"From the Vault" is a series of articles originally published between 2011 and 2014 that I'm re-publishing for archival purposes, usually due to the scarcity of available material or the artist(s) not being active anymore.
Date: 16/06/2011
Place: Belgrade, Serbia
Thomas Köner probably needs no introduction to readers of this website. This audiovisual artist from Bochum, Germany has travelled the world many times over showcasing his unique art combining images and sounds into a singular experience, but dark ambient audiences will primarily know him for his seminal trilogy of albums from the early 1990s: Nunatak Gongamur, Teimo and Permafrost. A perennial innovator, Thomas was essentially making dark ambient before the genre was even defined in those terms. Now, twenty years later, he has made his way back to Belgrade, Serbia to present his latest audiovisual installation, In the Shadow of Tabor, commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and combining what are essentially live renderings of medieval orthodox icons with his trademark minimalist soundscapes. After the event itself, a clearly fatigued Thomas was kind enough to stick around for a while for a conversation with me, for which I remain indebted to him.
Thomas: It’s been a very difficult day… I had power outages and other technical difficulties the entire afternoon, so I was unable to prepare the sound for the performance in advance. I even had to visit a dentist… Not a very good day for me. Still, I leave satisfied.
As the occasion for our meeting was Thomas' just-completed performance in Belgrade, asking about how he came up with the idea in the first place was the obvious course of action.
The images of these saints - I see them as pictures from passports issued by the country of Heaven. I wondered what those people might have looked like when they were still “normal”. It has something to do with me personally as well – I am normal, as an artist, like anyone else. Seeing these icons, you understand that you have the potential to become a saint yourself. You don’t know if you are challenged in any way or not – again, it’s about the relation of the future and the present – but you have this potential, the hidden energy in this moment; you can relate to the holiness that is captured in these icons.
The thoughtfulness of Thomas' responses almost caught me off guard. The pause of 4-5 seconds after each of my questions, the profound look on his face during that pause, his facial expression... And just when I was about to ascribe it to his aforementioned fatigue, he came back with a superbly laid out response, one that seems far too complex to have been thought through in a few seconds. Fascinated, I continued to inquire about how these audiovisual exhibitions come to be, and whether the visuals or the sounds take precedence.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? [laughs] Both senses are addressed, the seeing and the hearing. They are not connected by themselves. What’s connecting them is you as a person, as a being, as someone who has a history, a memory, an emotional state, someone who changes by the hour. It’s a random situation anyway, in terms of physical perception. I’m addressing the sonic space and the visual space as two different “rooms”. As a visitor, you’re invited to connect these. I’d like everyone to feel something unique, something different. I don’t want you to feel what I might have in mind. I’d like you to accept the invitation to do something with the things I offer. The music doesn’t feel recognisable anyway; there’s no beat, no storytelling, no narration or anything. You basically either accept the invitation or turn around and go home.
There’s a stereotype concerning artists, claiming that a true artist must seem disconnected and distant, as if he was only part here on Earth, and part in his own universe, the one he’s trying to represent through his earthly emanation. I’ve always considered it ridiculous to pigeonhole people like that and judge something as abstract as art by its creator’s appearance or mannerisms, but as we kept talking, I realised that in Thomas' case it really rings true. It seemed as if he was merely the conduit for the actual Thomas that was somewhere on another plane of existence. Meanwhile, he continued.
Anyway, my idea was to create a space which would seem very local, almost banal – as these are all orthodox icons displayed in Serbia, an orthodox country – where all that potential would be addressed. Not that there’s any need for it, that something is missing, or that there’s even a point in it. It’s... Like a perfume. I’m very interested in the present moment, you see. You don’t know what the future will bring, and the past is already gone. The present is all we have.
Obviously, an art installation for the general public is rather different than performing at a concert or a music festival for a dedicated audience who came specifically to experience your music. Thomas is known for doing both in equal measure, and I was curious how the latter compared to the former.
Well, you have a much better sound system! [laughs] There’s no conceptual difference, really, I’m just able to express myself much better in terms of sound… With the sort of exhibition like the one today, I feel like I’m expressing two percent of my audio potential, and even that’s distorted.
I could attest to the same, having witnessed people talking during the performance here at the museum, and it annoyed me to the point of wanting to intervene. Thomas seemed completely unbothered by it, though.
I see it as salt in a soup. If you have the perfect amount of salt in your soup, you cannot ruin it. You can have a lot of bad side dishes as part of your meal, but the soup remains perfect.
As I was admittedly acquainted with Thomas primarily through his musical work rather than his multimedia installations, I wanted to know more about how he sees his early dark ambient works twenty years on.
Honestly, I don’t think I could record anything like that today, not with all the entropy and decadence surrounding us... So it’s good that I did it back at the time, so that I don’t have to worry. [laugh]
As a final topic before letting Thomas take some well-earned rest, I asked him if there was an end to his seemingly limitless source of ideas, both visual and aural ones.
I don’t know if I have any ideas at all.
That sounds an awful lot like Kierkegaard.
[laughs] I just try to establish the kind of situations that I’ve mentioned. What you call ideas are just results of applied principles, which are the general field of my research. For example, tonight there was a man who asked me about a sound I used at one moment, the sound of a closing door. He said that it reminded him of the bombings in Serbia in 1999, and he asked if it was intentional, used as a reference, if it was supposed to sound like that at all. You see, in my work, I try to create a space that is as empty as possible without collapsing. I invite the audience – each visitor – to fill this space with his own memories, his own content. This is actually one of the complaints about my work sometimes – that my music is boring. This “boredom” is a means to allow, to persuade the audience to drift off from my ideas, the ones that I might provide with my work, and to connect to their own story, their own memories, their own life. This is a thread that goes through all my works, be it visual works, sound works, photography or anything else.
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