| Kristín Björk Kristjánsdóttir, better known as Kira Kira of Reykjavik’s Kitchen Motors, talks with curator and artist Trong G. Nguyen about dangerous music, ghosts and the collective she started with fellow composers Johann Johannsson and Hilmar Jensson. Kira Kira recently performed at the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival and, a week later, produced a mixed media piece for Sequences: Real Time Festival entitled Helium Choir. Trong Gia Nguyen: How did Kitchen Motors form eight years ago? Kira Kira: Kitchen Motors really sprang from some heated music talk on street corners. |
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Kira Kira Takes the Stage – Trong Gia Nguyen
Kristín Björk Kristjánsdóttir, better known as Kira Kira of Reykjavik’s Kitchen Motors, talks with curator and artist Trong G. Nguyen about dangerous music, ghosts and the collective she started with fellow composers Johann Johannsson and Hilmar Jensson. Kira Kira recently performed at the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival and, a week later, produced a mixed media piece for Sequences: Real Time Festival entitled Helium Choir.
Trong Gia Nguyen: How did Kitchen Motors form eight years ago?
Kira Kira: Kitchen Motors really sprang from some heated music talk on street corners. The three of us that run Kitchen Motors felt that there was no real forum for adventurous music in Reykjavik and wanted to do something about that. So, we started out by doing a series of four concerts in an old cat shelter downtown where we’d ask different musicians to collaborate. Often these were people that had never met but shared a taste for “dangerous” music and so each night there were three of these new bands playing. We had no idea that we were going to continue with Kitchen Motors for so long. First it was just these few shows, but then we felt such good vibrations from everyone that we were inspired to keep on doing it. Later, we started involving visual artists and all kinds of people, and the motor is still running, full tilt. For us, Kitchen Motors is first and foremost a playground and a place to experiment with music and art.
TGN: Your project for Sequences, like you previous work, seems to be a complex game of “smoke and mirrors.” What is the Helium Choir?
KK: It’s a ghostly moment. Entangled tape heads floating in the dark air with neon eyes. The choir is here to sing us a disastrously divine tune but then it’ll be gone forever. On a bit more down to earth note, the choir is comprised of a hundred helium balloons dressed in entangled tape that I peeled from hundreds of cassettes that the library for the blind gave to me. The choir is tied to a 25-meter-high tower downtown that used to house the old apothecary as well as the first meetings of the Icelandic freemasons. I’ve hidden a speaker up there that will deliver the choir’s helium voices for the moment that they’re hovering in the spotlight.
TGN: Icelandic people seem to have a very de-mystified relationship with ghosts and the supernatural, allowing both realities to exist without much conflict. Can you describe your relationship with the paranormal as it pertains to both your artwork and music?
KK: I harbor an undying respect for ghosts and the atmospheres they bring from death to life. I see them also as quite humorous figures that are somehow holy at the same time—silly but holy. I’m not sure I have a relationship with the paranormal, as you put it, but ghostly things do seem to slither quite naturally into my work. You’re right about that. I read ghost stories at bedtime when I was a child. But, those ghosts were all quite gory and human while the ones that pop up in my work today are a bit less tangible—ethereal perhaps. I’m fascinated by things that have a levitating effect on the heart, things that will steal your breath away without you ever knowing why or even when it happened. In my music, the sounds that turn me on tend to be both horrific and sweet at the same time so there’s always a sense of danger lurking behind the corner—comforting danger.
TGN: Your live performance at Idno for the Airwaves Festival was a spare set of electronically processed sounds and live instrumentation, with an air of fragility. You said after the show that you are always surprised when the show doesn’t end disastrously. Is your presence and performance on stage, which is more solemn, at odds with the lighthearted humor in your visual work and installations?
KK: Interesting question. I didn’t realize my performance came across as solemn. Back to the sense of holiness, I always feel that a performer is quite a vulnerable creature, standing there with her most treasured things in the palm of her hand. I’m aware of all the things that can go very wrong there and I’d love them to just be blessed and come through in all their glory. The performer is the only one who really knows the potential of her tunes and, for me, the desire for them not to get entangled on the way is very strong. Maybe because I have done a lot of improvised sets and have really had everything blow up in my face grand royal. I recognize that and now I’m not after that kind of explosion. With visual work, you get the chance to give it your final touch in private while performing a song is really the final touch, only then you’re in front of an audience.
TGN: I imagine it’s not typically this chaotic with both the music and art festivals taking place at the same time. What’s life in Reykjavik like for a young artist/musician on a normal basis?
KK: Ideally there is no normal. I like things to be strange and explosive. But, I guess the normal life would be in between shows when you’re alone in your studio, tinkering with sounds and stuff or cuddled inside with your darling. I think that while I was rehearsing with my band for Airwaves, I was nicely reminded that the reward is just as much there in the living room playing away as it is on stage, if not even more. And so it is with visual work. I hate my own openings for example. I like collaborating with adventurous people and right now I’m making a movie with some tinker bells about the grandmother of eccentric Icelandic music—a 76-year-old lady called Sigridur Nielsdottir. And so quite a bit of my time is spent on that.
