The Magic of Unexpected Connections

Patrick Urbani: Julio, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Could you introduce yourself and briefly describe your practice?

Julio Cann González: Hi Patrick. We start with the difficult questions. It’s a running joke among fellows because every application, press, curatorial text, etc. is always asking you to define yourself and your practice, and it creates a sense of resistance. My full given name is Julio Cann González. I usually describe my practice as experimental and transdisciplinary.

PU: What projects are you most excited about at the moment?

JCG: I initially came to Solitude with the idea to work on a performance piece based on the story of my great-grandfather, who migrated from Germany to Mexico, but at the same time to leave a lot of open space for other things to happen. During the fellowship I ended up composing the cassette tape you heard during Open Solitude titled »(timemachine) (timemachine)«. It’s not a format I usually work with, but it took this shape naturally through collaborations and performances I did during my time here. I call it a time machine, a term I have been using in my practice for about ten years. To me it is literally a functioning time machine. It’s also a record of the time I spent at Solitude.

PU: How did your fellowship influence your practice?

JCG: In recent years I had been doing a lot of commercial work – writing scores, doing sound design, screenwriting or on set of larger productions, performing other artists’ works in museums, etc. Some of those collaborations were wonderful, others less so, but being here allowed me to connect with dimensions of the work that are meaningful and often more experimental. Solitude gave me time and resources to create a kind of work that other frameworks don’t always support.

PU: What, then, makes a project meaningful for you?

JCG: There could be infinite answers. One is the relationships a project creates – through collaboration, encounters, and the connections that continue long after the work is finished.

Another is that art is also a vehicle in which to navigate the world. So, in a way, even coming to Germany and this experience living in this castle in the forest. In this case it almost worked in reverse: because I came here, I made this work. But at the same time because I made it, I came here. The experience itself of making the work also becomes meaningful on its own.

When I call the tape a time machine, I mean it literally in some sense. I’ve been asked before whether it’s important that the listener understands what I mean by this term or how the machine functions. To me it doesn’t matter so much. Whatever their experience of the work is, and the impact that it may have, including their possible interpretation, that’s already the product of the time machine functioning.

I am interested in the relationships between timelines that sound or media can create. For example, on one part of the tape I mixed a recording of Jeannette Hunziker, another fellow, reading a poem she wrote, with a percussion improvisation recorded in Mexico City a year earlier. Putting together these moments creates some meaning for me. The two performers may never meet, but the time machine allows this type of speculative encounter, creating a portal into a world they inhabit together.

PU: You often describe your work as bringing different materials and moments together. Would you define that as assemblage?

JCG: That’s a good word. I used it a lot in the past because it carries two meanings that are both relevant to my practice. One comes from Robert Rauschenberg: His assemblages and combines were compositions of different materials on a surface. It’s related to collage, found objects and appropriation. Another meaning comes from Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari, who use assemblage to describe interconnected networks of people, concepts, physical forces, etc. These days I use the word less because the concept of networks has these technological connotations that I’m not so comfortable with. But the method of assembling things from a multiplicity of sources and materials still applies.

PU: When you begin a new project, what usually comes first? A sound, an image, a text?

JCG: I don’t usually imagine a work and then execute it. My favorite moments are when something clicks and I realize I’ve already made the work by the time I understood what it was. Sometimes I improvise on the piano, without a concrete purpose or simply for the enjoyment of playing. Later on, those recordings find a place in a composition or performance.

The same happened with Mauro Suárez. I heard him read a text during Open Solitude and immediately wanted to record it. At that point I wasn’t thinking it would eventually take this form. In fact, as my practice has evolved, the finished piece often feels like a collateral product of the work that is the process.

PU: Can a project ever really be finished?

JCG: Practically speaking, this tape was finished because I wanted it to be ready for Open Solitude. But in another sense, it isn’t finished at all. I may continue to use these recordings again in future works. Some of the material on this tape has already gone through layers of use in scores, performances, and compositions for more than ten years. In part that’s why I don’t think any finished object is the most interesting part of the practice.

PU: If the finished object isn’t the most interesting part of your practice, what is?

JCG: We could say relationships, to avoid the word networks. Honestly, the word I would use is magic. Magic happens when things come together in unexpected ways. It can happen between people, but also between recordings, ideas, or moments in time. Two sounds that come together suddenly create something that didn’t exist before. In a way, using this language both reveals and conceals something, which is part of the nature of magic. Ultimately, I’m trying to live a magical existence. The tape is wonderful, but it’s only one product of the practice. It’s not the practice itself, and it’s not the most important part.

PU: During your fellowship you also initiated Little Death, an event series that seems closely connected to these ideas. Could you tell me about it?

JCG: Little Death is a performance series I brought with me from my time in Los Angeles. It was originally created by the director and media artist Scarlett Kim, who ran a space called The Mortuary. She organized Little Death as a monthly salon for »underserved voices, unusual collaborations, and unclassifiable experiences.« Each piece would last about ten minutes. It created a space where something unexpected could happen. Here at Solitude, it became a space for people to experiment, to step outside their regular practice, collaborate with others, and try something without too much preparation, and leaving room for surprise.

It also connects to what we discussed earlier about creating the kinds of communities you want to exist. Everyone approaches a fellowship differently. Some people mostly want time alone to work. Others create tension. The question for me is: What can you contribute that helps create the kind of community you want to be part of? This was also why I organized Little Death here.

PU: Experimentality is something you mentioned several times today, and it’s central to how you describe your practice. How does that idea materialize in your work?

JCG: We spoke about this during the last Open Solitude conversation with Sarah, Lotte, and Hiba Ali. Something we said is, experimentality is connected to the possibility of making mistakes. I can play several musical instruments, but I’ve never been a virtuoso or the kind of performer who makes no mistakes. I’m interested in allowing space for mistakes, as part of the fragility in performance. Experimentation means doing something without knowing the outcome. It’s about working at the edge of your knowledge or your abilities, and allowing yourself to try things. It also involves play.

That’s also why I like to work across so many different media. The specific medium itself isn’t so important to me: whether writing, composing, cooking – I still approach it as making magic. I could be just as happy spending four years without making sound at all.

PU: I’d like to end by returning to two recurring themes in your work: time and sound. How are they connected? Does sound allow us to travel through time?

JCG: That’s a good question. My own theory of time travel is slightly different. I wouldn’t say that sound allows us to travel through time. I would say that time is what travels – through sound. Time travels through sound, and in doing so it produces a subjectivity. It produces us. So, rather than sound allowing us to travel through time, time travels through sound allowing us.

PU: Thank you very much, Julio.

 

Unless stated otherwise, all images are courtesy of Julio Cann González.