Rahel Kraft

Hello, I’m Ilia Rogatchevski and you’re listening to the latest instalment of From the Archives, a podcast series of previously unheard interviews with musicians and artists working with sound. Today’s conversation took place in London, in 2016 and is with the Swiss artist and composer Rahel Kraft. Rahel incorporates experimental approaches to her work in sound and performance art. Her voice, which is often mediated by technology and presented in “unfamiliar settings or custom made environments”, is seen by the artist as a method of “shifting boundaries between listener, maker, memory and the imagined on the threshold of the imperceptible.” Kraft has performed, exhibited and installed her work across the world, from Vienna to Tokyo. She is also an improviser, playing with the likes of David Toop and Korhan Erel. Her artist book Paradoxical Creatures, a collection of verbal scores that encourages an “intimate dialogue between body, paper and sound” was awarded the accolade of ‘The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2020’ by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. Kraft also frequently collaborates with Tomoko Hojo with whom she has developed a site-specific sonic practice and released two albums on the LINE Sound Arts Editions imprint. Kraft and I attended the same masters degree in Sound Art at the London College of Communication, albeit one year apart. Our conversation took place some time after her graduation, when I was researching the use of the voice in contemporary performance art. The talk centres around one of Rahel’s graduate pieces 'Ouiouioui', which she performed at the Flat Time House gallery in South London. A recording of this piece is what you can hear in the background. The programme is bookended by ‘No Borders’, a track that was first released on the nonclassical compilation Sound Journeys: Switzerland, in 2020, and later appeared on Rahel’s album No End the following year. So I was looking at a piece of work he did, for the Flat Time House Gallery in December 2015, that was a graduation show from the MA at LCC in sound art, and it was called 'Ouiouioui', and that was a piece for voice. And you described this piece as site-specific. I just want to quickly ask what made it precisely site-specific? For me, it made it site-specific because of the movement, because I was moving around and I needed to kind of adapt the piece to the room. And in a way it was site-specific because I filled also some parts with colour powder. Also the score was exactly the length of the room. And what is the connection for you then between the voice, the score and the technology that you used to create your pieces? Why is the interaction between these elements so important? So I made the score on the floor, that I could walk around it, but to relate this to the technology is rather difficult. But you could say because I had the technology on my body, it was kind of connected also to the score. And what is the technology that you use? I've got here written down Pure Data and MYO sensors, but for those of us who don't know what those are, could you describe it? Yeah, I had two sensors on my arm, and they can measure the muscle activity in my arm, and this gives me a signal. And this signal I can use it for everything, what I want. I can use it to transform sound or also visuals. And these signals or these numbers came into my computer and I could process my direct signal from my voice with these numbers. Yeah, this may be the simplest way to explain. You describe yourself primarily as a vocalist and a composer. The use of voice is integral to what you do. What motivates your vocal performances and their character? Do you follow a certain school of training? My background is jazz voice, so I studied jazz voice and also voice pedagogy. This is a big influence in my work because, yeah, I mean I listened a lot to jazz music and to improvisation, and I practiced also a lot of improvisation and vocal improvisation. And in a way this is, yeah, an important part of my practice, or this was an important part of my practice. There came a point in this development where I was more interested in freeing myself. So this is kind of the way where I began to practicing noises or what sounds can I make. And then I came more into how can I perform in a room and what is the difference if I'm in this room and then in that room and how can I respond to that. And I think this also kind of led me to what I'm doing now. How has your methodology, your working practice changed since then? I mean starting sound art has changed a lot because, I mean, I came from a totally musical background. And I was also very based in this musical thinking, and I was working as a musician for five years. And then I started sound art, so it was kind of a different thing. And for me it was very confusing in a way because I had to rethink so many things. I needed to kind of break, so what am I going to do now with this sound art knowledge. Now, actually I think I'm doing still the same but maybe in a different way. So I would call myself still a voice performer who works with technology and also a little bit of movement. And also a composer because I compose more in a traditional way from my tour 2henning, where we play songs actually. I wanted to pick up on that idea of composition. What does that mean to you in the 21st century where we're post-Cage, when any form of organised sound can be described as a work of art, where increasingly the symbiosis of composing and technology is becoming an acute phenomenon? It's difficult to make something new or to kind of invent new things because so many things are done already. And composition has a lot of tradition and for me it's difficult to work with this tradition because I think I can't do this. So I just try to do it in a very intuitive way. I mean although I have my jazz training and my jazz harmony training but I try to forget this and not think about it too much. And then the other thing is how can I organise stuff more. So when I work for my solo performances more I try to have some cues or some words that I can remember what I'm doing. So for example if I do a performance I try to organise it in a way and this can be very abstract but in a way it's a composition because it's a little bit fixed with a lot of improvisation or freeness in itself. So almost like an actor or a dancer who's got a certain choreography that they must follow. Yeah, exactly. I want to pick up on that idea of gesture as well. Where do the mechanics of gesture stem from? Is it something that you've learnt over time, picked up or it's always been there? You mean when I'm singing or when I'm performing or when I'm working with the technology? When you're working with your body as a sort of material, moving through space. I think there are a lot of influences. There is the influence of people you're watching or kind of seeing, a performer. Then there is also kind of the practice that you have, practising the voice because the voice is the body. You kind of develop I think a language how to perform this voice. And it's difficult to say where these gestures come from. And I think also sometimes you change the gestures. Sometimes you like something or sometimes maybe you see a picture of yourself or a video and you think, what? Am I doing this? I mean it's the same as when you speak. Yeah. Did you see something? And you say, okay, no, I don't want to do this on stage. And sometimes I decide, okay, no, I don't want to do this anymore. I can give you a simple example with the hand. I don't know why, but if you try to do a very complicated melody with the voice and you improvise it, it's easy to kind of make it with your hand. It's kind of following the melody or something like that. For me, when you do this on stage, it's very strange. So if you all the time make it like this and you see this, you think, no, this is very distracting, the performance. So you decide, okay, no, I don't want to make this gesture. But does that affect how your voice then performs? I think so, yeah. In a way it affects, but you can also learn that it doesn't affect it. Do any of the gestures that you perform have any symbolic meaning? Not at the moment. When I started to work with these sensors, they had kind of fixed gestures with it because they had the strongest muscle movement or the strongest response. It's just there. Just practical. Yeah.