher and the solitary practice of painting in her Brussels studio, until one day she had enough and organised a residency for six female artists at her grandmother’s house.
Five years of collective experimentation with other women paved the way for the creation of hybrid, solo performances combining artistic research, the staging of her speculative writing, and catchy pop songs, carefully woven through complex and seemingly sooth and seamless narratives.
And just before she turned forty –the cut-off age for having children according to a social obligation that still persists– she decided to radically change the course of her career and officially enter the world of the music industry and festivals, with the launch of her debut LP Bad Woman. She has since continued to follow the thread of her discoveries and obsessions, while embracing the prerogative of making audiences dance.
In this podcast, Céline Gillain talks about the power of fragility and about depression as a form of resistance today. She describes her stage fright and fear of making a mistake under the spotlights, in the face of the moral and political obligation to take control of her life, as a woman. Imbued with a strong class consciousness and an awareness of her inherited privileges, Céline speaks out against the privatisation of the art world and notes the need for collective discussion. Paradoxically, her current media of choice are a mix of pop songs, motivational speeches, and updated fictions from the entertainment world, which run through everyday life in a darkly humorous, inimitable way.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Céline Gillain that we were unable to include the first time around.
Tatiana Heuman
To the Argentinian trumpeter, percussionist, songwriter, and producer Tatiana Heuman, the world is a dance floor and and sound comes into being through close bodily combat involving intuition, movement, and hurdles. Thus, a paradox arises in the recording process, when spontaneity and corporality are reduced to mere beats on a timeline. In this podcast, Tatiana Heuman talks about music that runs through the body, about the intersections between dance and percussion, about sounds that move, about deconstructed folklore and babbling, about formal and informal teaching, about addition and subtraction, about names that don’t mean anything, and about the experiences of women who play and lug around drum kits.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Judy Dunaway that we were unable to include the first time around.
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Bifo talks about mass killings in relation to cinema, mental health, neuroplasticity, friendship, irony and, ultimately, hope.
Mark Fisher
The cultural impact of Mark Fisher's work continues to grow years after his death in 2017. His tough but always accessible dissection of the system and its endemic problems was captured in essays, posts, and books, such as Capitalist Realism, which gave rise to this conversation. The book explores the dangerous connection between neoliberalism and mental health, almost as a tragic portent of his death, although it is much more than that. In the podcast, Fisher talks about the avalanche of repercussions of the 2008 financial crash, particularly in relation to the idea of capitalism as the only possible framework.