Interview with Alen Ilijić

Interviewed by Milica Ilijić, curator-art historian, on 9.6.2015 

Photo by Milica Ilijić

Many people are confused by your professional work, as you are active in many fields. They don’t use the proper terminology for your artwork. Can you, finally, describe yourself in a precise way?

I regard myself as a new media avant-garde composer/de-composer,
radical, uncompromising, hermetic, polymedia artist.

You are a progressive artist and composer, but neglected and misunderstood even though paradoxically, your artwork has its roots mainly in the art of Judeo-Christian civilisation. Who were the people that influenced you?

My influences are mostly among people that have been gone a long time gone, leaving us with such great, divine inventions: Orlando di Lasso, Monteverdi, Bach, Mahler, The Russian Five, Mokranjac, Schoenberg, Slavenski, Webern, Honneger, Cage, Stockhausen, Scelsi, Tesla, Einstein, Milanković, Caravaggio, Gogh, Duchamp, Stein, Maciunas, Beuys, Dali, Basquiat, Charlie Parker, Elvin Jones, Thelonious Monk, Kubrick, Hesse, Andrić, Kiš, etc. There are also a few composers, artists, still alive, that I worship: Vladan Radovanović, Srđan Hofman, Miroslav Mandić, Michelangelo Lupone, John Zorn and Steve Reich. One of my life concepts is to provoke so-called ’liberal’ artists and people. It’s amazing what can actually come out of their mouth – it can be worse than any Hitler speech ever.

You lived in London, England. It’s obvious that the British way of life had a big impact on your personal development. What’s your opinion about the British system in general?

OK, I love the UK, and respect their rich tradition: Monarchy, British bravery, modesty, a gentle approach towards asylum seekers, social justice, people’s social security system, etc. But I can’t forget disasters perpetrated by their government – from Blair up to Cameron, and still happening – by oversimplifying the situation in ex-Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Mr. John Major was liberal compared to them.

I’ve noticed changes in your recent compositions. You started from a kind of post-Bartók, post-Schoenberg’s language; then you had an intuitive, aleatory period. How would you characterize your movement now? 

Well, yes, it’s changed, for good. I finally feel safe and secure in this sonic picture; it’s something that I’ve been in search of for a very long time. It was a long process of going trough different states of mind; I was competing with myself only. Of course, partly, I did it by analysing my earlier works, dropping off extra materials, notes, leaving some parameters behind, intuitively keeping what was good. Inspired by Stockhausen’s integral serialism, Scelsi’s sound approach, and Reich’s pulsative, minimalistic music, I’ve added new approaches such as body movement, movement through space, moving speakers around, amps, noise, voco-visuals as scores, performance art in general, and total experimental situations, expression which can go up to the unknown. So this music doesn’t depend on musical language/parameters only – there’s much more into it, it’s like a polymedia composition. That’s now a musicologist’s or an art historian’s job to give further analysis. I’m going to continue with this new media avant-garde direction, and I believe that there is a lot more I can discover within myself to add to my future works. The good thing is that I enjoy workin’ and thinking as never before.

As a polymedia artist, you express yourself through art performance, video and sound installation, paintings, drawings and photography, which is a confirmation that you are full of ideas and have the multiple abilities to express them. What do you think about today's Serbian art scene?

I’m not impressed by the current art situation in Serbia. Honestly, it’s very unclear, with no any direction at all, full of replicas that we already know of. Even those replicas are badly done – they are replicas that don’t go a step further; there is no thinking process, only trivial ideas in which the artists do not even believe. We adopted a global idea of the capitalistic system that destroys the spiritual, art and music in general. That is partly because of a ’democratic’ behaviour among the circles of established and unknown artists, with the motto: if I can’t beat them, I’ll join them. As Vladan Radovanović said: If I can’t beat them, I won’t join them. I’d add to this, that they are already beaten – individuality always wins in the end. The funny thing is that we are currently seeing more of a fake neo-liberal expression – everyone is spreading peace around, just because they are well paid by dubious organisations to do so. The eminent artists in Serbia are not artists anymore, or artists-in-residence, but rather artists-in-management. In this way, we have lot of them going around the world, making exhibitions and concerts that don’t mean anything, just as folkor troops during Tito’s time. People who follow those manifestations, their fellows exchangers, are also in the same business, because this is a worldwide problem, and, unfortunately, art suffers. For example, Serbia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015 has the ‘United Dead Nations’ installation by Ivan Grubanov: good, I thought that idea was interesting, but he needed to be more confrontational. Grubanov was also over the ‘democratic’ cause; for example, he left a few of the ‘dead’ countries out: Pavelić’s NDH, Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. If that was his idea, Grubanov should have added them in his work. Sadly, those countries are stronger than ever. Regarding the visual aspect of the installation, well, it’s also unfinished, and it’s kind of kitschy from my perspective. In the end, Merenik’s statement was that their exhibition was the best  thing that happened  to Serbia in the 21st century, alluding to media acceptance, and maybe even further. Well, that’s a scandalous remark. We need radical changes, with a radical approach, non-compromising, with an idea, with a bit of new, with a respect of the line that goes from the Renaissance up to the avant-garde movements.

You mentioned Schoenberg, Webern, Zorn, Mandić... Many of them dropped out of the Universities, but they had a big influence in the history of music and art . What was your reason for leaving FMU?

We have the same kind of ‘touristic art’ in music. For example, Žebeljan’s ‘success’ is well fabricated by the past ‘democratic’ movement, and now it’s continuing with the current political system. Also, her music is the worst kind of academic: neo-classical, ethnic-kitschy gobelins, nothing new, nothing inventive or brave. But the problem goes further: she is pushing her students, ‘composers’ with no integrity and morals, people who play at weddings and funerals, who will educate newcomers. That’s the dangerous part, very dangerous, and that is one of the reasons I left FMU in the end. So half-talented ‘composers’ will be giving their opinion tomorrow? They will destroy everything good that was built since the beginning of the academy, by destroying the individuality, doing something that even Communists didn’t do – by bringing the idea of ‘collective’ madness, just because they have various university degrees. I would say: let’s rave in a fuckin’ grave, all together, now! Luckily, there are great professors at the University. I went to FMU to study with Srđan Hofman. He was the only reason I was there, and I’m proud of those years I spent learning from him. I’ve also gained a great amount of knowledge from Sonja Marinković, Svetlana Savić, Vera Milanković, Vesna Mihić, and Svetislav Božić. The rest of the classes didn’t interest me at all; I skipped them since I realised that those so-called professors don’t belong there, either as intellectuals or musicians. After six years, I left the building with no degree, glad that my name will never be on the paper which is now being held by many of them who are mostly uneducated, mute people without any idea what the world is about and what music and art should be.

You are generally very provocative and rebellious as we can see in your art or hear it in your compositions. And here, you said a lot of things that many think, but they are afraid to say in public. From where this bravery comes from?

This is due to ultra conservative, anti-Semitic, racist surrounding, ultra parochial musical institutions, and half-talented disoriented artists who misused my ideas by trying to shut out my progressive thoughts. As the last masterpiece in the twentieth century was called ’’MIROSLAV MANDIĆ FUCKS EVERYBODY’S MOTHER’’, I say: ALEN ILIJIĆ WILL FUCK YOU ALL.