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I always liked music, but I could never learn to play any actual instruments. And it always hurt me. But earlier this year (2016), I decided to play around with a music software called GarageBand. Even without knowing anything about musical theory, I just wanted to create and have fun.
The first song, called “Alince” was based on the film Alice in Wonderland (Něco z Alenky – 1988) by Jan Svankmajer, Czech surrealist artist, and master in Stop Motion. Personally, I found the result very amusing and I decided to make a clip with the scenes from the film.
When I finished the first video, I was really excited and I ended up doing three more. “Design Thinking,” “The Mermaid Scream” and “This Thing Inside Me”. Each song was created following just one rule: all music should explore the sounds, be fun to do, and be different.
After the four videos were uploaded, I realized there was an opportunity to create a music album. With a total of 11 tracks, the experimental album would be an excuse to be able to create music without knowing exactly how to make them. In this way, I created a genre of music that gave to define this unusual musical proposal. This is how Wenvawe was born.
Wenvawe has no meaning and is not a purposeful anagram of another word or anything from another genre. The word, like the musical genre I want it to represent, is unusual and sounds weird. For that reason, it is exotic and interesting. My intention with this genre is to create a musical strand where freedom of creation is above any standard of style or technique. In Wenvawe, a scream, noise, glitch, or whatever can become music, just let yourself be heard.
In this video, I decided to create it from scratch. I mixed animation with photos that I took in the city of Porto Alegre after a big storm in January 2016. The message of the video is a bit ambiguous, but I believe that all the interpretations of the viewers are interesting and can make sense (or not).
The song “SobreViver” is a compilation of videos that I made during my walks in the city of Porto Alegre. These walks are a hobby that I enjoy practicing and are very important to me.
Anyway, after creating these videos and songs, I thought I needed to do some artwork for the album cover. I thought of several things and some interesting concepts. But I went down a more introspective and personal path. After all, the project was born and developed simply out of self-interest. That way, I decided to explore those subjective feelings that I feel with music and express it visually. For this, I chose the photograph because I wanted it to be the closest to the real and at the same time close to my unconscious.
I thought about using my desk, my stuff, and my mess. But all this, despite being me and what I do, my chaos and so on … It was not exactly part of the Lithium Effect. As I photographed, I took a painting I had thrown in the middle of my mess and started shooting. I realized in the middle of the process that this painting was done in the same way as the songs, a kind of Wenwave painting! At the time I painted, I had no intention of making a masterpiece, I just needed to put paint on that paper. It was necessary for me. Just like the songs I had done! I needed to use this painting. So I started shooting and literally throwing myself on paper.
“Throw me” was a kind of metaphor I found to express that subjectivity Wenvawe remitted me. It was as if I were alone in the universe with just my ideas on paper.
In addition to this cover, I also enjoyed to have fun and make six more options, which I liked a lot and still plan to apply them somewhere.
This authorial experience was very interesting to me. Perhaps for other people it is not so relevant, but this issue raises a deeper debate about Wenvawe’s role in society and how this may or may not affect the cultural dynamics of art and the like. But personally, I feel proud of this project. Because of the way I got involved and executed, in my opinion, it generated a conceptual result about who I am and what I think is very interesting. Maybe it was a rather egocentric project, but I do not see the harm in it.