E6: Ard Kok

TRANSCRIPT:

[Evy:] Hello hello and welcome to Word Up Podcast. I’m Evy.
[Webster:] And I’m Webster.
[Evy:] And today we’re here with Ard Kok.
[Ard:] Yes, hello.
[Evy:] How are you today?
[Ard:] I’m uhm I’m... I’m pretty good. I’ve been very busy lately, ‘cause my girlfriend from America has been here...
[Evy:] oohh
[Ard:] So we have like six weeks together. So trying to fit as many nice things as we can in this period, you know.
[Evy:] Oh, so exciting. Thank you so much for giving your precious time to us then.
[Ard:] Anytime, really.
[Evy:] But first, for people who don’t know you very well, or at all, could you please introduce yourself?
[Ard:] Ja, I’m an experimental electronic music producer, mainly right now. I think I’ve changed a lot in that since last year. I’ve.. I was in Iceland for a few months and after that a lot of my sort of musical direction changed. And that’s why now I would say experimental electronic music producer. Before it would’ve been more of like singer-songwriter and Dutch poetry or Dutch stories on music. Which I did under a different name. Uh and now I’m here I think as uh “either id” which would be my performance name now. I recently graduated with my performance from the school of the arts in Utrecht. So I’m very happy about that.
[Evy:] Congratulations.
[Laughing]
[Ard:] Thank you. It’s also what gives me the time now to actually have Ella over, my girlfriend. So yeah, I think that’s it.
[Evy:] Nice.
[Webster:] That’s nice. I watched one of your video’s at Outspoken. It was you and your band, you guys were sorta doing a performance and it was sorta paired with visuals and you had different instruments.. It’s super cool. Can you describe your process, how did you guys come to be putting so much into your art?
[Ard:] Yeah, that’s been an interesting process I think. We’ll have to speak about Iceland also at some point, because it was just such a pivotal moment. And in Iceland a lot of those, a lot of the things that I perform with now and the concepts that I use and the way that I collaborate with people started there really.vFor example the visual guy, Wouter Smit, is someone that I met during an.. It was sort of a ableton masterclass during Amsterdam Dance Event. And I went there and there were a few like artist expositioning that worked there and one of them was Wouter Smit and he was having this installation of sort of audiovisual feedback looping. So it would be, uhm, I’m not entirely sure if I’m explaining this correctly, but he would have something projected on the wall which he would film, which he would feed back into like an analog TV, and then he would record the sound and input that sound into the video input of the analog TV. Which makes the TV react with like just sort of flashes of light. And you know, the snow and the interference that you get on analog TV’s. And then he would record that back and send that back into the visuals that he was projecting on the wall. And sort of by making these infinite feedback loops of things they all sort of started working together or uh interfering with each other to make this really weird uh really weird visuals and really nice ambient soundscapes.
So I just approached him after.. Asked like “Do you wanna be a part of my graduation?” at first but now it’s I think evolved into this idea that everything that I do will fit really well with his visuals. And I think the other way around, too. And I really work as like a collage artist, it feels like. So it’s all material from Iceland or from after Iceland. So I use I think four of the eight texts that we used in the graduation performance, Were texts written by people that I met in Iceland, that I just asked “Can I just use those texts of have those texts?” Which I was really happy to get. And then I sort of supplement them with my own texts and it was kinda the same with the musical ideas. Like the guitarist will have some sort of musical idea and we’d work that into the whole performance and I think the thing that gives everything of that graduation performance, it’s called “Hyper Self” that gives it this feeling that it’s really a whole, or that it has like a red thread; you can say that, right? In English? a red thread?
[Evy:] Yeah.
[Ard:] Is just really the concept that everything for me is really concept-heavy. And the concept that I’m working with now is the idea of it’s a lot about social anxiety and about interpersonal connection and either feeling that or not feeling that. And then in the performance in “Hyper Self”, what we did was we started from this completely isolated individual that was not in touch with anything of it’s surroundings or not even acknowledging any of the surroundings. It was just this completely internal world uh where everything happened because of own thoughts. It’s just thoughts reacting to own thoughts I guess. And then that world of awareness slowly grows out until it acknowledges that there is something that exists outside of a self. Until it eventually touches another person. An from that moment on, there starts to be interpersonal connection and there starts to be, I don’t know, like uh.. real emotions that grasps onto someone. But there also starts to become more awkwardness and miscommunication and then slowly that attention grows more and more and grows into the other person because slowly from this feeling of uh.. there is another person that I can interact with, it becomes I need this other person because I need to interact with them because otherwise I’m no-one. And then in the end that individual loses all touch with the self and then completely disappears into the other, and it’s just about “What can the other do for me?”, “How can they change me?”, “How can I validate myself through them?”, I guess. And the Outspoken performance you saw, which is not “Hyper Self”. Well that’s all improvised performance, which is how we perform now, as “either id” because that “Hyper Self” performance is just way too big to do in any other place than kinda where we did it.
[Webster:] Right.
[Ard:] So that’s all improvised performance based around the materials that we made there and the texts that we used there. And then it’s just every time we just see what happens. And that’s what Outspoken was, too.
[Webster:] That’s amazing. It seems like the visuals that you add on top of the music and everything, it’s all designed to sort of emerge the audience.
[Ard:] Yes.
[Webster:] Whereas usually when you go to like a live-performance, you know, the artist comes into our space. We’re sitting here, with our wine and bread, and you come into our space and perform for us and we might like it or we might not. But it seems like, with you guys improvising and the visuals, we’re kinda drawn into your word, you know? And there’s something really cool about that.
[Ard:] Well, I’m glad, really glad to hear that. Because I think that whole... just the word “immersive” I think is really important for what we’re trying to do. ‘Cause if the concept is something as as much about like the individual or you know, your own experience, in this pretty fragile place of being socially awkward or uncomfortable. It’s kinda hard to make a space in which people feel open enough to feel that, you know? So we try to create this space in which it becomes the experience of the people themselves instead of something that I’m trying to tell. Like: “Try to feel this?” we try not to do that, because people will decide for themselves what they feel, you know?
[Evy:] Yeah. But now I’m really intrigued about Iceland.
[laughing]
[Ard:] Yeah, I can imagine, yeah.
[Evy:] Tell us when uhm when did you go, when did you come back, uh what happened in between?
[Ard:] I’m also intrigued about Iceland.
[Evy:] It’s beautiful country, isn’t it?
[Ard:] It’s really nice, yeah. And it’s crazy how much the people there... have this sort of innate uh sense of uh respect I guess for their surroundings and makes a lot of sense to me that someone such a creative mind as like Bjork originates there, just because I dunno it seemed to be really curious creatures there. I partook in Lunga, which is a sort of artists residency there. And most artists residencies or like the classic idea of an artist residency is that the artist that comes, gets space and time and materials to just work on their art. And they either have to present an idea when they apply for it or they just come and they get freedom. And Lunga definitely is that, but they also try to be a little bit of a school of sorts. So there are workshops that you follow, and they do call the people that join there the Lunga students. But nothing is ever like mandatory, and everything is... serves the purpose of getting the artist to be I guess as “in the moment” as possible and to really... I dont know, there’s just something about Lunga that makes the whole thing feel like like an art project, like a sort of performative art project that lasts three months that you just partake in and everything you do is just part of it. Like every night that you go to bed, like what time you go to bed or with what motivation you wake up, it’s just all part of what you apparently needed to be doing there. Because you don’t have anything that you have to do while you’re there. So they don’t they don’t make you go to classes or they don’t make you make art. So if you’re feeling like doing nothing for like a whole week, and just sitting on a bench, then apparently that’s exactly what you needed to do, ‘cause otherwise you wouldn’t have been doing it. And that created this way of living, something, that was really about sort of finding yourself in the moment and spending time with your art. Like, spending time with whatever discipline you brought along with you, or whatever new discipline you wanted to be doing. So we also did like silence days in which we’d all be silent. We all lived together in this big hostel-house that was just our home, like there was no-one else living in there too. So we had to take care of our home. Lunch and dinner was served in a restaurant every day so we’d never have to think about food. And we’d ... I don't know, one thing that I really loved that was for me very explanatory of how things were is that we had to wake up I think it was at 1AM at some point, and then we all took a 20-minute walk, just alongside this mountain/hill in silence. And then when we got to our destination there was just this huge gong there and we all took turns just hitting the gong once and then we walked back in silence and then we went back to bed. And experiences like that, like it’s super unclear why exactly we we’d have to do that but the next morning, the fact that you did that made a lot of sense, or felt for some reason like yeah we really did something, we really experienced something there.
[Webster:] That’s amazing.
[Ard:] Yeah, it was crazy.
[Evy:] Were you there during the winter, or dark season, or the light season?
[Ard:] It was uh crossing over into the dark season. So it was September until December of 2017, so when we left there was about four hours of light per day.
[Evy:] That’s pretty intense also, right?
[Ard:] Yeah, it also got pretty depressing sometimes, but then that was also part of it I guess.
[Evy:] But the nature is also... have you been in Reykjavik or?
[Ard:] No, Lunga is in Seyðisfjörður, which is actually the place where the ferry that comes in from Denmark arrives, so it’s this really small town, has I think 500 or 700 people living there. So it’s like really small, and it’s like right on the edge of one of the fjords that comes like into Iceland so you’re really at the water.
[Evy:] Oh nice, must be really beautiful.
[Ard:] It was really beautiful, like, there was ... If we’d walked out of our hostel and then five minutes up the hill you could just see the entire village. It was just there, really small. We’d start walking up the hill and then within fifteen minutes the the village would be out of sight, things like that.
[Evy:] Oh, now I’m having this wanderlust.
[laughing]
[Ard:] Go there, really do
[Evy:] I’ve only been to, ya, Reykjavik. And the south-est point of Iceland.
[Ard:] Okay, right.
[Evy:] So that’s the the really black sand beach and that’s really alien experience.
[Ard:] Ya, so I haven’t seen any of that, sadly.
[Evy:] And all the smelly geysers and things.
[Ard:] They’re all there?
[Evy:] Well, in the ah around Reykjavik it’s not that far, yea...
[Ard:] Maybe I’m glad I missed the smelly geysers, it’s...
[laughing]
[Evy:] It’s a obligatory touristic moment.
[Ard:] Next time I go there, I’ll do it, yeah.
[Evy:] Nice. Okay so that was really a shift for you. Creatively and personally I assume.
[Ard:] Ya personally and creatively I mean it’s all kinda intertwined of course but yeah. It was a big shift because like I said like before I was way more doing singer/songwriter and more Dutch things and I guess I felt a lot more pushed into this box of what a Dutch conservatory student should do. Although my study that I did, musician 3.0, is a really free-thinking study, like I think as free-thinking as music education gets in Holland. But still there’s always certain things that I felt like I had to be and those were just completely gone when I came back.
So that’s also why I only graduated like, I guess three weeks ago, is because after coming back in December of 2017 I was just completely I guess out of balance. So I didn’t go to school and I didn’t do anything for months... Like three to five months or something, I just needed to zone out from the world and slowly get my footing and I really took about a year. And feel like I’ve found it now, again, since a few months.
[Webster:] So is that something that you think you’ll chase in the future, you know pulling yourself out of context, being in a new place, finding different inspirations, since it’s brought so much positivity for your music?
[Ard:] Well it’s.. the weird thing is like, yes I would love to, and I think through like the improvisational quality of what “either id” does, we do that. And we sort of like also for what I’ll be doing later in this podcast, I don’t really know. I have some texts and I just brought the guitar but I don’t even know if I’m gonna use it. So I think I’m doing that a little bit but also, like it did take me a long time of like really not feeling good in my skin. For that change to have happened sort of eventually like it did now. So actually I’m feeling more like using… Using how I’m feeling now a bit more and sort of settling in and maybe the changes after this can be a bit smaller, a bit smaller.
[Webster:] Yeah, they don’t always have to be leaps and bounce, right?
[Ard:] Exactly, yeah, I think that was enough for a few years.
[Evy:] So I feel like with what you’re saying with your performances, you explore a lot about interpersonal and relationship, and also relationship with yourself. So inside out and outside in.
[Ard:] Yeah, I guess so, yeah.
[Evy:] And is this something that really interests you and is this something that you want to explore further or you feel like with what you’ve done for your final work as something that you’re done with this and you explored?
[Ard:] That’s a good question. I’m never really.. You never really know where inspiration might strike. And I’m noticing that one thing that I do really want to pursue although I’m not sure if that’s gonna be now, but is.. are the more sort of humouristic aspects I guess of doing spoken word and doing performances like this. Because I know my performances tend to be pretty dark and like pretty serious. So I‘d wanna move into a space that provides for a little bit more of a lighter touch, I think would be really nice. But the concept of social awkwardness and miscommunication and anxiety and needing other people to be someone doesn’t really feel explored yet. Like, I’m still in there.
[Evy:] And it’s a big pool to explore, right?
[Laughing]
[Ard:] Exactly, yeah. I mean it’s..
[Evy:] Never ending.
[Webster:] So much content.
[Ard:] Yeah.
[Evy:] Both ways, from the dark to the humouristic I think and everything in between.
[Ard:] Exactly yeah, there’s.. I mean the inspiration right now does feel kinda endless. Just because cause everything feels kind of inspirational, which is a very nice place to be in, so trying to hold onto that for as long as I can.
[Webster:] So what’s your process like when you guys get together and you practice maybe, where are you sourcing inspiration for that? Is it improvised then? When you’re in a garage, or wherever you practice.
[Ard:] So if we’ve got a performance someone asked us for a performance like March 23rd I just throw it into the group. I just say: “There’s a performance then, who can join?” and I have two dancers, two visual, like VJ’s, and a group of six musicians now. And then anyone who says “Yeah I’ll join in” they just join in. So it’s always different. So the last performance was with Luuk Laporte and Sjoerd de Rooij which is a bass player and one vocalist and Wouter Smit, the VJ. And for the March 23rd it’s gonna be Hugo, so that’s the guitarist. He works a lot with prepared guitars so he has this like a toolbox of different weird things that he sticks in between his strings or he uses like a brush to brush his strings to make different sounds. And then there’s no other spoken word person, so then it’s gonna be just me. And the idea is just that everybody kinda knows the materials that we work with, and then we just see from there. So we don’t... We’re now at a point because the whole process of making “Hyper Self” was pretty pretty intense, so now we’re at a point that we don’t really need to rehearse anymore, because we just know the materials. And for a performance of like 15 to 20 minutes improvising that is pretty easy, or like doable. So there’s not really much of a process right now, anymore actually.
[Webster:] That’s nice.
[Ard:] Yeah it is very comfortable because it’s just very easy to accept performances now and it keeps it very exciting every time. So yeah…
[Webster:] Do you think the audience looks forward to it being improvised or... How is that different to giving them something that they know has been practiced and you know, sorta honed and defined?
[Ard:] I think that’s where the spoken word part becomes very important because like... The texts have been rehearsed, obviously, because they’re.. they can be long texts, most of them are shorter texts and like when I.. We have a few texts for example that are dialogues. Sort of very abstract inner dialogues that would go like:
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because, feelings.”
“Just feelings?”
“Yeah, because feelings.”
“Why feelings?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then no.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Like, it will be things like that, that can be very easily improvised with, but still have a structure to them, so I guess that is something that the audience... I mean, ‘cause you do have to give them something that is rehearsed or prepared you know to otherwise it becomes too loose, also for me. Otherwise you can’t really push a concept in it, and I really wanted there to be a concept. But I did after the last performance we had, last Friday, we were like speaking about ways of getting some musical materials in there that are... Like the hard thing is if you’re working with different musicians and different spoken word people every time.. Like how can we shape the musical materials in such a way that if we’re playing with bass and drums we can use the same musical material that we would use if we were playing with like three spoken word people and just a guitar? So I guess that’s kinda the challenge we’re in now. But yeah, we’re working on that. I guess there is a process then.
[Laughing]
[Webster:] Controlled freedom, kinda.
[Ard:] Yeah, yeah, structured improvisation.
[Webster:] Exactly, that’s better way to put it.
[Evy:] So we’re very curious now to hear what you have for us to improvise?
[Webster:] Very curious.
[Ard:] Sure. Yeah, alright
[Evy:] Let’s do this
[Ard:] Let’s do it. Let’s see what happens


Lines
[guitar strum]
Drawn in the sand, by the hand of a child
[guitar strum, then muted]
So carefully, the god child arranges the world before him
[guitar strum]
his fingers dipped in pastel sugars
Tiny gemstones [guitar] Mountains
Long vanished and eroded into tiny specks
[guitar]
And so he creates
shaping civilizations [guitar] from sand
Men and women from clay feathers and sticks found
objects on the beach and in the into them he dreams
[guitar]
Lives lived, born and suffered
Families, destinies fragility and strength
And so the god child creates and dreams wondrous worlds
attachment, pain and struggles
into his little world
and then by the turn
[guitar grows lower]
of a tide or a familiar voice calling
Or a familiar voice calling
Or a familiar voice calling
Or a familiar voice calling
So he gets up and in his clumsiness stumbles and shatters
the very world he had just created and so
Lines
Drawn in the sand
Were drawn to remain
Lines
Drawn in the sand
Will never remain
[guitar picking]
Lines
Drawn in the sand
Were drawn to remain
Lines
Drawn in the sand
Will never remain
Lines
Drawn in the sand
Were drawn to remain
Lines
Drawn in the sand
Will never remain
Lines
Drawn in the sand
were drawn to remain
Lines
And so our lives pass
In the very theater that had just opened like a flower
Closes in on itself once more
In a strange mute gesture of un-death
of un-life
of things passing
without a trace into an unknown
ruins and fragments that reminisce nature
Disappearing into ruins and nature without form
and so
in silence colored by longing from an unseen source
from an unseen source
from an unseen source
The next chapter opens and play figures emerge
glimpses of light in the night of your chambers
you find yourself
[Guitar]
[recording] Standing across from each other
Standing across from each other
[recording] reaching for each other
Staying stable around each other
[recording] Seeming... A lot like each other Whilst staring at each other
Afraid of each other
[recording] Seeing every other person in the other
Seeming a lot like each other whilst staring at each other
[recording] turning away from each other
Walking away from each other
[recording] Walking away from each other
[recording] Stagnating between each other
Stagnating between each other
[recording] And then staying stable... Around each other
Stagnating between each other
[recording] Afraid of each other
[recording] Mutually needing each other
Involuntarily
hating each other
[recording] Craving each other
Craving each other
Anxious, Nervous
easily distracted
Paranoid
Stops frequently
Thinks too much
but doesn’t think of anything, looks around
Searching
Comparing
Watching
Always afraid of abandonment
Worries about not being included
Worries more about intentionally
being excluded
Makes bad jokes
and laughs at the wrong moments
too silent or too
loud
or too
loud
or too
loud
or too
loud
or too
loud
or too
loud
[guitar]
And so in silence
coloured by longing from an unseen source
The next chapter opens and play-figures emerge
Glimpses of light in the night of your chambers
you find yourself drawn
once more into a world
and you find yourself moving softly
like on a wave
Towards a calling
so convincing
from a direction never seen
before
and the sad longing for the world
which is past that you
clutched in the corner of your worlds
left there, on the floor
as you turn, already forgotten as it slips
from your
Hands



[Webster:] Right, yeah
[Clapping]
[Evy:] Thank you very much
[Webster:] Thank you for sharing that.
[Ard:] Yeah, of course
[Evy:] It was very transcendental, is that the word?
[Ard:] It’s probably a word, yeah
[Webster:] Yeah no that was very vivid for me, sorta hearing you speak. The internal dialogue going on, you know, the back-and-forth, and also you sort of singing in between I thought that was really powerful so... No it was really cool. Can you tell us how why, where the inspiration came?
[Ard:] I’m always like kinda shaking after performing, now too, it’s like extremely I get extremely nervous always. But before playing I just try to sort of “phooh” “don’t show it, don’t show it” but always after a performance I’ll be like kinda shaking and uh.. I guess that’s because one of the things I have taught myself to do is to not do anything until I feel I should really fucking do something now. Cause then things need space, a lot of the time, you just need space to develop and when you’re playing most of the time you’re in like a different experience of time then the audience is. Or I’ve noticed that like you’re quicker most of the time, because you’re like working and you’re active and you know what you’ll have to do and you’re thinking about the future... So, one of the important things I think is to really wait until you feel owner of the space, I guess, that you’re in. So always start with silence and the improvisational part is really nice because I had a couple of texts that I just know, and I had my guitar, but I didn’t have anything prepared specifically. Just while setting up the microphones, I just did this one chord a few times I was like okay, I think I’ll probably use that just so I at least have something. And then.. I don’t know.. A lot of things also happen I guess by accident, like in the text that I opened with I think I stopped twice and repeated one sentence again, which most of the time is just cause I sort of trip in my mouth like it’s just sort of “whoops”. And then I stop and just think “it’s alright, let’s say this pause was a part of it. Why would this pause be a part of it? Oh probably to get emphasis on the previous sentence. Okay so I’ll just repeat that sentence.” So something like that it’s always just sort of catching myself when I fall and if I don’t fall then it’s probably because what was there was steady enough already. And then and the same thing happened, I think I said “And you find yourself” and then I stopped, which is also not in the text I didn’t know I was going to do that, but I I think I had to swallow at that point, so I just stopped, and that made a lot of sense. And then I was like “alright, if you find yourself..” and then I knew I had the that text about others on my phone, I recorded it while walking here, between the metro stop and your house. Uhm, yeah I don’t know... It’s hard to say where inspiration strikes, but it’s always just like seeing like okay, where am I now and which of the materials that I have can uh can either break it or lengthen it, I guess. Yeah..
[Webster:] Right
[Evy:] I have this sense that you know there is technique for blind people, it’s called Geo-location, where people click with the
[Webster:] With bats
[Evy:] Yeah like bats, and then I feel like you’re somehow performing in that way, like you’re checking where your borders are, where your sound bounces off of the wall, and then that’s...
[Ard:] It does feel like that a lot..
[Evy:] Right? I had that visualization somehow.
[Ard:] Actually it’s pretty interesting because at OutSpoken, I was really nervous, like really nervous and I always need some way of like dealing with that and that always has to, it always has to be a start up of the performance, like the opening for me is most of the time like the choice or the thing that deals best with how I’m feeling at that point. Which is mostly like nervous, but sometimes it gets into more sort of anxious or it gets into more excitement or something... And there’s different ways to sort of calm me down and at... I was feeling pretty I guess awkward or something during OutSpoken and so when I performed with my electronic setup I have all my different sort of vocal effects and sounds all sort of live under my buttons and stuff. So I can change the sound that I speak with at any time and there’s this one that glitches up the vocals a lot, like chops it, and then plays everything back at different speeds so when I say “uh” if I would say that it would come back as “u U Oh oh” like that so it’s... and that’s kind of... I don’t know it felt really awkward to start with that, so that’s what I did, I just literally did “uuh” in the mic to start, because that was really how I felt. And that always... Turning that into some.. some musical or like artistic material really works to immediately be sort of in touch with what I’m doing.
[Webster:] That’s wonderful because then it’s kinda organic for each audience, you know... Even if there are “mistakes” that to me didn’t feel or look like, or sound like mistakes at all you know, it was just all part of what you were doing.
[Ard:] Okay, right, okay, that’s good yeah. And that’s also where the immersiveness that we spoke about earlier comes back, because it just has to be all in the moment you know, it’s just really important. So also for the for the VJ for example... I wanted to work with him because.. because of how he had those feedback systems working, like there was also somewhere in that weird system he had an like an infrared camera, that was responding to like I guess... I guess like how close you got to the mic and stuff so it was this circle of like grid lines that was made into a 3D-circle that was spinning around it’s as and then when you would put your hand in front of that, the circle would sort of crunch into itself or like grow in weird ways. And so he was really like.. He was being live with his visuals, and that was the kinda thing that I needed.. So that’s always been a big part of the process like how can I make this text or musical material or this discipline. How can I make it so that it’s actually has worth to do it live. Where as I guess the more set in stone your material becomes, the less I need to see it live, I guess.
[Webster:] And do you prepare the audience and sort of say “hey guys, this is gonna be completely live” and you know tell them your process or do you kinda keep that under wraps?
[Ard:] I try to, I guess, like it’s I think it’s nice to tell people that it’s improvised because that... I’m not sure.. I‘m wondering about that, like if that works for I guess the general audience if there’s a general audience. But to put them in a mindset of "okay he’s really experiencing it for himself new, too", because I really do. And that’s why I get shakey, because I’m like so it get’s very fragile I guess.
[Webster:] Yeah, I think for me it adds an extra element of like “Oh my god I really need to pay attention because everything I’m about to experience I probably won’t get to see again in that order, in that way, with those emotions at the present time”
[Ard:] So it did that for you?
[Webster:] Yeah
[Ard:] Okay, that’s good.
[Webster:] Knowing you’re doing that sort of live, it’s like okay, sweet, I’m looking forward to this, you know..
[Ard:] Yeah, exactly
[Evy:] But it feels to me like you’re practicing a lot of social like awkward social situations through your art, but how do you deal with all those social awkward situations in real life? Like what’s your advice for people, because I know like a lot of my friends they also they get awkward and then it’s all like “hmm what to do” like, do you have any advice since you’ve been researching it?
[Ard:] Yeah that’s interesting, do I?
[Evy:] Or like tricks, or, you know?
[Ard:] Yeah, I’ve.. I guess I did speak... I had a conversation pretty recently about something like that. In Iceland at some point Jonatan, one of the organizers of Lunga hosted like philosophical talks about certain things and at some point we arrived at the idea of systems and of how in what way systems respond to the input that you give them and and how you get that input back as output and there’s like simple systems like your shower that if you put the input of I turn the nob towards hotter water the output is hotter water, and it’s like really easy to understand what the system does. And then like it starts growing into more and more complex systems in which you’re either not really sure how the input works, like with a TV or something, I don’t know what my remote control does but I think I have an idea of what the output will be, so I kinda understand. And then at some point there’s systems that are just so complex that you cannot understand because every time you give it an input, even if it’s exactly the same input, a completely different output comes out. So it’s completely unpredictable and I feel that’s how life is a lot and how social situations are a lot. Like you can do something again because you thought it worked last time, and then it just doesn’t work this time. But the idea of just keep poking it with a different input was nice. So like, uhh.. I guess when I get awkward in social situations sometimes I’ll just pick a random thing to do, and just do it, and then see what the output it, because then at least I’m taking a little bit of control over the situation where I’m in. And if you stop giving input, to that system, because it’s so chaotic, then you really lose every type of control.
[Evy:] So winning by confusion.
[Ard:] Yes, exactly. And, yeah... I mean, uh I think so... I like that. Because often people will be like, I don’t know, let’s say you just sort of walk up to someone and you just sort of stand next to them and you just give them this weird look, or something. But then they might laugh, like “What are you doing?” and then you’re in a social interaction that’s real. Because he’s like “what are you doing?” and I’m like “I don’t really know, but I’m here now” and then you’re laughing all of a sudden and then it makes a lot more sense. So I guess just uh just that.
[Evy:] Yeah, try everything random, and then see what happens. Okay.
[Ard:] Except that no-one knows what the output’s gonna be anyway, so, yeah...
[Evy:] Although I think society is quite well structured, for us.
[Ard:] Yes, that’s true, that’s true.
[Evy:] Right? So like if you do extend a hand, a person expects you to shake it, right? That’s the ...
[Ard:] Yeah, but that’s also for me what makes it weird sometimes, is where do those rules... Where do they stop or where... When are those rules still authentic or like real. So I would rather not do that, do something weird, because then at least what comes out of it is not one of those social rules but something that’s authentic.
[Webster:] It’s real
[Ard:] Yeah
[Evy:] So that’s when I stopped kissing Dutch people three times.
[Ard:] Okay
[Laughing]
[Webster:] Is that a thing?
[Evy:] Like three... yeah... And I stopped because I’m like... It’s so awkward, I’m like: I’m just gonna hug or if I don’t know you I’m just gonna wave and smile, be normal, like...
[Webster:] You get that a lot in London as well, like people kiss and I go for the hug, and then they go for the kiss and then I’m like “oh oh shit”
[Evy:] Oh yeah yeah, there’s a lot of like wet ears in those moments.
[Webster:] Bummed chins.
[Evy:] Oh god yeah
[Ard:] Keep doing the hugs, they’re nice. Hugging is good.
[Evy:] Hugs are good, yeah
[Webster:] So speaking of controlling, how do you handle the anxiety of being a musician and you know managing your artwork and thinking about the future and what’s happening next?
[Ard:] I guess it’s really hard I mean I just graduated, so I don’t really have that specific of future prospects right now. Which for now is okay I do think that with the things that we’re doing, as “Either id” it feels sort of untapped, at least, like this this way of every performance being about in the moment and about being real, being improvisational and being so sort of conceptually driven, feels really good and feels like a new thing for me at least in the Dutch scene. So we do have something really good to push forward with and we have, we’re getting more and more footage out of like like the video of OutSpoken which is on Youtube now, which is nice so people can get a bit of an idea and we have a press kit now of “Hyper Self” as like a complete performance. So people can, you know, if there’s space somewhere to book a big show, like with that involves like a total of 16 people or something, like if that’s possible. And if we wanna get booked for smaller shows, that’s also possible. And things like OutSpoken and Word Up I think are really nice, and I do have the feeling that there’s a a growing platform for spoken word. At least in Amsterdam and Utrecht, which are just the two places that I know about. So I have good hopes but it is just intense, because it’s all about like, working at it and sending your materials to different places and spending time in something that’s just not gonna give money at first. So definitely need to find some different ways of being able to you know, get some funding. Either from the government, which I think is what I’m going for now, for big subsidies. And if I get that, that would be the best, to get the subsidies because “Hyper Self” as a performance is there now. And it’s just complete and it’s ready, we’ll have to see how it goes. And I’ll do a master’s also.
[Webster:] Cool, nice. sounds good.
[Evy:] Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that, and we will be following your journey further on. And maybe we’ll have you back when you’re big and famous.
[Ard:] Oh yes, next year.
[Laughing]
[Evy:]So thank you so much for your time, and uhmm...
[Webster:] Yeah, cheers man. So uhm, where can our audience find you, for anyone who’s looking for you?
[Ard:] Yeah uhmm... So right now you can just find us on Facebook: our Facebook is “either id” (Click here) and then there’s a soundcloud on which I post.. experiments, like nothing nothing like entirely produced ready, but I just publish experiments, like time-experiments that I’ve done there. So I’ve given myself myself an hour or two hours to create an entire track and forcing myself to immediately upload it afterwards. So that’s just some weird experimental stuff that gets into all different genres. So you can check that there. Yeah
[Evy:] Yeah
[Webster:] Thank you very much
[Ard:] Anytime
[Webster:] And for our audience listening, you know where to find us: it’s www.worduppodcast.com where you can follow us on social media; find out about our current and past guests and also make guest suggestions. Uhm yeah, see you guys next time
[Evy:] Doei!
[Ard:] Doei!
[Laughing]
[Music]

Transcript done by Audrey van Houten.