texts

Auf der Schwelle

Zur künstlerischen Arbeit von Billy Roisz anlässlich der Verleihung des Österreichischen Kunstpreis, Sektion Film

Von Alejandro Bachmann

I.

Jetzt gerade, in diesem Moment der Geschichte, fällt es mir nicht immer leicht, meine Begeisterung für Filme, allgemeiner: Bilder, noch allgemeiner: Kunst, aufrecht zu erhalten. Das hat vermutlich damit zu tun, dass es so viel Kunst gibt, dass kaum noch auszumachen ist, was das eigentlich meint, dass es so viele Bilder gibt, dass kaum noch auszumachen ist, wo sie aufhören und auf was sie außerhalb ihrer selbst verweisen. In diesem Zustand gibt es – glücklicherweise anhaltend und immer wieder – Begegnungen mit den Arbeiten eines Künstlers, einer Künstlerin, in denen die Begeisterung neu aufflackert, die Bildermüdigkeit vergessen ist und außer Frage steht, was Kunst ist und wofür wir sie brauchen. Die Begegnungen mit Billy Roisz‘ Arbeiten gehören für mich zu diesen Erfahrungen. Nicht weil sie die oben artikulierten Uneindeutigkeiten in Richtung von Eindeutigkeiten auflösen, sondern weil sie die Uneindeutigkeiten potenzieren und diese gerade darin produktiv werden. Sie lassen mich erkennen, dass meine oben genannten Überlegungen gerade falsch, weil reaktionär sind. Denn sie fordern Eindeutigkeit als Antwort auf Übermüdung, sollten aber eigentlich nach progressiveren Uneindeutigkeiten verlangen, die mich wieder aufwecken. Es geht nicht darum, die Kunst zu definieren, die Bilder von der Welt zu trennen, sondern um das Erhalten der Schwelle, in der die Dinge wabern, nicht zu greifen sind. „Die Schwelle ist schwer zu verorten, im strengen Sinne ist sie gar nicht zu verorten. Sie bildet einen Ort des Übergangs, einen Niemandsort, an dem man zögert, verweilt, sich vorwagt, den man hinter sich läßt, aber nie ganz. Sie gehört zum Alltag und ist doch mehr als alltäglich. Im Überschreiten der Schwelle befindet man sich nicht mehr hier und noch nicht dort, Ort und Zeit berühren sich“ (Bernhard Waldenfels). Die Kunst von Billy Roisz trifft unmittelbar und entzieht sich im selben Moment der Kategorisierung und Domestizierung und das, während der Kunstmarkt immer stärker dazu tendiert alles Ästhetische einer Nische, einer Richtung, einem Diskurs, einer Tradition zuschreiben zu wollen.

II.

Beim Googlen der Preistäger*innen der Kunstpreise der unterschiedlichen Sektionen stoße ich beim Jahr 2021, Sektion Film also auf ihren Namen, klicke darauf und finde ein Foto, auf dem ein Fernseher zu sehen ist, der achtlos auf dem Bürgersteig abgestellt wurde. Jemand (Roisz selbst?) hat mit rosa Farbe „Not a TV“ darauf gesprüht. Eine Pfeife, …äh, … ein Fernseher, der keine Pfeife, …äh, … kein Fernseher sein will. Da ist sie wieder, die Schwelle.

Der Fernseher – genauer: der Röhrenfernseher – steht im Zentrum der künstlerischen Arbeit von Billy Roisz, ist ein Teil des audiovisuellen Instrumentariums mit dem die Künstlerin seit über 20 Jahren jene flirrenden, brummenden, wabernden senk- und waagerechten Balken herstellt, die das prägnanteste formale Merkmal ihrer sehr unterschiedlichen Bildarbeiten sind. Dies geschieht durch Sinuswellen, die ein Sampler in den Bildeingang schickt, eine Störung des üblichen Signalablaufs, der im Fernsehgerät etwas hervorbringt, das irgendwie genau „not tv“ ist: ein Bild, das auf sich selbst verweist, auf die Schaltpläne seines Mediums, das üblicherweise eine Blackbox sein will. Darin ist Roisz schon auch in der Tradition des österreichischen Avantgardefilms, dem strukturellen Film zu denken, ohne im eigentlichen Sinn Film zu sein. Nicht Fernsehen. Nicht Film. Irgendwo auf der Schwelle dazwischen.

Und wenn diese Schwelle – so wie hier von mir argumentiert – erarbeitet, gedanklich gebaut daherkommt, kann sie zugleich auch auf einer rein sinnlichen Ebene wahrgenommen werden. Ich kann das beweisen: zounk! (2012) zum Beispiel, jenes trocken-ekstatische Bildgewitter zu Broken.Heart.Collectors Stück „Eisenwalzer“ habe ich wiederholt gemeinsam mit Kindern gesehen, die mit ihren zehn, elf oder zwölf Jahren ihre sinnliche Erfahrung präzise auf den Punkt bringen konnten: „Irgendwie sehe ich mit den Ohren und höre mit den Augen“. Es ist ein wenig (wenn auch nicht ganz) so, wie Friedrich Kittler es in „Grammophon/Film/Typewriter beschrieben hat: „Mithin zählen nicht die Botschaften oder Inhalte, mit denen Nachrichtentechniken sogenannte Seelen für die Dauer einer Technikepoche buchstäblich ausstaffieren, sondern (streng nach McLuhan) einzig ihre Schaltungen, dieser Schematismus von Wahrnehmbarkeit überhaupt“. Die Arbeiten von Roisz durchbrechen Schemata der Wahrnehmung. Roisz verschaltet nicht nur den Sampler und den Fernseher entgegen ihrer industriellen Funktionslogiken, sondern auch mein Gehirn, meinen Körper entgegen seiner eingeübten Funktionsweisen.

III.

Auf dieser Wahrnehmungsschwelle lotet Roisz Bilder und Töne neu aus, seit 20 Jahren, in immer wieder neuen Konstellationen. In den frühen Arbeiten – z.B. in Smokfraqs (2001) – ist diese Umleitung der Signale, diese Neuverschaltung der Ausdruckstechniken, noch überdeutlich spürbar, ist quasi ihr Thema. Mit Arbeiten wie brRRMMMWHEee II (2010) oder dem schon genanntem zounk! (2012) verschwindet dieses nicht, bekommt aber eine Leichtigkeit und Selbstverständlichkeit, die davon erzählt, das Roisz sich ihre Werkzeuge komplett zu eigen gemacht hat: Eine Virtuosität der Alterität könnte man das vielleicht nennen, ein Sich-im-anders-sein-und-machen-sicher-sein. Damit aber kehrt in Roisz Arbeiten nicht die Stasis ein, sondern eher die Potenzierung der Möglichkeiten, die die persönliche Erfahrung, das subjektive Erleben der Welt – etwa in Chiles en Nogada (2011) oder Toutes Directions (2017) – ebenso in Tonbilder/Bildtöne zu übersetzen weiß wie die Begegnung mit anderen Bildern und den Genres und Dispositiven ihres Erscheinens – etwa in THE (2015) oder WHO’S AFRAID OF RGB (2019). Ein Körper und wie er die Welt erlebt trifft auf Bilder und Bildformen – jene Hollywoods, jene des Minimalismus – und verhält sich dazu mit den Instrumenten seiner Wahl. Führt man diesen Gedanken fort, kommt man vielleicht zurück zu jener Frage, was Kunst ist und was Kunst kann: Neue Verbindungen auf neue Weisen denken, um darin die Welt als Ganze in einem anderen Licht erscheinen zu lassen. „Revolution“, schreibt Bini Adamczak, „bedeutet dann radikale Neukombination prä-existierender Elemente, die durch eine neue Verbindung eine neue Essenz erhalten. Weder die Zelle noch das Atom, sondern die Synapse ist Vorbild dieser revolutionären Stiftung anderer Beziehungsweisen“. Die synaptische Neuverschaltung des Samplers mit dem Fernseher im Atelier von Roisz gerinnt in ihren Arbeiten zu einer potenziellen Neuverschaltung unserer Sinne und den Bildern, aus denen wir Sinn generieren.

IV.

Richtet man den Blick nochmal anders auf das Werk von Billy Roisz kann man ein zentrales Element, das zu dieser Kunst der immer wieder neuen Verschaltung führt im Element der Kollaboration benennen: Wenn der österreichische Kunstpreis in der Kategorie Film 2021 an Billy Roisz geht, dann geht er an eine künstlerische Persönlichkeit, deren Schaffen ich in vielerlei Hinsicht als „synaptisch“ beschreiben würde. Denn viele der auch in diesem kurzen Abriss benannten Arbeiten sind in Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Künstler*innen entstanden (u.a. mit Toshimaru Nakamura, Christof Kurzmann, Burkhard Stangl, Martin Siewert, dieb13 a.k.a. Dieter Kovačič , Angelica Castello, Michaela Grill). Der Austausch, der Dialog, das Verhandeln der Verhältnisse und künstlerischen Zugänge bildet eines der Zentren von Roisz‘ Werk. Dieses wäre nicht ansatzweise beschrieben, wenn man nur die fertigen Werke in Betracht zöge. Ebenso zentral sind Roisz‘ Live-Performances mit diesen und anderen Künstler*innen, die oftmals Teil des Kollektivs klingt.org sind: Denn in den Performances wird dieses Aushandeln als künstlerischer Prozess auf der Bühne sichtbar und nachvollziehbar. Dort zeigt sich das Werk von Roisz nicht als eine Sammlung abgeschlossener Werke einer Individualkünstlerin, sondern als durchgehend dialogischer Prozess, der zu keinem Ende kommt und kommen will und so stets im Bereich der Schwelle verbleibt.

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Reviews for bajo – solo album on Ventil Records:

Billy Roisz – bajo
VENTIL RECORDS, V_030, 2023)
Viennese experimental audio-visual artist Billy Roisz explores the frequency spectrum and the sound materiality of the double bass in her sophomore solo album BAJO. Roisz does so from a philosophical and refreshingly innocent perspective. The double bass represents the concept of going low, not only in terms of Roisz’ fascination with the familiar, dark, deep tones of the double
bass but also in a metaphysical sense.
The double bass’ acoustic and physical, heavily resonating sounds are sculpted and layered, processed and expanded with the modulation of electronic devices that veil its sonic substance and range but suggest whole new, mighty, brutal and noisy, multidimensional and dramatic sonic entities. Roisz adds another layer of sound to the mix, created by the processed cymbal that belonged to her longtime stage partner Silvia Fässler of the duo Skylla (that released a self-titled album, Editions Mego, 2008). BAJO is dedicated to the memory of Fässler.
BAJO was recorded at Atelier Weißgasse and Sperrmuecc Studios and the tunnel Spillern in lower Austria, with the help of Roisz’ partner Dieter Kovačič (aka dieb13). Roisz painted the aardvark on the cover, and BAJO is released as limited edition vinyl and a download option.
Roisz evokes on BAJO an uncompromising and demanding sonic journey deeper into abstract and unsettling sounds. It is strange but highly imaginative «Picnic At Sine Wave Valley», as the openingpiece is titled. Roisz employs errors and surprise encounters to navigate her multifaceted pieces intointriguing sonic territories and unexpected associations as in her previous works. BAJO, with its weird but highly suggestive ritualist spirit, invites the listener to dive deeper into Roisz’s idiosyncratic and mysterious sound universe.
Eyal Hareuveni
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Review for Hidden Layers on for/wind records

Billy Roisz – Hidden Layers – released on for/wind’s tape series Angry Ambient ArtistsBilly Roisz is as well known for her directorial work as her many sound projects . It’s hard to not draw from this aspect of her artistic career as ‘Hidden Layers’ presents the listener with a 13 minutekaleidoscopic trip that gleefully changes scene and perspective multiple times throughout its course .
The title is more than appropriate for a piece that reveals itself more with each listen. And there are many layers to get through as Billy journeys through the harshest soundscapes while regularly encompassing moments of lightness and melody. There’s an amnesiac effect to the sound as it twistsand transforms into something wholly different to where you were only 30 seconds ago. Industrial
noise, manic machinery and distorted vocals battle it out with unidentifiable sound grabs, rising bleeps and radio intrusions that leave you feeling like you’ve just entered a demented circus. The listener is quickly dumped from one intense sonic scenerio to another in this shapeshifting track. It’san uncompromising piece that once again proves what fans of harsher music already know – there’s dark diamonds to be found down these mines.
https://www.forwind.net/releases/fwd20–

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Reviews for ‚Walking The Monkey -Solo Album on editionsMEGO:

A CLOSER LISTEN – by captainfreakout/David Murrieta

Billy Roisz – Walking The Monkey -EditionsMego LP

Remember all those incredible stories you made up as a child? Remember all that time of mischief, of imagination transforming the world to your every whim? Most importantly, remember just how fun this time slightly out of time was? It was like a loose rhythm within a wider one made of weird-yet-natural rules, a time to eat, a time to sleep, a time to do whatever you wished: you were part of a flow of games, one after the other, a limitless adaptation to modernity’s strict envisioning of the passing of days. What is now imbued with the constant speed of schedules was then an entryway into the infinite, a relentless adventure never interrupted, an intuitive knowledge of the unknown. It was, in short, a whole lotta noise in comparison to the tight classical symphonies we live as adults, every contradiction tenuously resolved in one way or another by conventions we sometimes don’t even understand and give for granted. Back then, well, back then I just remember crying a lot.

What better story of childhood myth than one named Walking the Monkey, then? And what better way to express the desire without end, the will to alchemy that we all shared as children, than the utter explosiveness of the imagination that is electronic noise? Most of those sounds, after all, don’t exist anywhere else, just like our adventures. Austrian artist Billy Roisz has created such a work, a work of games and stories with names such as “Spinning in Ecstasy” and “Feeding the Monsters”; a fantastic logic underlines the constant sounds every track begins with, slowly and violently building upon them until nothing recognizable remains, like listening to a kid telling a story of his or her own, in the beginning always related to something we adults know but which is utterly de-contextualized soon enough, undermining most of what ties it to the “real world” we like to believe is truth. This is, of course, also a wider statement about music, and while Roisz isn’t the first or the last to make it (all those old-school noisters could tell you better, I’m sure), it’s made in an interesting enough manner to merit more than a few listens.

Another thing to consider when listening to Walking the Monkey is that it is actually Roisz’s debut, and that she comes from a visual arts background. The point is that the statement mentioned above is probably also about the way in which all those adventures involved noises and music of our own making (who has never imitated a sound with their own mouths?), granting our eyes a ‘closer look’ at how everything we imagined interacted, perhaps not as a reproduction of reality but ultimately as a reproduction of ourselves. Electronics are fitting here, if only because they are, traditionally, as far from ‘the real thing’ as any swooshing sound we might emit while moving our hands as a sort of special effect. An enhanced reality is a fantastic one, so to speak, a place where everything awaits transmutation at the hands of our every sense and desire. In this sense, noise is about twisting the rules of the game of music, and we all have a hand at such gaming every day of our lives in the use we give not only to our imagination but to our technology, like all of us who ‘soundtrack’ our public transport journeys every time we step out of home.

In the end, Walking the Monkey is a pretty fun album that presents lots of ideas for you to interpret as you see fit, and even if you just want to sit down and listen, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the ways in which the sounds transform seamlessly, creating all sorts of unexpected harmonics within seconds. Revive an adventure!

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CHAIN D.L.K. – by Vito Camarretta

This solo debut album by Austrian experimental video and sound artist Billy Roisz, known for her talent to render experimental music into visual imagery, sounds like a sort of anarchic transposition of suprematist praecepts from plastics to electricity after yuppifying them by means of contemporary treatment of frequencies and an impressive weaponry of instruments and unstruments, i.e.remote-controlled instruments where a device (normally a computer) goes between instrument and performer, such as electric bass guitar, kakophonator, kluppe (a linux-only open source loop-player and recorder, developed by Dieter Kovacic aka dieb13, who already collaborated with Billy), Flower Electronics Jealous Heart (a small battery-powered modular synthesizer, which is quite good to produce chatic clashing sounds) and a set of audible video devices. On „Walking The Monkey“, she manages to organize corrosive flow of noises by tantalizing vortexes of spooky mid-frequencies („Blue Hairy Tongues“), progressive saturations over tonal curves which look like following hyperbolic trend („Spinning The Ecstasy“), sonic peptic ulcers (the distant smooth jazzy excerpt on the incipit of the title-track „Walking The Monkey“ could let you imagine the possible mishap of an heavy drinker after many drinks), fermentations of stunning drones („Feeding The Monsters“), thunderous flashes of noises which broaden over the sonic sphere (particularly on the track „Wave Your Hand To Sleepy Land“, whose title conveniently quotes Thomas Pynchon’s „Gravity’s Rainbow“…a possible reading which could match the listening of Roisz’s sonic sculptures) and high-pitched sharpening death throes of sound („Under The Influence“). If you appreciate modulations of noise and similar stuff, just give heed to this stuff.

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THE WIRE – by Nick Cain

Billy Roisz – Walking The Monkey -EditionsMego LP

Billy Roisz has been operating at the fringes of post-Mego Viennese electronics and electroacoustic Improv since the late 90s, with very little to show for her efforts in the way of documentation. She’s primarly known as a video artist, her most noteable musical projects being her SKYLLA duo with Silvia Fässler and the AVVA collaboration with Toshimaru Nakamura, who released a synapse-melting DVD on Erstwhile a few years back. Walking The Monkey is her solo deput, and is a sharp piece of work. Its six tracks keep themselves busy with chunky frequencies and noisy slabs of sound, into which Roisz mixes granular static, clipped pulses and stuttering rhythms. They’re all carefully balanced, their ostensibly loose, roaming motion belying a smart compositional sensibility.

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ROCK-A-ROLLA – by Jack Chuter

Walking The Monkey penetrates with the same invasive, full-body assault as seen in the works of Kevin Drumm. It’s music that’s heard as much in the pit of the gut as it is in the ear canals, carried largely by the clumps of electronics and processed bass guitar juddering through the listener and the floor beneath, while syntheszers and shards of white noise blot out the higher frequency ranges. The title Walking The Monkey describes the process behind Roisz’s composition; while some aspects of the record are ‚tamed‘ and refined to reflect her creative intensions, others are let loose to be subsumed by their own anarchic instincts – roisz slackens the reins and puts herself at the mercy of chance, leaving the musical monkey to clamber into places forbidden by logical forethought.

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freistil – by kat

Spinning in Ecstasy, Feeding the Monsters, Blue Hairy Tongues, Walking the Monkey, … Rohheit und Filigranität begegnen einem hier auf der neuen Solo-LP von Billy Roisz (ihrem ersten Solo-Album!), zusammengestellt aus zwei Konzertmitschnitten und Aufnahmen in der Garnisongasse 7 in Wien.
Durch pulsierende Rauschflächen undDrones erzeugt Roisz stationäre Räume, die sich durch eine gewisse klangliche Konkretheit auszeichnen. Ich mag die vielschichtigen, noisigen Sounds, vor
allem auch die Verwendung des E-Basses, der einen guten Gegenpart zur Elektronik schafft. Feeding the Mons ters ist wohl der dronigste Track auf diesem ganzen Album und mein Favorit. Lange
Linien (höchstwahrscheinlich erzeugt durch einen gestrichenen E-Bass) treffen hier auf unterschiedliche schmutzige Klangtexturen. Der Sound ist generell recht noisig und intensiv, sehr lebendig und kraftvoll. Roisz verschafft sich mit diesem Album eine recht eigenständige Position innerhalb der österreichischen experimentellen Musiklandschaft und entfernt sich von abstrakten Konstrukten und Klang bil dern; gut auch, dass das Ganze auf Editions Mego erschienen ist, die zweite Veröffentlichung für Roisz auf diesem Label neben dem Skylla-Album (Silvia Fässler/Billy
Roisz) aus dem Jahr 2007. (kat)

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experimedia.net – by Mike Shiflet

Billy Roisz is an artist whose work I am far more accustomed to seeing than hearing. While her visual manipulations are stunning, (the AVVA collaborative DVD with Toshimaru Nakamura is a personal favorite) I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ms. Roisz in a purely audio context. Walking the Monkey doesn’t disappoint. It is every bit as compelling as her video work, but for entirely different reasons. What sets the album apart from its Viennese kin is how particularly lo-fi and, I’d dare to say, American it sounds. It is the first record I’ve heard from the Austrian Klingt crew that could be casually mistaken for a Hanson or American Tapes offering. Opener Spinning in Ecstasy comes across more Dead Machines than Dieb13 and the title track practically sounds like a one-woman Sixteen Bitch Pile-Up. There’s something in the way Roisz’s bass and electronics interplay, crudely and brashly combining for some sublime warped results. Beneath the gnarled surface, however, there are still plenty of nods to country and scene of origin. Even a few moments, like the opening of Feeding the Monsters, that could only be described as vintage Mego. For the better part of a decade, European electro-acoustic improv has been leaking into the American underground. Walking the Monkey’s surprise role reversal, intentional or not, is most welcome.- Mike Shiflet, Experimedia

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boomkat.com

Editions Mego serve up their 2nd release featuring Vienna’s Billy Roisz – a mysterious and masterfully dense, dynamic work of electro-acoustic composition. With over a decade experience as a visual and sound artist, including collaborations with Burkhard Stangl, Silvia Fässler, Martin Brandlmayr, and Toshimaru Nakamura, among others, Billy is among the best known figures in the austrian experimental scene. ‚Walking The Monkey‘ is her debut album and employs a range of unique „unstruments“ to her cause – audible video devices, kluppe, jealous heart, kakophonator, transducer radio and pick ups – to shape an intensely textural and often noisy journey tugged in many directions. At the top ‚Spinning In Ecstasy‘ is an engrossing shot of squally highs and pyroclastic bottom end, while ‚Walking The Monkey‘ plastinates the veins of free jazz with caustic, visceral noise and the mighty ‚Feeding The Monsters‘ switches tack again to a heavyweight, absorbing take on drone/doom rock. Still veering clear of any rhtyhsm proper, the sustained bass and mi-range vortex of ‚Blue Hairy Tongue‘ is a powerful display of intent, before we’re returned to doomier, perilous drone terrain by the end with ‚Under The Influence‘.

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Various texts/interviews/reviews:

Roehrenfernseher verwende ich hauptsaechlich als Instrumente – Interview mit Sebastian Müller

denkfabrikat.net

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Unter Strom – von Stefan Grissemann im profil #7/ feb 2012 – download pdf

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Rotterdam 2010: Digital Mescaline & Urns of Film – by Daniel Kasman/MUBI
published feb 2010

excerpt:
… From such meditations on the material world, a move to the synthetic—back to the digital, as a great number of films at Rotterdam seem to be doing—might have seemed a relief, if that synthetic world wasn’t Billy Roisz’s ocular blitzkrieg tour-de-force Close Your Eyes.  Inspired by Henri Michaux’s records of his experiments with mescaline, Roisz’ video is a rhythmic, patterned series of colored and black and white animated segments of pristine digital artificating and other forms of video distortion captured, dissected, and re-framed as the kind of sensory nightmare parents in the 50s probably thought would beset their children if they sat too close to the radiation of the TV.  Its aesthetic is difficult to describe, but in a festival where most of the experimental shorts seen were meditative even in their activity (the musician Machinefabriek, who composed music to go with a series of  films by Jim Jennings, talked about bringing out the “hypnotic” undercurrents in Jennings’ “hectic” films), it was thrilling to see something as aggressive as Roisz’s video, which dares you not to close your eyes against its vision, but to close your eyes to see more like it.

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Sound Eye, Sound Body:
Interviews with Artists Bridging the Gap between Sound and Image
by Matt Wellins  dusted magazine

By now, synaesthesia is old hat. You can look back to Walter Ruttman´s early, silent, yet musical animations, or listen to his prototypical musique concrete, recorded with a film camera, before portable magnetic tape recorders were readily available. You can read about Alexander Scriabin´s „colored hearing“ theories that correlated pitch with color palette.

Yet, interestingly, and perhaps inevitably, the advent of video ushered in an age of attempted media democratization while simultaneously seeming concerned with the barriers of the sound/image relationship. Blurring these sensory boundaries may have served a similar function to the aim of subverting an oppressive media/political infrastructure . a projected artistic utopia, not without its cynics and misanthropes, but ultimately, a more constructive alternative to the problematic and limiting situations of daily life.

This idealism faded though the ´80s. On one hand, the fringe artists became formalized. Some joined academia, some betrayed their ideals for a more ego-driven career in high art. Others simply lost interest in repeating themselves, especially with their aims seeming less and less obtainable. Alternately, music culture began to take the reins at this time. A culture became built around the distribution of cassette tapes and independent releases that still carries over today,

Lately, it seems that video art has re-entered its populist dialogue. By intersecting with experimental music cultures, by becoming more readily available and distributable, by dropping some of its pretenses, video art seems more vital than ever. This speaks a lot for both music and the moving image, it completes a sense of counter-cultural unity, an ideological reclaiming of media for independents.

This article is the first in a series of interviews with artists that are currently working with image and sound in a counter-cultural context. Billy Roisz is an Austrian video artist who has worked extremely closely with the Electro-Acoustic Improv community, people like Sachiko M and Burkhard Stangl, and it is clearly apparent in her aesthetic. LoVid is the NYC-based team of Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. Outside of their videos, the Lapidus´ independent experimental label, Ignivomous, also illustrates their affinity and participation in the noise community.

Billy Roisz

Dusted: Rather than being strictly based in art museums or festival screenings, you’re very involved in presenting your work through more commonly accessible venues, such as music concerts, DVD/CDs, and the Internet. How does the venue of presentation affect your design of the work itself?

Billy Roisz: There are two main modes of presentation for my work. On the one hand there are live performances with musicians (sometimes solo gigs, I make music too) and sometimes with other video artists (e.g. with Michaela Grill for the audio-visual project „my kingdom for a lullaby) on the other hand there are screenings at film- or media festivals. These two ways of presentation show two different threads of my work.

The live shows are mostly based on improvisation and can be influenced by many things and circumstances: the people involved, instruments, venues (architecture, colors), audience. I am always aware of these things – not necessarily before the show – but during the show and so I can react or choose to ignore it (which is a reaction too).

My films that are screened at film festivals (and sometimes released on DVD/CD) are more based on strict concepts. In this work I try to explore the links and gaps between seeing and hearing, images and sounds. These screenings are also influenced by the technical circumstances of the cinema, screensize, attention of the audience. Of course each of these working methods affect the other one: if I discover new technical or aesthetical possibilities during a live show, I will use them for one of my next film and conceptual ideas for a film can set the frame for the next live show.

I also tried to find a fitting way of presentation for my work on the web. High-resolution video still works slowly on the net and I think it is boring to watch 10 minutes of low-resolution videos. So I extracted mini-loops of different parts of films and live recordings and put two, three, four… Quick Time loops of each film on one page, with the facility to start and stop the loops. Everybody can play around with them and use it like a little sound and image instrument to build their own combinations and rhythms.

Dusted: You seem very interested in dealing with abstraction, often as a direct analogy to the experience of listening. With the recent piece „Blinq“, you’ve illustrated a conscious decision to separate these two fields. There seems to still be a sensory overlap between the two, but I was curious to hear the ways in which you find your work with video to be explicitly different from the act of listening.

Roisz: I can’t say so much about the explicit difference between the acts of seeing and listening. Of course they are different senses with different organs of reception. Maybe the differnce lies in the vocabulary for descriptions. I guess it’s much easier to describe images and associations rather than what is heard, but they affect each other so much. „Abstract Soundscapes“ and „Abstract Images“ especially can melt together to a kind of inner architecture. Images affect the way of listening and vice versa.

Even without watching visuals during listening to music, I have optical figures and structures in my mind or if I watch silent movies (e.g. Diagonal Symphony (1924) by Viking Eggeling or Rhythm 21 (1923) by Hans Richter), I can hear rhythm or other acoustic structures in my mind.

So, it is very exciting to work with these links (and gaps) of these two ways of perception.

Dusted: Another question about abstraction: do you intend for your abstract work to retain certain concrete elements? There always seems to be a faint trace of something familiar beneath the surface of your work.

Roisz: I guess this comes a lot from my background as cartoon and animation fan (I started with super-8 single frame animation). These genres always give „life“ to inanimate things.

On the other hand, I have always been fascinated by figures and structures that are printed on the back of your eyes by light (you just see them when you close your eyes). Another interesting phenomenon you can get by starring at a white wall, playing around with the focus of your lenses until you can see moving structures or dancing particles. This sounds weird – but I know a lot people are fascinated by these optical effects or at least know them – I guess that’s why there always seems to be something familiar.

You can hear a similar phenomenon in the acoustic world too: you start to hear structures, rhythms after listening a while to a certain drone in every day life (e.g. the fridge, dishwasher…)

Dusted: One of the other interesting ideas in „Blinq“ is that it is formally compartmentalized, each section directly relating to a single artist. The video itself seems to work as a cohesive whole, but I was curious to hear a little bit about how you chose to respond to isolated artists. As both an improviser and a frequent collaborator, I’m curious to hear about how you’ve developed a language that compliments the people you work with. For instance, how would you prepare for a performance with Toshimaru Nakamura and how would it differ from preparing for a performance with Dieb13?

Roisz: I don’t think i am changing my language for each musician I am working with. It’s more the mood and the dynamics that changes. Often I try to modulate my technical setup to compliment the musician’s setup.

For example: Toshimaru Nakamura uses a no-input mixing-board and works with internal feedback loops to create his sounds. For this collaboration, I use a video mixing-desk and the only input is Toshi’s sound. He has a TV monitor and can watch the patterns that are generated by his high frequency sounds. The direct interventions by him or me in the processes running between our instruments are minimal. The output – acoustic and optical – is very clear and the influences on each other quite transparent.

The project NotTheSameColor – an audio/video duo with Dieb13 obtains its impact out of its complexity. The setup consists of various audio and video instruments, connected in a way that allows multiple ways of feedback and physical interaction. Audio and video signals leave their domain to get a new function and meaning.

Sound creates images and video signals can be heard. The speaker and the screen finally define whether a signal will appear audible or visible. Thus, signal routing becomes an integral element of the creative process.

The most important point for my collaborations with musicians is that there is a dialogue on an abstract artistic level between my working partners and me. I have no interest to just illustrate the sounds on a visual level – which can be interesting as well, but is not the main issue.

Dusted: I’ve noticed an interest in gridded and cellular structures, as well as a persistent use of video feedback. I’m curious to hear what draws you to these specific approaches, aesthetically?

Roisz: To answer this question, I have to tell you a little bit about my technical setup, which is very informative to my aesthetical output:

When I started to play with live video in the context of concerts, I was looking for a technique to generate images, interact and react, spontaneously corresponding to the musicians‘ techniques. a performance by Sachiko M (no-input-sampler) in Vienna in 1999 made me think about using my video-mixer in a way different from its intended use. I just put the sound output of the audio mixing desk directly into the video-in of the video mixing desk and made some effect-presets to make the audio signal visible – and so I found out that I already had my instrument. Later on, I added my old hi8-cam and a TV monitor for optical

feedback to my setup. During a lot of testing and live shows with Efzeg and in various collaborations with international audio and video artists I improved my technology. I learned to use the transition modes and effects of the video-mixing desk as a drawing instrument and to control the feedback loops with the exposure and zoom functions of the camera.

Both the grids and the cellular structures are inherent patterns of my working instruments. The grids come from a transition effect of my old Panasonic mixing desk, the cells from the optical feedback between cam and TV set by using a strong zoom adjustment.

Dusted: Your piece on Sonic Fiction stands out from a lot of the other pieces on the DVD because of its marked use of vivid colors. What is your relationship to the colors you use? To what degree do you gravitate towards certain arrangements? What sorts of visceral effects you feel certain colors produce?

Roisz:The video-mixers have 8 preset colors, these brilliant pure very synthetic red, cyan, magenta, green, yellow, blue, black and white. So, I have to deal with them. Before a live show – during the sound/image check – I choose one or two colors for one set – most of the time I stick with them during the whole show and play with the tension between the colors (I can adjust the saturation of each color). The usage of this feature is an important part of my visual work.

For my films, I often collaborate with a couple of musicians (as in „Blinq“) – I often choose a different color for each musician – going with the character of the sound rather than with the character of the person.

Dusted: Your biography clip on the Sonic Fiction DVD seems to draw specific attention to your move to Vienna in 1991, I’m curious to hear about the relationship between your work and the place you live. As someone who frequently travels, I’m curious to hear about your relationship to your home.

Roisz: I am not so much influenced by Vienna as by the people and the infrastructure surrounding me.

The film museum Wien maybe has the strongest influence on my way of seeing. I have been there regularly after I moved to Vienna in 1991 (before I lived in the countryside of Austria) and I went to all the experimental and avant-garde films that were screened during the „Zyklisches Programm“, a series that focused on films of that nature. Later on, during the mid-90s when Mego and the rest of the Viennese electronic music hype started, I went to see a lot of shows. At this time I was the member of a physical performance group, which collaborated with musicians from this scene (e.g. Dieb13, who became my boyfriend and is my most important working partner).

Another very important place for me was the Rhiz, which opened in 1998. I used to work there as a waitress and regular DJ. I saw a lot of great concerts there and met a lot of great people. The Rhiz was the location for my first live experiences, as well as the first live performances of a number of others.

Dusted: It seems to me that your work is a direct evolution out of early animators and experimental filmmakers like Oskar Fischinger, Walter Ruttman, and Hans Richter. Do you feel that this is accurate? If so, what elements of the above mentioned appeal to you? How do you find the circumstances and media in which you work to be contrary to their work?

Roisz: In a certain way, it is accurate, because they are the pioneers of abstract film and in this respect every abstract film or video work is a direct evolution out of them. Of course, I use a lot these elements too (graphic figures, the use of montage for creating rhythmical structures, the humor), but I am more focused on the medium video itself and the links between optical and acoustic phenomenon on a very physical level.

I feel more connected to the early work by Woody and Steina Vasulka, who experimented with the video medium and built some great sound-image-interfaces and video synthesizers. However, I found out about their existence a fairly long time after I started to develop my techniques, so it is more an affinity than a direct influence.

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AVVA live @ ’star and shadow’/Newcastle/UK
Reviewed by WILL SHRIMSHAW

Beyond a Minimal Distance

AVVA: Toshimaru Nakamura and Billy Roisz

A crowd of no more than fifteen turned out to listen to Nakamura’s no-input mixing board  at the Star and Shadow last night. Billy Roisz’s video mixer fed beautifully off the signal, immediate responses that actually suggest something new, drawing out connections and new elements in a way that avoids the banality of many shows that include ‚live visuals‘. It seems common for attempts at ’sound reactive visuals‘ to attain little more than a knee jerk response. But in this performance a connection was made; an excitation of matter, rendering sonorous and visual the silent and invisible, making consistent the silent noise of material forces.

Nakamura presents a feedback which cuts, attaining a proximity that almost burns, cutting straight through and bursting the minimal distance or framing of representation or spectacle. The intensity of sound causes a happening on the inside, every turn of the listeners head
brings about a change in tone and timbre. Sound fills the room and comes in from all directions, enveloping listeners. The task becomes finding a comfortable space between the waves. The performance involves the establishment of ephemeral fields, audio and visual fields void of any sense of distance. The cutting noise was one of the finest examples of the machinic phylum at work in sound. Roisz’s visuals presented an emerging field of noise, a noise which is constitutive of the space it fills, a space which collapses in on itself when the performance ends.
The same is true of the sonorous experience, as the performance ends the field collapses and the world fades back in. Spatial senses are reawakened in a somewhat heightened state after having become thoroughly confused in sonorous extimacy. This extimacy is afforded by a privilege of sound, its material-force capable of such intensity, of an imprint upon, as well as movement through and beyond, the body.

This type of work performs an individuation along the lines of what Deleuze refers to as the One-Crowd: „The people must be individualized, not according to the persons within it, but according to the affects it experiences, simultaneously or successively“ (A Thousand Plateaus, 376). This was a construction of fields across which various signals passed, a rare experience unfortunately missed by many.

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unlikely.ws
BILLY ROISZ – perfil

Su filiación al ruido, visual y sonoro, es probablemente su rasgo de identidad mas conocido, notorio y representativo. Avalada por una extensa producción en solitario y junto a otros artistas, Billy Roisz, austriaca para mas señas, es al new media art lo mismo que Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) para la electrónica: una terrorista del glitch que manipula programas y subvierte códigos para elaborar un discurso que se mueve extraordinariamente bien entre la abstracción minimal, los materiales hiperprocesados y la creación de complejos paisajes a través de la yuxtaposición.

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All Music Guide review
by Francois Couture/AMG

Released as part of Shameless‘ series of private releases/public downloads, this EP takes the form of a CD-ROM. On it is an untitled 20-minute video by Billy Roisz (aka Gnu). Known as the video artist working with the Viennese electro-acoustic improv group Efzeg, Roisz also plays electronics. This piece makes you wonder why she doesn’t have a musical voice in the group. The music follows the laptop improv vein of the Mego crew with the kind of subtle humor TV Pow is so good at. Her video work consists of filtering images so extensively that only a VHF residue remains: discorporeal pixels that could have been anything; contours that give you no hint as to their origins; monochrome greys, reds, and yellows. The three colors separate the work into three movements. The relationship between sound and image runs deep, despite the latter’s minimalist outlooks. A finale on acoustic guitar adds to the mystery and charm of the piece. More please. —

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for SKYLLA reviews go to SKYLLA’S site

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cilantro@LMC07 – Baggage Reclaim
Angelica Castello & Billy Roisz @ 16th LMC Festival Nov 30th 2007
reviewed by Richard Sanderson/bagrec

LMC 16th International Festival of Experimental Music – Day Two
excerpt:
Assuming that what one expects from a Festival of Experimental music is to be surprised, then Friday night didn’t disappoint from the very start. The first act was a duo of two women, Billy Roisz and Angélica Castelló on „recorders and video“, „Recorders“ somewhat stretched the definition from the things we tooted on at primary school, as one of them was a boxy tube about six foot long – when blown into it produced eerie wheezing, ghostly
sounds as the player’s breath was routed around the internal catacombs of this monstrous thing – the „video“ was pretty arcane too, an old telly and various bits and pieces of electrical equipment (placed on doilies I was pleased to see) produced crackles and noise whilst a projection on the wall seemed to freeze sound waves. It was enigmatic and decidedly peculiar, but more importantly rather wonderful and evocative. There was an interplay between these two divergent sounds – one the very human sound of breath, the other the fractured noise of obsolete consumer electronics, that was baffling, witty and full of unexpected turns.
I liked it.
….

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