For ten years now, the concert and club series Struma+Iodine has ensured that listening habits in the city of Vienna are also being continuously shifted. And that the certainty of what can be expected on the dance floor must be regularly discarded. What began to organize performances in the circle of friends developed into a permanent institution in the independent scene and can today be regarded as the critical infrastructure of the same. Behind the structure is the curator, author and artist Shilla Strelka. Simon Popp spoke to her about her work.
In a few days we will celebrate the birthday of Goiter+Iodine. One of the most progressive concert and party series in the city is ten years old. What made you Goiter+Iodine to bring to life?
Shilla Strelka: I wanted to enable fellow musicians from Germany and abroad to perform. At that time there were no independent promoters for this type of music. I’ve followed a strong DIY ethos. I wanted to give something back, step out of the role of passive music consumer.
“They are sounds (that) carry transformative potential.”
How would you describe the sound you curate?
Shilla Strelka: Contemporary, advanced electronics in the broadest possible sense and progressive club culture. My focus is on experimental approaches and radical electronic music. I’m looking for intense sounds. Not only in the sense of being physically affected, i.e. sounds that disturb your perception and break through sensual taboo zones, dissident, subversive sounds. I also mean emotional intensities – euphoria, nostalgia, melancholy, anger, etc. and the question of how these translate into contemporary sounds. There is a lot of present time in these positions. But I’m also interested in phenomena like immersion, being totally wrapped up in sound and trance states. I am fascinated by sounds that change our perception in a way that reconfigures the senses because they carry transformative potential. Sounds can break into reality.
Some of our readers will probably not know Vienna in 2013 at all. Can you outline the mood of the city, especially the location for electronic, experimental music?
Shilla Strelka: At that time there was a lot of indie rock or formats like that in Vienna Gameboymusicclub. So it was hard for me to find a scene in the beginning. A lot has happened in the environment of Klang.org, but the acts were more situated in the improv context, a lot of electro-acoustic music. And there was LATER-Evenings by the PREVENT were held. At that time there was no platform for experimental electronic (club) music that moved away from the academic, in the underground, in the subcultural niches. In the 1990s there was phonotactics, that’s what my work is sometimes compared to. But that was already over when I started. I was also too young to have been there. Of course there was Rhiz and the Fluc. Back then, Herbie Molin and Peter Nachtnebel gave me the space to try things out and charged me less rent because they liked what I was doing. Many things would have been different without them. There were also off-spaces. I initially got into places like that Ve.Sch organized, later in Tiredwhere the community idea was in the foreground.
You have an academic background and studied philosophy, theatre, film and media studies as well as art. How do you get from there to curating and organizing concerts and techno parties?
Shilla Strelka: I’ve always been interested in music. I hardly go a minute without listening to music. All my life. I originally planned to do my Ph.D. writing about noise and the political and doing research on sounds with Diederich Diederichsen at the Academy. Perceptual experiments, formal experiments have always interested me – whether in film, in literature or in music. I was attracted to the avant-garde, all currents and positions in which art wants to have a direct impact on life and society. The poetics of Artaud, Brecht and Godard had a strong influence on me.
Via the detour of the practice you have meanwhile returned to the university! You teach at FH Salzburg and in the coming semester too University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. What exactly can the music students expect?
Shilla Strelka: It is important to me that the students learn to listen carefully, that they pay attention to the specific materiality of sound and to be touched by sound in different ways. I want to free the acoustic sense from its underprivileged position and put it in the focus of perception. We will go in search of Sonic Fictions and take a closer look at the different concepts behind certain sounds. The social context plays an important role and the genealogy of certain genres.
“(How) how the political and aesthetics can be thought of together.”
Are there topics or motives from your scientific practice that are reflected in your work as a curator and organizer?
Shilla Strelka: The central question I ask myself is how the political and aesthetic can be thought of together. When does art succeed in invading life, changing perception and reality and having a positive impact on society? When I was a student, I read a lot of critical theory and the French philosophers and dealt with the relationship between form and content. As a music curator, these issues also concern me. Only that the content is transmitted acoustically, remains abstract, in limbo.
As an artist you also ask yourself these questions, put under the name Inou Ki Endo yourself again and again. How do you manage it, in addition to your many tasks – you not only organize Struma+Iodine, but also curate the Elevate in Graz and the festival Unsafe+Sounds AND you work as an author – to come to your own artistic practice?
Shilla Strelka: Yes, unfortunately I’m getting less and less. It works in phases. Then I sit down late at night and prepare sets. What I really like to do apart from the club sets are silent film settings. Thinking about concrete images and abstract sounds together is extremely exciting.
Even if he himself was rather reserved and avoided the foreground: many in the global scene will, you hear from Vienna Mego Editions think. And to the label’s founder, Peter Rehberg, who died suddenly in 2021. Has Vienna and the world of electronic music changed since then?
Shilla Strelka: It’s hard for me to say that in isolation from my personal relationship with Peter. I miss him a lot. Of course, that’s a loss that leaves a void. Peter cannot be replaced. Also because he had a vision. He might not have called it that, but his musical flair, intuition and knowledge are irreplaceable. And neither does he as a person. He was radical and uncompromising and a provocateur, incorruptible and loyal.
Can you put into words what effect, what influence Peter Rehberg had as a label head, as a discoverer of artists?
Shilla Strelka: Mego will never lose its legacy. The label is rightly regarded as one of the most internationally influential in the experimental sector. Peter received numerous inquiries every day. He was a restless spirit, constantly discovering new things, buying lots of records. He always had an open ear and remained curious. When you look at the roster, you realize the impact and vision he had.
What connects you to yourself Mego?
Shilla Strelka: I learned a lot from Peter, both professionally and personally. He always has from the Mego-Family spoken. This community idea connected us strongly, but of course also the aesthetics. The interest in the radical and experimental, the new, that was what we had in common. That’s why we got along so well. We liked similar sounds and approaches.
“I want to create something sustainable for the scene.”
Also Goiter+Iodine developed in the last few years from a party and concert series towards a community, at least that’s my impression. For example visible in the archive of artists and events on the (very well designed!) new website. There is also an active interview section showing the faces behind the aliases. Am I even observing this correctly? And what else can you expect from Goiter+Iodine, which, on its tenth birthday, is already one of the most important institutions for electronic music in Vienna?
Shilla Strelka: Thanks, that’s flattering but also funny when your 10th anniversary series is called Institution. As a DIY promoter, that would have really upset me (laughs). I was always on the run, deliberately not wanting to be co-opted and not a brand. But yes, the community spirit was the main reason why I stuck with it from the start. There is nothing better than being surrounded by like-minded people and it makes me happy when that communicates. The local electronics scene has its say in the magazine section. I think it’s important to communicate who, but also what’s behind the sounds, what ideas, contexts and moods. In addition, the website follows an archive idea of creating a kind of reference work in which the independent scene in Vienna is depicted. The podcast series also follows this idea. But in the end it’s about establishing a living platform. I want to create something sustainable for the scene.
Thank you for the interview!
Simon Popp
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Next appointment: February 24th, 2023 – 10 year anniversary with Jung An Tage, In My Talons, Gischt, Karo Preuschl, Alpha Tracks, Elvin Brandhi and many more.
dasWerk, Vienna
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