Desire Avenue

Look forward to the english translation!

I can help with the 'on the tip of my tongue' part ........it translates as 'on the tip of my tongue'

Its the rest I'm going to struggle with.

We get few clues and there is nothing about recent or future work. It’s mostly about “Tänk dig en människa”. It’s a nightmare to translate all of the conversation, and I’m not skilled enough to do it I’m afraid. I actually thought that Google did a good job with the interview recently so my judgment is not the best when it comes to rating English translations.

But I’ll try to summarize the hour anyway. Sorry for any misinterpretations or added confusion. Here we go.

0:00 Intro+welcome

0:40 Curators Richard Julin and Tessa Praun explain the exhibition On the Tip of My Tongue, where Stina’s work “Tänk dig en människa” is featured. The exhibition is inspired by Pierre Huyghe.

2:30 “Tänk dig en människa” is described as a room where the visitor hears a boy and two other persons tell stories about life changing moments. The piece is about 30 minutes long. Documentary content and fiction is mixed.

3:00 Julin and Praun met Stina in the Spring of 2013 in the library at Magasin 3 in Stockholm, for a conversation – a “trialogue”.

3:30 Stina talks about her perception of time. She has had strange experiences, for example that time stopped for three days and that she could go in and out of all previous moments of her life. It was a joyful experience. The “tunnel of now” disappeared.

Stina says that she has no sense of continuity. She lives in an absolute and constant “now”. Past and future is overshadowed by now. She has found it easier to describe this when she’s becoming older. She also says that she pushes herself to be present.

6:30 Julin and Praun talk about how this fits the exhibition, and the feeling they’re trying to express. Stina says that the constant bombardment of stimuli in modern society distracts and makes it harder to be creative.

9:00 She says that it is necessary to create something outside of oneself, put it in print and externalize. Stina says that she is controlled by her subconscious and that she communicates with it, even though the communication isn’t through an exact language. It is rewarding to define things through the subconscious and avoid chaos.

12:45 Stina says that she has been diagnosed with autistic syndrome. She describes that she doesn’t need anything from anyone else or the surrounding world, even though she is very social. She call’s the mix extreme, but she’s glad to be able to create without thinking about how it will be received. It is unaffected by the conscious. She knows exactly how something must turn out when she’s working with it. She has other ways to interact with other people than through her work.

17:00 She was interested in the relation between documentary and fiction, when she made “Tänk dig en människa”. She says it differs from her approach to making music. Julin talks about documentary elements in her music, and she admits that the recording locations affects in her music. Locations give meaning to her work, for her.

21:00 More about “Tänk dig en människa” and ”On the Tip of My Tongue”, and how people experience art. Stina doesn’t sound entirely convinced when the curators tell her about their intentions.

25:00 Stina describes how she was interested in answering her own questions when she made “Tänk dig en människa”. She enjoyed the intellectual process involved in making it. She calls music making a trial-and-error-type of work, not very intellectual. It’s more about yes or no. Music is 100% intuition, even if she’s interested in themes and stories while making the music, but it is not about answering specific questions.

29:45 Stina says that the boy’s talk is scripted. The foster children’s parts were recorded. Then Stina rewrote their stories. Then the same people recorded the text again. She was a bit surprised that they agreed to do it…
She can’t say that she likes the work today, but it’s an image of who she was at the time she made it. But she found it fascinating and cohesive when she listened to it now. She could hear the content better now. When she worked with it, it turned into “sound”.

36:30 She talks about how she was shocked when the newspapers started to write about her in the beginning of her career. When she began writing music she had found a way to describe the world. But when they wrote about her she was no longer in control, and it didn’t matter what they wrote. It was just the fact that they wrote that destroyed the joy for her. She had become a mediocre part of a mediocre world. She likes projects where she can work in a confined space, in a bubble. She can’t deal with morning television and staged settings, or the music business agenda where she is just a small part in a bigger game.

The curators talk about how they try to create that bubble, far away from tabloids and business and a consensus society, and Stina talks about timelessness and about not wanting to experience things together with everybody else, at the same time.

48:00 Now everything turns a bit meta, when they talk about their own conversation as an antidote for what they discussed at 36:30.

50:00 Excerpt from one of the stories in “Tänk dig en människa” and the boy’s monologue.

52:45 Stina describes an experience when she was young and falling asleep, where her tongue felt huge. She discusses what it could mean subconsciously.

55:45 Stina tell us about Manne who is the boy in “Tänk dig en människa”. She says that she likes boy choirs and boy voices. She wanted an innocent voice. Someone who has all information, but who sounds like he couldn’t possible have all that knowledge.

59:45 They talk about fiction and lies as a defense. That might be why the people in “Tänk dig en människa” agreed to have their own stories rewritten. Then they talk about the borders between truth and fiction until the end.

STRMBRG, thank you so much for the above. The way you've described the content of the conversation I think makes it more far easier to digest than a literal translation would have done.

This is a flying visit though and there is so much to take in that i'll have to have another read through again tomorrow but once again, many thanks for your time and trouble. Its very much appreciated.

I think from a fan's perspective,one of the crucial extracts from the conversation was:

'Stina says that she has no sense of continuity. She lives in an absolute and constant “now”. Past and future is overshadowed by now.'

That doesn't bode well for Stina resuming the interupted recording sessions for the follow up to TWIS. And its difficult to imagine Stina mustering sufficient enthusiasm to begin a new album when she's having to to look ahead over a period of months to complete the project.

I recall an interview with Paul McCartney when he was saying that 'Now is never important' and that most people were constantly either looking back or looking ahead..... and totally overlooking that 'Now' is all we really have. Life is a series of 'nows'. Stina's current attitude tends to cover the same ground as Paul's.

I suppose in theory Stina could write a song in the morning,record it in the afternoon and download it in the evening but I can't see that happening somehow. It looks as if we could be in for a very long and ultimately fruitless wait.

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This is great-many thanks, STRMBRG. And of course it's the first concrete evidence we have had for about 6-7 years that Stina is alive and well (enough) somewhere.
The revelation that she has a trace of autistic spectrum isn't completely a surprise to me, but as someone who has come into contact with many people with autism, I'd say Stina is a pretty mild case.

Here and there on the mp3 she sounds quite happy and able to laugh at herself and other things. And...she sounds older.

A pity the opportunity was lost to get a sense of what she is up to right now. Perhaps the subject was off-limits to the interviewers. At least she sounds fully engaged and interested in artistic ideas.

Maybe she wont release another album now. Her watchword was always the need to be creative and a recoiling from the world of the media. So long as she is still feeling creatively active, I don't much mind whether or not anything comes our way.

And of course it's the first concrete evidence we have had for about 6-7 years that Stina is alive and well (enough) somewhere.

We also have the nice text that Fredrik Strage wrote in May, that I found quite uplifting. I'll put it in the article topic in the album section.

Interesting read, quite telling in some parts. Her comments about the subconscious/unconscious are intriguing to me because that is an area of the creative mechanism I'm very absorbed by myself. It is a direct communication with aspects of yourself that you don't normally encounter in any other way.

It's funny because I've never felt much of a personal empathy with Stina as she comes across in interviews before, but several things she says here really chime with my own perception at the moment. Maybe it's a getting older thing, we're both middle-aged now and I guess there are certain essential feelings or insights that come with that, to everyone.

Thanks for posting the info!

This webpage has a translation of (presumably) part of the 'trialogue' conversation:

http://totallystockholm.se/arts-culture ... ordenstam/


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Yes, that is a part of the conversation. And one of the best parts as well.

I've been 'googling' around trying to find any reviews or reports of the actual music used for the 'sound installation' but apparently no one who has attended the event has yet described what they have heard.

I assume there must be 'security checks' in place to prevent people from taking in any recording device which will probably mean we'll never get to hear the music outside of attending the actual events.

I guess the 'soundtrack' that Stina has created for this 'sound installation' is 'ambient' or 'abstract' in nature as opposed to being a collection of songs'?

I'm just listening now, as I'm Swedish.
It's a very interesting interview, especially since I'm also an artist. I have been to the Magasin 3 arts centre before, really interesting place, and I would've loved to go to this but I don't live in Sweden and wont be back there till Christmas. Interesting interview all the same. Wont bother trying to translate anything as it's already been done. I've never heard Stina being interviewed in Swedish before I don't think...

Also, she says she's got computer-phobia and finds them scary the way people can do things at the same time. Don't think we'll see her online anytime soon then

You can hear a short extract from the sound piece at 00:51min, it's instrumental, slightly abstract sounds.

You can hear a tapping noise every now and again, it's Stina drumming on her snus (snuff) box, a popular tobacco product in Sweden.

The s/t was broadcast a few years back. RobB-I sent you a copy, so you've heard it! Inbetween the voices (and sometimes under them) are five pieces of music, which I think are great.

BlownAWish-there was an audio interview in Swedish with Stina when the Magasin project happened first five or six years back.
Also there's one made in the PAS era where Stina is talking about the photos she made for the album and her work as a photographer-which you can still listen to (and read the translation) at Kuhn's old site-http://stinamedia.tripod.com

sound world wrote:The s/t was broadcast a few years back. RobB-I sent you a copy, so you've heard it! Inbetween the voices (and sometimes under them) are five pieces of music, which I think are great.

I'll need to re-check Dave....I can remember the 'Horrors OnThe Ice' radio soundtrack you kindly sent me but I can't recall the 'Remember a Person / Human' one.
Maybe it didn't make much of an impression?

Ok, now located the recording thanks. I do like the keyboards.....and some of the strings suggest that one or two pieces may have been unused from the 'Jean Claude' project. Good to hear Stina as one of the speakers.........can anyone translate what she is saying please?