She places Christmas cookies, coffee cups and a lockable ashtray on the table. MAJA OSOJNIK opted for the studio kitchen at the last minute. “Sorry, but otherwise none of this would have worked out today,” says the human work engine. Then the espresso pot gurgles and we talk. About ChatGPT and walks and listening exercises and putting on pants – the small topics, the big feelings, in between: her album, which is called “Doorways” and was released by col legno and Mamka Records.
I’m afraid we need to talk about your time today.
Maja Osojnik: I never have time, but I use it more consciously. I want to use it in an anti-capitalist way, which means: I take the right to waste my time. Or to linger in slowness. Be it in my everyday life or especially in composition – I notice that I’m slowing down more and more. And therefore more detailed, more focused. More profound in my research.
Yeah?
Maja Osojnik: Yes, it’s my rebellion against neoliberal optimization, which always focuses on the product and the result. Never the process.
That’s a good intention, the rebellion.
Maja Osojnik: Because otherwise everything disappears, doesn’t it? You see or hear something and scroll past it and then it’s gone.
At the same time, everything is juxtaposed – someone is slapping cucumbers on their face, someone is reporting from a war zone, someone is showing an insight into their studio.
Maja Osojnik: You become pure content, which becomes blurred. It dulls you to the world. And also for the time. I do believe that many people are aware of this staging. Because that’s exactly what it is – a game for publicity. However, there is always insecurity behind it, always fear, always the pressure of not being enough. The question is: how do we deal with this? I think we need to practice radical empathy. In other words, to question the pressure to move quickly and to insist on slowness.
How do you do that?
Maja Osojnik: Yes, good question. It is difficult. I have certain colleagues who I value above all else and who always impress me with how quickly they work. At the same time, this speed also made me feel insecure. It took me a long time to accept that it’s okay – if they’re faster and I’m slower.
You mean you shouldn’t compare yourself?
Maja Osojnik: Yes, also because processes are different. If we only see the product, we don’t think about how it was produced. How much preparatory work went into it and so on. We only perceive the product. The person behind it is degraded to an interchangeable adjusting screw. That’s why it’s important …
“I think we need to practice radical empathy […] to question the pressure to move quickly and to insist on slowness.”
To ask how something was created?
Maja Osojnik: Yes, especially today, with and alongside AI. So when students ask me what ChatGPT could be used for in art and composition, I like to ask them: what knowledge do we use these technologies with? If I have basic knowledge, the technology can help me. But if I don’t have it, it’s the first step into the …
Abbreviation – one abbreviates …
Maja Osojnik: Abbreviating your own knowledge. Here’s an example: When I write a text, I go through a brain battle. The text needs knots. Sometimes you sweat, fight against it, misplace it for the duration of a walk. But it is precisely this walk that gives rise to new ideas and associations. The process is therefore an essential part of the product that I can’t cut short.
I just realized: It’s also theft. Not so much from existing works, but from oneself. You steal from your own experience that you could have had in order to arrive at a result.
Maja Osojnik: Exactly. It’s a shortcut that leads to theft. However, I don’t want to be the one to say that this technology is all bad. There are exciting areas of application, including in art. Some push the program to its limits, causing glitches. So you can play with the machine, but the question is: what knowledge is offered to you and how do you – objectively – check this knowledge?
“The process is therefore an essential part of the product that I can’t cut short.”
How did we end up back at ChatGPT?
Maja Osojnik: Because of the time?
Ah, yes, the time. “Doorways”, your latest album, has to be, sorry for the term: acquired.
Maja Osojnik: And almost surrender to the piece. (laughs)
Yes, I can’t just skip to minute 27 in a three-quarter-hour play and then say that’s it.
Maja Osojnik: Exactly. It goes against pure usability and is also a question: How do we listen? I don’t just mean the piece, but also ourselves and each other. In other words: how do we listen to each other? This question is difficult to answer in the face of ever shorter attention spans. This is not to say, by the way, that compressed thoughts are not justified. Nevertheless, time always plays a role.
Which one?
Maja Osojnik: Let’s assume that there is a very loud forzato in a piece, i.e. a strong musical element that causes a shock. How long does it take from tension to relaxation? Often much longer than we think. This is because perception tricks us. However, it takes the experience of the other elements, the dynamics, these phases of leading in and letting go – in other words, the whole piece – to realize what is happening. “Doorways” is therefore an offer from me to take a trip.
“it’s about a collective experience. But it’s also about the journey there and back home.”
To get somewhere else?
Maja Osojnik: Absolutely. You think differently about a piece, a film, an exhibition when you’ve been there – in a place – with it. That’s why I love going to concerts or the movies. Of course, it’s about a collective experience. But it’s also about the journey there and back home. You prepare yourself, you look forward to it. And maybe you change your pants before you leave the house.
Or put them on at all.
Maja Osojnik: Yes, exactly. Anyway, what I want to say is that you think differently about what you perceive when you’ve been somewhere. Art in particular, but especially music, is stuck in time. If you don’t take the time, you can’t experience anything.
Is that one reason why you like knitting?
Maja Osojnik: There is a restlessness in me that I can work on with it. At the same time, all my work has to do with my hands. I even write about them because I realize how nervous they are. How often I accidentally drop things. But knitting allows me not to think about my hands. They just do. That’s why I just knit intuitively, without a precise plan.
And in the flow of the music?
Maja Osojnik: I’m trying to separate the two more and more. In the last knitting phase, I often stopped knitting while listening because I wanted to be focused on one thing. I don’t believe in multitasking. I believe more in directed focus.
I listened to pure noise while I worked for a while …
Maja Osojnik: Me too! Because I have the feeling that it blocks out everything else and helps me to concentrate.
Exactly.
Maja Osojnik: Glenn Gould even practiced like that for a while, with a vacuum cleaner on in the background – not to distract himself, but so that he could focus. Gould said that he learned from the chance encounter between Mozart and the vacuum cleaner that the, quote: ‘inner ear of the imagination is a much stronger stimulus than any external observation’.
“You can knead sound like plasticine […]“
Let me put it pathetically: Noise is like the coffee bean in a good perfumery – it neutralizes, sets you back, focuses.
Maja Osojnik: Yes, if you use them consciously, it can be like that. Especially if – like me – you play with many elements. I don’t call this approach aural gymnastics for nothing. You can knead sound like plasticine – with your ears and playfully. The composition then invites you to be heard like a kind of rotary knob that focuses on the changes with great sensitivity, constantly trying to readjust the focus in order to capture the surroundings, the sound nature of the place.
This is also exciting in “Doorways”. At one point, a beautiful melody comes after a long, loud chaos.
Maja Osojnik: The fragile and soft coexists with the hard and concise, doesn’t it? I often think to myself: if you totally stretch noise, it becomes melody. Or vice versa: if you compress melody, it becomes noise. I play with these microscopic ideas and contrasts because there can also be fragile frameworks under many layers of noise. The question is how long you take to discover them.
“there is not just one way, not just one door.”
I think it’s good that you use the plural: “doorways” – not just one, but several.
Maja Osojnik: Because there is not just one way, not just one door. And because everyone perceives them differently. Even if we see the same movie, hear the same piece – we will interpret it differently. Because it depends on your knowledge, your reality, your state of mind on the day and your stage of life.
The great thing is that each of these interpretations is correct, isn’t it?
Maja Osojnik: Absolutely. What really matters is the dialog to compare these truths and add a new truth. Sometimes I fear that we no longer allow ourselves this dialog, this discourse, because we are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Or of being misunderstood.
Isn’t that a product of this fast pace of life? In other words, when condemnation always follows immediately instead of debate?
Maja Osojnik: Yes, the important space for understanding is missing.
Or of trying to understand each other?
Maja Osojnik: That’s what it’s all about, the open space, the openness. My aim is to preserve it. To do this, I sometimes have to withdraw in order to seek out the collective again after a process of working alone, because: I can only formulate my thoughts further in dialog.
There is a beautiful book by Jean-Luc Nancy, “Corpus” – in it he writes that a body is not actually a body. A body, no matter how you define it, always requires another body.
Maja Osojnik: I also think that I define and recognize myself through my counterpart. Growth happens through confrontation, through confrontation with the other.
“Growth happens through confrontation.”
I’m glad you brought up confrontation – putting your own thoughts to the test.
Maja Osojnik: Yes, it makes you confront yourself; within the confrontation with the other person. I am a bad fighter. But there’s something very appealing about the idea of a fruitful argument. Maybe that’s why I like hip-hop so much. The battles are nothing more than letting off steam with humor within a certain framework.
The humor part is important. It’s always missing in the discussion about so-called safer spaces. People take themselves too seriously and only applaud themselves – because all potential confrontations have already been filtered out.
Maja Osojnik: It makes you lose touch with the world, with reality. And even if safe spaces are important, the question remains: How do we deal with ourselves in a world that only moves from one conflict to the next? Is it possible to have a humane argument in this world? I would hope so. Because you would realize how many fears and wishes and needs you share with other people.
That’s why it would be important to confront similarities and not always just confirm them.
Maja Osojnik: There is this book by Heinz von Foerster: “The Truth is the Invention of a Liar”. It’s about a dialog between two intellectuals. They value each other, but on a communicative level of dispute. In other words, they challenge each other in dialog – playfully and without each side hardening in the process.
Because they engage with each other.
Maja Osojnik: And listen to each other and respond, yes.
That’s a good transition back to your piece. Maybe you just say nothing for three quarters of an hour and just listen and then you say something else.
Maja Osojnik: That brings me back to the example of tension and relaxation. Two years ago, I was on La Palma for the first time. I experienced absolute silence there. And that made me understand how my body begins to relax. I claim that I am a working horse that can withstand a lot – that can withstand anything. But it was only through complete relaxation, through the experience of absolute silence, that I understood how much we actually have to filter out in order to function. So the ideal would be a society in which both is possible – surfing through loud noise and having the opportunity to completely relax. That’s a utopian thought, but …
I don’t think it’s that utopian. These days, almost everyone walks around with headphones that block out everything, don’t they?
Maja Osojnik: I’ve had these headphones for two weeks now. And I tried them out straight away, on the train, on a journey. It wasn’t a good feeling at all because I was suddenly so isolated – almost as if I was taking away the meaning of the journey. I like to communicate, even with strangers. That’s important for a trip. Even in everyday life in the city.
Is it a responsibility not to shut yourself out, but to listen?
Maja Osojnik: Yes. You choose to live in the city, among people. We may all be in an anthill, but conscious participation contributes to a better society. In conclusion, I can think of a beautiful sentence by Jenny Odell from her book “How to do Nothing”: “Simple awareness is the seed of responsibility. That’s what makes us who we are, isn’t it?
Thank you for your time!
Christoph Benkeser
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Translated from the German original by Arianna Alfreds.