Side A
a conversation with Inne Eysermans
Inne’s working station, October 2020.
Inne Eysermans is a musician, sound artist and film score composer based in Antwerp. She performs in different constellations, as the frontwoman of Amatorski, as the futuristic persona Velma Spell with Liew Niyomkarn, and as part of the collective The Space Between with Katharina Smets and Ingrid Leonard, exploring the dynamics between language, image and audio. This issue features a part of Inne’s audiowork Side A, a spacious and layered composition created with a 4-track tape recorder. We interview Inne on a Saturday afternoon in Autumn, sharing our rooms remotely through a video connection.
What are you working on right now?
I’m currently at home, rehearsing for a project with Katharina and Ingrid for a piece called SZUM, which means noise in Polish. We pay tribute to PRES, a relatively unknown experimental Polish radio studio that emerged in the late 50’s and brought together the divided camps of French musique concrète and German electronic music. Based on PRES’s experimental yet accessible music and its story, we’ve tried to make a piece about the people who actually worked there and played a major role in its history.
Next to this, together with Liew Niyomkarn, I’m working on a commissioned project by Flanders Festival Ghent as Velma Spell, where they invited 12 artists to translate all twelve panels of the Ghent Altarpiece* into music. We got asked to base a work on the Virgin Mary, who’s primarily known as the mother of Jesus, but is also subject to a lot of conspiracy theories and lately ‘bad’ restorations of her portrayals. It’s nice to be able to indulge in stories and mythology, and bring together these different sides of her persona.
Do you have a basis from which you work and can you tell us a bit more about your approach to composition?
I find it interesting to think about composition and what that means. Since I rarely start from writing notes, but from recording or thinking about a certain situation to perform within. I work with time-based software like Pro Tools and Ableton, as well as cassette, with the latter also being used for this interview’s accompanying work, Side A. Apart from using more patch-based software programs, I also started to create sounds with the web, using HTML and JavaScript, and build systems with Max/MSP. Regarding its narrative role, I like to add contrast and new layers of meaning rather than blindly following a text and its particular atmosphere. This is inspired by Yannis Kyriakides* and his ideas about the dynamics between sound, words and image.
It’s beautiful how you navigate and explore these interdisciplinary dynamics, for instance with your collective The Space Between, or using physical surroundings as an instrument in itself.
Yannis uses the term ‘narrative network’ for approaching every audience of a performance differently because of the unique makeup of its individual members and their cognitive processes. This idea works for the web, or even with learning new tools as well; each environment offers its own dynamics and features that direct your perspective, your approach, and the relationships you build.
How do you prefer to start things?
I initially start things through play and experimentation, but at the same time letting my surroundings find a way in my work and ideas. I think the influence of those two things are equally important.
Do you have a preference for solo versus collaborative working?
The social aspect of collaboration is very important to me, both in the creative process and how the work can be presented. To be part of a collective and its unique collection of ideas, changes your perspective on your own work and role every time. Because of this, I prefer collective over solo performances.
Do you always try to work together in physical spaces or have you worked a lot on Zoom in recent months?
Since last year, I run a studio space together with Liew Niyomkarn, Jo Caimo, and Sjoerd Leijten, called toitoiDROME. It’s a coworking space where we have organized many performances. Apart from this, I have mainly collaborated online in recent months, and many performances have come to a halt. It’s crazy that everything that happened in the outside world has become superfluous.
Inne Eysermans
Can you tell us a little bit more about this interview’s accompanying work Side A, and how it came about?
Side A was actually part of my music production master thesis about cassette culture. A two-part project, with Side A being a more layer-based composition using my 4-track recorder, and Side B as a performance driven counterpart, created together with my sisters using walkmans and a lot of tape experimentation. At the time I was working a lot with tape and was collecting cassettes as well. As a medium, cassettes spawned a whole pre-internet DIY culture that had a huge impact on distributing and consuming music, both socially and individually. People could make and distribute their own tapes, and its audience could listen to them anywhere they wanted because of the walkman’s portability.
We showcase a specific part of Side A (min. 11-18). Can you tell us something about that part? What instrument plays the entrance motive?
I believe that melody is being played on a guitar using a drumstick. For this part I actually worked with my band members from Amatorski, where Christophe recorded a trumpet part I wrote, and Sebastiaan contributed a drum track.
The recording exudes a sense of spontaneity and coincidence. To what extent does this play a role in your music as a sound artist, compared to your approach to pop music?
That’s an interesting question, and I’m not sure about its answer yet. I do think that spontaneity, coincidence and experimentation have their place in pop music, but are way less apparent than in other musical contexts where it’s more important to allow instruction and spontaneous action to exist at the same time. I guess these are two different worlds, with their own parameters you can step into and work with.
Have you ever tried mixing these worlds together?
I try to, but it’s not that easy. Julia Holter comes to mind, who does that very well, I think. I do believe there’s a clearer division between these worlds in Europe than in the US, where it’s easier to transition from one to the other. This difference in cultural orientation is noticeable in working with Liew Niyomkarn as well, who studied at CALarts in LA. In Europe it often seems impossible to operate in both, which is very unfortunate. But I do think that this is shifting, though.
Do you have an idea why that is?
The history of music in Europe has been pretty ‘serious’ and dramatic. Not to forget Adorno’s critique on pop music, his compartmentalized views on popular versus classical music. In the US they moved away from that. If really experimental music, nothing really matters but the experiment. On another level, experimentation entered popular culture and vica versa. I’m happy to see that today on a global scale, newer generations are making these transitions way easier and also do not tend to think in a binary manner.
Do you also notice this when teaching?
Indeed, they don't necessarily make choices for the sake of convention.
There’s a shift to cultural eclecticism, especially in the work of younger generations.
Yes, I'm glad about that.
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The Ghent Altarpiece or the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb is a 15th-century polyptych altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. It was completed in 1432 and is attributed to the Early Flemish painters and brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck.
Yannis Kyriakides is a composer of contemporary classical music and sound art. His music explores new forms and hybrids of media, synthesizing disparate sound sources and highlighting the sensorial space of music. In his work, he focuses on ways of combining traditional performance practices with digital media, particularly in the use of live electronics.