The work of the heroine of the following interview was brought to my attention by a reliable editorial colleague, Marek ‘Lokis’ Nawrot. Some time later, her excellent Dew material was released in cassette form by Okla Records. This further motivated me to get in touch with Manja Ristić to find out more about her approach to art, her unique view of sound and her interdisciplinary artistic explorations.
Manja Ristić, born in Belgrade in 1979, is a violinist, sound artist, poet, curator and researcher. A graduate of the Belgrade Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, she successfully combines her classical training with experimental sound practices. Her work ranges from solo performances to group projects, electroacoustic compositions to field research. She has collaborated with renowned artists, curated international events, published for renowned labels, and won numerous accolades, including prestigious awards for experimental music.
Please accept my invitation to read the interview, which will provide a unique perspective of this fascinating artist.
Artur Mieczkowski
Artur Mieczkowski: How did your adventure in music and sound begin?
Manja Ristić: I was six years old when my mom took me to a music school to “test my hearing”, I started playing violin soon after that. Violin wasn’t my first choice, I wanted to play piano, but it was a bit costly endeavour at the time, and we already had a few violins in the house since my dad and his grandma played the instrument in their youth.
My first violin teacher was extremely warm-hearted, with a slightly theatrical appearance, and she called all her young students “sunašce” (little sunshine). I remember being so small and scared when brought to violin lessons that I would hide under the grand piano. I remember vividly her nicely manicured hand with jewellery and red nail varnish offering me a bar of chocolate to come out and play the tunes while she was accompanying me on the piano… She fought for me and saw certain potentials before anyone else, at the age of 9 I was the youngest person at the Republic Violin Competition. I remember the dark venue and the long desk with the jury, I struggled with the demanding program, but I somehow finished in third place. That’s how my Sunshine teacher launched my career in 1988, you know, it takes a zillion situations, to take the right turn at countless crossroads to become a professional musician, in my case, it is a long and quite eventful story…
I am not certain that how one enters the life of music is in any way defining, it is more how one endures all the challenges and stays on the path despite all obstacles. I went through rigorous classical music training since early childhood and finished two Academies, in extreme socio-cultural conditions involving the war and the fall of Yugoslavia. All that had an impact on “navigating” my career. Taking risks and craving for growth in all aspects of life were predominant values that brought me to where I am now, together with all sorts of circumstances that have little to do with music, but everything to do with the courage to search for authenticity. I might be a good example of what not to do with your career! I’m way over it, it’s just life now.
A.M.: You studied in Belgrade and in London. How have these two cities influenced your artistic path?
M.R.: They are both very dynamic environments. Both cities left a huge impact on my nerves that’s for sure!
Belgrade – harsh and unpredictable. Strong amplitudes in energies, big turmoil, tight-knit social fabric.
London from 20 years ago, was lush with a strong notion of cultural expansion into the new millennium. Selectively fake, distant, and colonial.
Belgrade is always a struggle, existential, political, and socio-cultural, still, it has an incredibly vibrant independent culture, the most authentic in Europe without comparison, with all sorts of scenes overlapping and influencing each other. An eternal spin of subcultures, the only thing that is not working in Belgrade are institutions, cultural policies are crap, and the government is corrupted with a long record of criminal activities, so things happen in parallel dimensions. And there is zero transparency and true interest by the rest of Europe about what is, and what was happening in Belgrade in the last 30 years. It was systematically stigmatised and culturally isolated. The society endured a lot and is still standing, fighting for democracy until the last drop of blood, the state (establishment) is the ultimate disaster that brought the country to the brink of collapse many times. Living in such an environment produces a real cognitive dissonance. I think Belgrade taught me well how to take a stand. I am grateful for all the culture and knowledge I gained in that city, and from some extraordinary people. It is my home.
London, was heaven for students back then, still, my life was quite focused on one of the most demanding classical music milieus and scenes. I enjoyed cultural diversity and access to culture. I enjoyed building friendships with people from all over, and I loved playing with some of the most amazing musicians of our time. It felt amazing to be valued and praised. It was a good, somewhat elitist bubble, despite poverty and challenges. London today is a pale shadow of what I experienced 20 years ago.
What I didn’t like was the rigidness of the institutions, occasionally being looked down upon for being from Eastern Europe, not being able to get a proper work permit after I finished my studies, and all those things that kept the stench of the British Empire real.
Metropoles of the western hemisphere have changed drastically in this first quarter of the century. Gentrification, corporate expansion, capital-driven urban “development”, favoring technology over education, which in terms of the socio-cultural sphere ended up meaning – crap cultural politics, the downfall of social policies, and less and less investment in education; all of that slowly paving the way for corruption and capital hoarding politics we are living now.
A.M.: Your work combines classical music with an experimental approach to sound. How do you manage to balance these two worlds?
M.R.: It is all one world to me. They are intermingled. I feel comfortable entering new fields of performance or creation too, because I’ve achieved more than enough. Failing doesn’t put me off either. I’m comfortable being in different worlds, or dimensions at the same time.
A.M.: Dew released by Okla Records, is your new release. They have a very personal dimension. Could you tell us how your memories of your trip to Vienna influenced the construction of this album?
M.R.: Albums like Dew almost make themselves. Once the concept falls in place, actual work on the piece is more like an active meditation in which I am more a listener to what my subconscious is telling me than the sculptor. Awareness is a dynamic thing, a spectrum, a psychophysical compound operating through different layers of the psyche. Yes, I had a moment of clarity at that train station in July 2023, a glimpse of stretched time, while I was gobbling a Big Mac between two connecting trains. Luckily, I was conscious enough to turn on my recorder. You see, some situations and feelings define us even though we easily forget about them, and picking up on some feelings and situations from the past and integrating them helps us grow. I am happy I took this musical journey to meet with 16-year-old me again, to tell her that I see her and that I’m proud of her. It was also a deeply felt remembrance of my mom who passed away in 2007. She lives through me in various aspects of life, still, there are occasions when grief takes strange forms. They are not always harsh or unpleasant, but they do have a deep emotional impact. Being a motherless child is not an easy burden, it is like having a black hole in your soul, and you’re constantly making sure that it’s not spinning in the wrong direction.
I believe it is healthy to check on your traumas and fears in every form you come up with, to converse with them, and see them rather than looking away, otherwise, that content might come after you, pin you down until you are ready to acknowledge its existence, or worse, damage you indefinitely.
A.M.: The field recordings you use are extremely detailed and evocative. What significance do the sounds recorded with the hydrophone have for you?
M.R.: I use hydrophones as an instrument, it is my extended body, like the violin is my extended body; these instruments open new dimensions of being and listening. Exploring my hearing range underwater is an exciting thing, and I am deeply content to be able to share these explorations with others. But the most important aspect of it is how this new way of being in the world affects my mind. The recordings are what they are, they are detailed because the aspects of the spaces I am focusing on are so detailed, that in fact, there is no end to it. It does matter how far we are ready to soak ourselves into it, and how much we stretch our egotistic boundaries. It’s easy to listen to the surface of the world. All the lush sounds. Try hearing the struggle beneath, the constant cycle of life and death, destruction and rebirth.
Every inch of space contains traces of eternity, and every moment belongs to its fabric.
A.M.: 2024 has been a very busy year for you in terms of publishing. How do you manage to stay so creatively productive?
M.R.: It takes 6 to 8 months in the best case to publish works, sometimes this process takes many years, a lot that came out this year was made last year, some of the collaborations took several years, and some were polished until the last minute… all to all, things sometimes overlap so it looks like I’m gone coo-coo producing constantly, the truth is, my production is in the future already… in the background, I enjoy a lot making exhibitions, making music for documentaries, sound for theatre or contemporary dance, doing occasional workshops, radio productions, and dedicated projects, but to be honest all this is a well-organized timeline that fits into a quite limited amount of time I have left daily after taking care of my son, his school work, family time, the house (it’s a bloody demanding house from the 16th century, and its alive!).
Life-long classical music training embedded in me a specific working ethic. But I would be working way more if I stayed an active classical violinist or professor. My island life is not so fast at all.
A.M.: Are there specific places or moments that particularly inspire you to make field recordings?
M.R.: Yes, places that suffered severe trauma of the landscape, places of historical value, abandoned post-industrial sites, archaeological sites, and memorial sites. Deep nature. All of the aquatic macro and micro-environments, site-specific interventions, and unexpected found sounds. I love recording moments. I love creating moments to record as well.
A.M.: How do you perceive the contemporary experimental music scene? Do you notice changes in the way audiences respond to your work?
M.R.: I think the experimental scene is slowly emerging from the underground into many social spheres, but it is still far away from being properly acknowledged and supported as one of the most precious generators of socio-cultural development. The good thing is that finally grassroots culture is detected as a good educational basis for community well-being. The bad thing is that there are still many divisions between different public spheres and interest groups, and no matter how hard cross-sectional networking is trying to break those barriers, institutional culture is still holding its ground predominantly so it can suck up as much as possible funds for self-preservation, rather than investing in the cultural production. It is a political issue, dodgy governmental policies regarding funding education and culture have become normalcy all around Europe. Perhaps that is one thing we need to consolidate against and show more interest in differences across the continent and the world, regarding conditions under which the culture is made. We cannot keep comparing the quality of work, of individuals and organisations, with complete oblivion of how, where, and under which circumstances this work came to life. Even on the experimental scene, there is still a huge leap in equal opportunities based on education, nationality, race, and gender. To be completely honest, I find that very sad and primitive.
Even so, audiences are quite amazing across. Yes, there are differences in understanding abstract experimental sound art between public spheres that had access to it and those that had none. But that is exactly what the mission of experimental arts is – to expand the cultural field, to be critical, to be an advocate for positive social change, and to question and stir immediate societal reality. I don’t believe in a clear division between the creators of culture and the audience, that division vanished for me a long time ago. Same as I don’t believe in individual reality, since everything that exists is interdependent and interconnected, in various forms of “organisation” whether we are talking about human social dynamics, the physics of deep space, or Earth nature’s intelligence. So, in my opinion, the audience is a final composer or a second performer. Because, if there is no flow between different agents, there is no life to it either.
A.M.: You are also a poet. How does poetry influence your work as a sound artist and composer?
M.R.: I think poetry and music both can imply deep transformations. They “stick” deep.
Learning to be a poet is a lifelong endeavour, it is an unconventional view, a courageous encounter with the darkest parts of self, and the ugliness of the world. It is both a craft and a curse. Poetry often comes from unrest, sometimes from grief, sometimes from Weltschmerz, but in all cases, it comes from a solid connection with oneself that involves the diffusion of many psychophysical aspects. It is indeed a state of mind and a demanding one. Sometimes poets get into a complete panic when they feel that “poetry abandoned them”, but in fact what happens is that one cannot be constantly submerged and exposed to this state of being, it can have a forceful effect on mental and emotional well-being. That being said, a large portion of being a poet is to know how to maintain this connection, without developing an addiction to it. For centuries poets were called “inspired”, poetry was an “inspiration” of the world, today we know that poetry is a powerful transcendental state – and not the Buddhist one, but one that craves for the inner polyphony and tumbles your subconscious hard.
Now, try to replace the words “poetry” with “sound art” and “poet” with “sound artist” in this paragraph above. It kind of works, no?
A.M.: How important is sound to you in terms of ecology and environmental awareness?
M.R.: I think my recent opus (last 10 years) says a lot for itself.
What really bothers me though, is that many cultural institutions, artists, and even whole artistic communities are using this momentum of environmental awareness about the Anthropocene for purely selfish reasons, of hoarding funds for a systematic greenwashing, or their own narcissistic careers, or simply to “look good”, whilst at the same time giving zero fucks about actual problems in the field. The environmental fight is a political involvement, its activism, it’s fighting in the town councils, it’s fighting in the courtrooms, its organising campaigns and protests, it’s cleaning the riverbeds and beaches, it’s monitoring the system, it’s insisting on education… it is a dirty work that lacks immediate results and is rarely rewarding.
The aspect of advocacy that my work with sound contains is soft artivism, which I prefer to keep in the framework of broader research, and then there is some activist work that happens in the background. Without that, it would be pure hypocrisy.
A.M.: You collaborate with a number of artists, including Mark Vernon and Murmer. What does working in a duo or ensemble give you that you can’t experience when working alone?
M.R.: Collaboration is a necessary expansion for every creator. Complete self-centredness inevitably leads to some form of sociopathy. For me, merging ideas and building “shared spaces” with others is a path toward creative maturity. I enjoy collaborating with creators from different artistic spheres and disciplines, of diverse generational and educational backgrounds. It is enriching and it builds lifetime bonds. Good communication, a fluid exchange of ideas, ethical values, and a solid ground for compromises are parameters that can tell the difference between a successful collaboration and a lousy one. Making music with other people is a precious experience.
A.M.: You have curated many art events and projects. Which of these do you consider to be the most important in your career?
M.R.: Two occasions are probably the most traumatic organisational and cultural management experiences, but both hold significant value in the sense of lessons learned.
150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, it was a large-scale multimedia event involving building a 4 million volts Tesla coil to be included in an audio-visual performance. The spectacle took place twice in two different locations at the Kalemegdan fortress in Belgrade which at that time had quite poor infrastructure. It was back in 2006. When I survived that I’ll survive anything.
Organising the first wider European cultural conference outside of the European Union, called Forum Belgrade, back in 2007 and 2008, with members of the European Parliament (who wouldn’t come to official visits invited by the then-president of Serbia, but they did come to support our initiative), as well as numerous representatives of an NGO sector from all over; discussing new models for developing a citizen culture, European cultural policies and politics, and cross border collaboration.
The rest is an immense number of concerts, exhibitions, and performances that hold equal importance for me, from the dirty basements of many European cities to the Royal Albert Hall, from contemporary art museums and galleries to squats, from abandoned temples to Westminster Cathedral; music put me in many places and I am deeply grateful for that.
A.M.: What are your immediate plans in artistic activity?
M.R.: I’ve got to make a birthday album for my boyfriend and I haven’t even started yet!
A.M.: Thank you very much for the interview. I wish you the best of luck with your plans.
M.R.: Thanks for this lovely interview, Artur, and just for the record, I think Anxious Musick Magazine is a brilliant name and a brilliant place for living culture! Thanks once again. The pleasure was mine.