Lira Pramuk talks about the importance of collaboration, space and healing in her live performance.
Lira Pramuk’s artwork has been meticulously documented. The Berlin-based singer, composer, producer, and performance artist is known for her dedication to metaphysical spirituality, her unwavering sensitivity, and how the two manifest through her spin on electronic-focused, futuristic folk music. But the entity that Lera Pramuk becomes on stage is less describable.
Through collective healing rituals, Lira Pramuk uses collaborative learning and performance practices to invite audiences on intimate journeys that explore the connection between mind and body. Lyra Pramuk’s live performance is built on nuance; External and internal conditions dictate the path, Lara Pramuk and the audience along the way.
Through a series of collaborative works, Pramuk has integrated mediums including contemporary dance and installation chamber music. By making room for improvisation and working closely with artists outside her own practice, her approach to music making and live performance has changed dramatically. Through deep introspection, Lira Pramuk reflects her awareness of literal and abstract space, accepting vulnerability among outsiders and rejecting the industry’s desire to interpret works of art.
This feature was originally published in Fact’s S/S 2022 issue, and is available for purchase heRepeats.
Claire Muchmore: Your debut album, fountain, It was issued at the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, and in 2021, you followed it Deltaa remix album that gave dozens of artists the opportunity to interpret freely fountain Through their individual styles. The audiences you have been performing for the past year have been some of the first and only people to experience these works first hand. How were they received?
Lira Pramuk: A lot of people have made a connection with my music through it fountain She is still connected to him on a very intimate level. However, due to the pandemic, they were unable to experience the album live, and now that I’m touring again, it’s clear that there’s a longing to experience this work properly. So I’m still playing fountain Because I crave that company with listeners. I don’t care about commercial album cycles. It’s not something that interests me. I wanted to create this album to be something that would last and that I could keep revisiting. I didn’t want it to come with a timestamp or expiration date. as far as Delta I feel anxious, and this project is very close to my heart. fountain It was conceived through this solitary process; It was meditative and solitary, and all that experimental acapella-type electronic vocal stuff was kind of a recontextualization of a dream I had. I wanted to expand this dream to include my community, bringing in other composers and producers that I really loved, to build a collective world around music. On stage during this tour, I’m playing excerpts from Delta Throughout my collection, as a kind of transformation, intertwined with the traditional performances of fountainso the two keep shifting and blending more, depending on how I’m feeling.
CM: How have you leveraged collaboration during your recent live performances to reimagine the possibilities that lie within them fountain and Delta?
LP: I have always thought about performance in an interdisciplinary way, so it seems natural to me to perform different versions of the same work to recontextualize it for different audiences. Although it’s technically the same album, all of the performances feature collaborators they’ve explored fountain I felt completely different. The performance with the dancers was so much about our collective bodies on stage that it transcended dance theater to become a meditation on the ways bodies relate to each other in particular spaces.
As a singer who performs this music live, it’s less about my personal expression and more about tracing the journey of the three of us together. Singing was different with the chamber ensemble, just as it was with dancers from the KDV Dance Ensemble. It was about inviting all these amazing artists to dance and play on the surface of this music through a collective reimagining of synergy.
At some point, it feels more like jamming rather than performing music that was recorded in a traditional studio environment. The music sounds completely different after those collaborative performances. The music now belongs not only to me, but also to my 40-plus teammates who participated in it.
KM: Group performance is often very reactionary when it relies on elements of improvisation. At some point, as you mentioned, it was no longer just about the music; It’s about other bodies sharing the space and being aware of who and what is in the space around you. How does physical space, whether it be the architecture itself, or the negative space between bodies on stage, influence your performing style?
LP: When I focus on the performance aspect, I think about the space first and foremost. Architecture is really important. I started my career playing in a lot of bars and clubs with really low ceilings. This creates a different sense of how you move and how you navigate the space. Even before I bring collaborators into my work, I make sure I have a very intimate sense of space when I play live.
Ceiling height really affects the acoustics – although it affects me psychologically, in terms of how I feel I can conduct sound from my body. There is a very sensitive ecosystem. I consider the acoustics of the space — the materials the walls are made of, the height of the ceiling, the size and shape of the room, how the windows change the sound of the space, the size of the stage — all of that affects how loud it is. The space in which I have to move physically and through my voice.
In short, all of this impacts the overall experience of everyone in the room, and I think it’s a truly collective ritual. So it’s not about me versus them. For example, performing the last track of the show, “New Moon,” to me, is absolutely wild pagan catharsis. It’s the song that ends my album, the moment I open myself up and use the space to expand our souls, minds and bodies.
CM: In general, your performance style is very theatrical, which is reflected in your recent work with the KDV Dance Ensemble at the Volksbühne in Berlin and your collaboration with the chamber ensemble that premiered at MoMA PS in New York last December. I’m interested in understanding the journey you embark on during each performance. I have referred to the final part of each performance as a moment of “massive pagan purification,” in which you “open” yourself to the audience. How do you get to that vulnerable point where you trust the audience enough to be open with them?
LP: The structure of the performance reflects this goal of the music; This was always music that I designed as a collective healing ritual. The songs are arranged in a specific order because the album is a tracing of grief, self-recovery, and subsequent joy. It’s in the system for a reason. It is a cycle of grief and transformation. Although many personal events inspired me when I created it fountainMy goal has always been to create a space for collective healing rituals that transcend my personal experience. By bringing people into this space with me and inviting them on this healing journey, I embarked on another series of collaborations. I am interested in exploring each individual’s relationship with grief and healing by investigating what music brings out to each individual. It’s a really emotional process to do that, to make room for everyone in this way. But it’s worthwhile; I’m not interested in wasting time on the superficial aspects of performance. Yes, I’m obsessed with aesthetics and form, but always with the broader goal of bringing our inner worlds to the ideal expression of the outer. There is always a deeper purpose for me doing this work.
CM: When you’re working on new music or putting together a new performance, what kind of space, whether literal and physical or abstract and imaginative, do you envision your music being experienced in?
LP: The contours of that world are not clear to me; It is an emerging space of possibility, a space that becomes clearer to me the more I dwell in it. It’s a space I feel lucky to inhabit, but if I tried to highlight it and show its many details, it would disappear, and I have a deep respect for that. I’m not interested in trying to turn on the light and show it and see it for what it is – that’s not the point. This space is not a fantasy world, but rather an abstract utopia linked to the challenges of this world, as well as the beauty and joy of this world. But it must exist in this separate, unknowable space in order to maintain its status as a utopia.
CM: You put your audience in charge and go on their own individual healing journeys during your live shows. What role do interpretation and agency play in your work?
LP: I’m not at all interested in dictating how people should feel; It’s not my job. I’m interested in creating. I think it’s almost like a physical work, like a sculpture; It just exists, and everything people come out of it is beautiful. I attribute my position on this to Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation,” which you can sum up by saying that interpretation kills a work of art. I find it cheap and insulting to try to describe a work of art in a blanket way that impoverishes the work of art but also impoverishes the individuals who experience it. In doing so, it devalues people; It is insulting for people to try to describe their individual life experience because there must be many possible interpretations of the work. Most of this is not just an explanation, it is simply felt. Surrounding someone with the experience they must have before they actually have it separates the individual from a potential world of feelings and understanding that they might have experienced differently if they had not been struck in that way.
CM: You’ve talked a lot about embracing the fleeting nature of performance and how being in the moment should take priority over documenting the experience. How does where you are physically and emotionally determine your stage presence?
LP: I talk about this with my friend Colin Self a lot. It’s about asking yourself: “What do I need from this performance?” Where am I now, at this moment? It’s an opportunity to connect with yourself and see how much you’ve transformed and approximate where you are that day. To allow yourself to surrender to the flow of your own life and learn something from that through performance. I think this touches on the ritual aspect of performance. Each presentation is a portal through which you can learn a lot; It can transport and transform you in real time.
It is important, on a philosophical level, to work with the knowledge that the brain and body are not separate. They are, in fact, closely related, and much of what guides us is intuition and feeling. That our neural systems pick up on emotions is a fundamental aspect of thinking, especially regarding what that means in the context of performance or modern life in general. The more confidence we have in our bodies, the better decisions we end up making. All of this is encoded and relates to the non-verbal feeling space it provides. Everything we need is there; If we are able to focus, meditate and pay attention to it, then that is the case.
Words: Claire Muchemore
Photos: Pedro S. Coaster
This feature was originally published in Fact’s S/S 2022 issue, and is available for purchase heRepeats.
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