1/ You've been a musician since the early 90's. How did the much changing production environment influence your way of making music or even of playing live ? Can you tell us more about your improvisation process ? 


I have not changed my approach to neither music making nor live performance as much as the producers of all sorts of modern gadgets should have wished for. In a way I feel that the early 90s/post-cassette scene attitude and methods have reached beyond the limited creative circuits of that time and entered the wider and more traditional scenes, white jazz in particular. It´s common these days to incorporate both non-musical elements and objects in pretty trivial composition, also for the people who once found us ridiculous for breaking the strict laws of "free improvisation" and such. The freedom we fought so hard for is now being taken for granted, but please understand that I see this as a good thing. I´ve tried to pursue an open and riskful way of filling in spaces in other people´s work ever since the first futile cassette attempts (except in my extreme noise work), and since the scenes are now cross-fertilised not only top-down but bottom-up, I´m pretty trained to listen and then follow. To me improvisational music is about "getting there" together, and not about the competition of who´s the best instrumentalist that often effectively kept me away from a scene where I should have taken part. Art can be competitive, AND it can be complimentary. The production environment has obviously changed, making it easier to produce better sounds and spread your expressions wider and faster.  But all in all it´s just better tools that have little to do with the value of the output. What is left to see if mankind through the individual can change as much.    

 

2/ Do you somehow link art and music ? How ?


I´ve been a great admirer of Kurt Schwitter´s mindbogling freedom manifested through his Merz ideas from very early on. The good part is that it has made me see that all artistic expression is in a constant flux and chaos that nurtures "a greater work". Thus I´ve been able to incorporate elements from many different styles and genres, stealing tricks from various art and music movements. I have learned to appreceate both the professional and the amateur as part of "the bigger painting" (they just add different hues). Thus it is logical that I see no separation between music and art. The sad part, economically tragi-comical, is that it has made it impossible to promote my general "work", as people will only be able to see single parts, sometimes musical, sometimes visual, sometimes in text or performance. After over twenty years I´ve achieved that people can see maybe a few more aspects, and that gives me great pleasure. I don´t critise my audience, as even I can never remember all the single things in the mix that makes up my worklog. Only under my current Origami Boe moniker that worklog consists of 16 unconsistent parts (then you could add my collaborations, the microgallery I run, and other artistic activities).


   

3/ How would you describe your performances ? The notion of experience and diy seems to be central in your work: in this frame what is your relationship to the audience? are they active or passive? do they have a role ?


I am always, and hope to remain, a part of my audience. We experience things together. I very often include audience members in my performances. In my live performances I respond to someone caughing, a chair being moved, the sound system breaking down, the unavoidable ring of the cash till, the car passing outside. My performances is thus hard to describe, as the value is (again) not top-down, but a low-threshold experience to be shared by whoever is there at the time. I very seldom have a clear idea of what I want to achieve (but when I do, certain rules apply, but that is another story). This often gives me the best output when the audience is unlearned in what I do, because those "normal" people our scene is so quick to put down usually come with a cleaner, less pre-programmed mind. Specially as I often happen to be where they are more or less by chance. I have not been following the rather safe "easy-money-same-festival-next-year" circuit mostly to accomplish this purity and surprise factor (though I don´t let that hinder anyone in asking me back). I do like to give people the feeling that art is not too dangerous, even if it can be challenging. 


3/ Why did you choose these various media ? How does each of them contribute to the performance ?


(I think I answered that above) 

 

4/ how do you see the evolution of your origami republika network ? What are your ideas about that form of collaborative spaces at the age of internet ?


Origami Republika actually started out as a sort of an "acoustic" version of social networks like Facebook/Myspace etc. We started by exchanging cassettes and faxes, drawings and ideas, we intuitively linked things together without the knowledge of the now infamous "hyperlinks". It took more effort than a few clicks on the computer, as we had to spend money on postage and copying, going to the post, etc... It was of course also more based on physical objects than the unstable exchange of zero´s and one´s. It could/can easily become too chaotic to be described, and it all comes down to the fact that we had/have to sharpen our self discipline towards what we can achieve, how much we can absorb. Still it outlined/outlines the fact that man is a creative animal... 


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Omaonotopetokion: In Boe´s work there are often links between the sound output and the origin of the sounds; their political, symbolic or philosophical context. Most of his compositions and improvisations directly refers to various genres, methods, composers or socio-political issues. But in the Omaonotopetokion-series of electro-acoustic compositions the emphasis is set on the neutrality of sounds and the way they are combined into music. This means that any sound source can be utilised, regardless whether they come from the acoustic laptop, field recordings, electronic sessions or others. When this material is presented live, blocks of prerecorded sounds are played back more or less at random, and Boe then adds live sounds from the acoustic laptop or other sources. This creates a challenging music balancing between the predetermined and the improvised. "Onomatopoetic words sound like the noises they refer to, while the Omaonotopetokion sounds sound like the sounds they refer to."