Transition as Constant: An Interview with KAYA

The following interview between Todd Schroeder and KAYA took place throughout the month of October, 2020, initially through a series of emails followed by a final zoom meeting. The stimulus for the interview is an exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, GA-”KAYA: Under Ursus”that was curated by Ariella Wolens. The exhibition took place in the museum’s four Jewel Boxes-shallow glass-encased cave-like spaces that encompass the brick Antebellum archways of the preserved edifice of the Museum, a former railway depot built in 1853.

By Todd Schroeder

Todd Schroeder - Can you give us the story of KAYA? when it started, how it started, and the various forms it has taken. Who is KAYA? And how did it come to life?

KAYA - KAYA is a collaboration between German painter Kerstin Brätsch and American sculptor Debo Eilers that began in 2010. Fundamentally it started with the idea of playing with authorship and power relationships. The name KAYA is a reference to Kaya Serene, the daughter of one of Eilers’ childhood friends. Serene releases a synthesizing energy between the two artists-partly through her participation in their joint actions, partly as an imaginary third person in their artistic exchange. This invocation of a “third body” allows Brätsch and Eilers to take a step back from their creative authority and open up their respective artistic practices. KAYA collaboratively traverses the boundaries between painting and sculpture, fusing both genres into an altogether new, hybrid artistic approach.

Painting has many lives, whether it’s psychological, physical, or social, and KAYA’s interest lies in painting in relation to the body. Their practice is always migrating around painting in the extended field. When looking at KAYA’s bodybags there is a re-staging of painting that allows the objects to become totemic monsters; they’re ugly, glossy, and tight. They are independent organisms, stitched and patched together, through a form of DIY plastic surgery that is executed on a painting’s body. A lot of labor, sweat, and awkwardness goes into the work.

KAYA, KAYA_YO-NAH YO-HO (Healing performance for a sick painting) with Kirsten Kilponen, sound by Nicolas An Xedro, 2018, Bärenzwinger, Berlin, Germany. Photo: Johanna Landscheidt.

T.S. - And then specifically the latest iterations of KAYA, with the SCADMOA exhibition and the _KOVO exhibition at the Fondazione Memmo in Rome where the first iterations of the OraKle Paintings were exhibited in 2018.

KAYA - When we started work on the OraKle Paintings we wanted to introduce a method of mark-making that was unpredictable and came upon the idea whereby we used the mirrored plexi sheets that form the support for the work, as our studio floor slowly accumulated sediment from the activities that were performed on it. Upon this surface, we painted forms that were references to the paintings found on the walls of pre-Renaissance Italian catacombs. While these catacombs paintings are primarily known for their influence on early Christian art, the catacombs as a whole contained a mixture of religious symbols and figures from Jewish and also various Italian pagan traditions of the time. This first iteration of the work was shown as part of “KAYA_KOVO” at Fondazione Memmo in Rome with KAYA light fixtures and also sound by our friend Nicholas An Xedro.

As most KAYA work is iterative, where ideas, materials, and energies from former works are constantly re-conceptualized and re-worked to become part of newer works, we started once again with mirror plexi sheets as the base from which we created the second series of OraKle Paintings shown at Bärenzwinger in Berlin. Two weeks before this show, we did another project at Tropez, also in Berlin, where we held an outdoor summer workshop for children. We used Plexi sheets as working table tops. The idea for the workshop was to create Talisman necklaces for the children to take home, so in order to charge their works the children were asked to mark the plexi surface with their wishes, charging the material with a ritualistic energy and creating a sort of talisman out of the tabletops which we then turned into artworks (OraKle Paintings) for the exhibition at Bärenzwinger.

KAYA, KAYA_YO-NAH YO-HO (Healing performance for a sick painting) with Kirsten Kilponen, sound by Nicolas An Xedro, 2018, Bärenzwinger, Berlin, Germany. Photo: Johanna Landscheidt.

We then brought these charged objects into the Bärenzwinger exhibition space, a former bear cage in the middle of an urban park in Berlin that was transformed into an art space. Dark and cave-like, the paintings found a natural home, charging the space ritualistically and laying the groundwork for a durational happening. In KAYA_YO-NAH YO-HO (Healing Performance for a sick painting)we resurrected the bear that once lived in the space and involved him in the ritual. In this space, Debo’s body represented “Painting” which was being healed from its ill history by the spiritual animal, the bear, and helped by the energy emanating from the OraKle Paintings. Kerstin acted as the bear as shaman, tattooing scratches that read like runes or lost languages onto the arm of Debo as he performed healing chants to complete the process. It was a four-hour process that pushed our bodies to the extreme, Kerstin laboring sweatily under the weight of a giant fur costume; Debo freezing in the naked cold of the fall night.

The works at SCADMOA being OraKle Paintingscontain within them this history, they can be thought of as containers with the potential to be charged and activated in the future with a ritual. Responding to the SCADMOA space, we used the Jewel Boxes as quasi cages/stages for the bear to be displayed to the public. Even though the main performer, the bear, is never visible, we treated the jewel boxes like enlarged lightboxes and home-spaces for the animal.

T.S. - After the city cleaned all of the painted graffiti off of the subway cars in NYC, the windows became the focus and scratching the means (you can’t clean scratches off of glass). The scratched surface of the mirrors made me think of that graffiti through the physically layered texture and the evocation of text and symbols but also through the brilliant relatability of the quotidian gut reaction of the scratch. I found the scratches as one of the quietest visual moments in the Under_Ursus work but perhaps the loudest visceral moments. Could you speak about this scratched aspect of the OraKle Paintings in the Under_Ursus installation?

KAYA - During the Bärenzwinger performance in Berlin the bear had a manuscript/notebook at the ritual, filled with bear-runes and signs. These were the healing notes of the bear to be placed onto the sick patients’ “Painting body” via stick and poke tattoo. They consisted of Stenographic astrological signs and scribbles, graffiti-like characters on a body-ruin, and a universal lost language of shapes. The patient (Debo) understood these marks by coming into deep contact with these symbols (the bear coming into a form of communication with the patient through the skin); the traces on his body lasting for a lifetime.

The scenes at times appeared ritualistic, an air of gravity and reverence infused in the actions, and at other times almost cartoonish in its composition, all the actors (the bear, the nurse and the patient) cosplaying an exaggerated role to an almost kitschy effect. The nurse was being represented by our friend Kirsten Kilponen. These two moments and atmospheres were merging and oscillating back and forth into each other, confusing the viewer by provoking ambivalent reactions to the activity happening before them.

The scratch marks on the OraKle Paintings are not only a reference to contemporary graffiti in public spaces, but they also refer back to the many marks made over time in the ancient caves and catacombs mentioned above, where the scratch represents a mark of existence. We like the idea that it could refer to this, but also to a mark of a bear, an animalistic gesture, and a set-up for an animistic ritual using a type of bear language. The words listed on the catacomb mirrors at SCAD appear through this history and specifically list the names of medieval beasts, whereas the painted lines are a reference to the former iterations of the catacomb mirrors/OraKle paintings from KAYA.

It is also worth mentioning that KAYA actually has a history of collaborating with the German graffiti artist N.O.Madski. In many KAYA works, N.O.Madski’s writings are used to frame certain KAYA artworks, operating as diagrams or contemporary runes. This lends the work an anachronistic aesthetic, at once appearing from the distant past and also the far off future.

KAYA with Nicholas An Xedro, Catacomb Mirror, 2018, Plexiglass, glasspaint, epoxy, amplifier, speaker wire, transducers, sound by Nicolas An Xedro, 81” x 120.” Photo: Daniele Molajoli.

T.S. - Why did you specifically choose to revisit the OraKle Paintings for the SCADMOA? Is there anything about the initial context vs. the new context at SCADMOA? Or anything else?

KAYA - KAYA is a container for a kind of intersubjectivity that both retains and sublimates our individual hands, offering an organic history of our own making. We are in a constant process of preserving, fermenting, and pulverizing former KAYA performance objects and ephemera into new works, re-using KAYA’s past to create a multiple, ever-becoming body. We are interested in a delay in time, or a dragging of former aspects, works, and performance tools into an unknown KAYA future. The works we create usually have many lifecycles, they travel through many stages and iterations until they find rest in their ultimate existence.

T.S. - In looking at your work, the work at the SCADMOA, and prior work as well (I saw the Processione work installed at the Whitney Biennial in 2017 as well), I was reminded of a recent interview that I heard with the musician Damo Suzuki. The interviewer was talking to him about improvisation and he said he didn’t like the word improvisation due to all of the associations (bebop and free jazz) and connotations (the idea that one improvises to “make do”); he preferred the term instant composing. In the interview, he related that for years, as a part of his Never Ending Tour, he has been playing shows with musicians in different cities that he has never played with, met, or heard their music prior to the live event. Local promoters choose the musicians. The less he knows, he says, the happier he is. Do you feel that you are engaged in a type of instant composing?

KAYA - We work within a very slow and syrupy process that gradually accelerates to a hurrying pace. A lot of what we do is made separately in our own studios until we bring the elements together, relying heavily on an unspoken energy that radiates between us. However, we actually share our solo studios in a bigger studio space, so the conversation never stops. The intuition we have developed has given our work strength and it has continued along an unpredictable path, keeping us challenged and excited to go on. But the unspoken has definitely developed into a language on its own and built on a deep mutual trust with each other’s decision making.

“Under_Ursus” at SCAD Museum of Art. Courtesy of the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Because we like to respond to the situation or context that is presented to us for each exhibition, we will often incorporate the creative energies of the community that we build around the project for each of its iterations. Often times this includes fellow artists, as well as students, curators, academics, and the institution that plays host to the many KAYA projects. This could mean performing alongside the work or asking the institution to interact with an artwork in a way they aren’t accustomed to. Maybe one could consider our practice itself as some form of sluggish happening…

T.S. - How did you arrive at the title “Under_Ursus” for the exhibition? Does that relate to the structure of the work in some fashion?

KAYA - Under Ursus = Under the bear.

Underground cave / under the street lies many lives.

The Bear is not physically present but the installation (Jewel Boxes) is under its influence.

Wordplay - The bear is buried underground. The bear is present - Under influence.

The bear is both dead and present.

“Under_Ursus” at SCAD Museum of Art, detail. Courtesy of the Savannah College of Art and Design.

T.S. - Through your work, the idea of slippage comes to mind as a theme or subtheme. A between-ness. Between painting, sculpture, and theatrical set design (more Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysterical Theater than Broadway of course). And slippage regarding authorship and resolution. It seems that KAYA is offering an openness that is counter to commodification. Can you speak to any/all of that?

KAYA - KAYA is an untamable beast, which shows its teeth the moment the animal is turned into a pet.

Our practice revolves around a constant transitioning, a liminal space which slips away the moment it starts to become defined (even by and from ourselves). Maybe this is its actual strength. The trust we mentioned before is a trust in making mistakes, which guides the project towards new unexpected/unforeseen outcomes. This collaboration pushes us into territory we might not enter on our own. It definitely touches aspects of historical references whether it’s slipping between painting, sculpture, and performativity. Since works are continuously retooled or restaged for different situations, the works might be made for the given environment, but not fully activated till a later date. So, some shows might display a “becoming work”, the viewer potentially witnessing various stages of a work. In this sense, a play on time and memory takes a shape of its own. We like this reference to theatrical design as it makes us see the Jewel-Boxes as empty stages populated by tools to be used by the bear in the not-so-distant future.

“Under_Ursus” at SCAD Museum of Art, detail. Courtesy of the Savannah College of Art and Design.

T.S. - How does KAYA fit into your personal practice? Do you see the influence of the collaboration and the fluidity of its nature leaching into your own practice?

KAYA - It’s been 10 years so the lines can definitely get blurred.

* “KAYA: Under_Ursus” was on view at SCAD Museum of Art from September 29^th, 2020 to January 3^rd, 2021.

Todd Schroederis an artist, educator, and writer based in Savannah, GA. He has exhibited internationally including solo shows at White Columns, New York, and the Jepson Center - Telfair Museum of Art. Schroeder’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Time Out/ New York, ARTPULSE, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer, among other publications.