Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.06.2019, Blaðsíða 35

Music 35The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 09— 2019
From Biennale
To Vinyl
Styrmir lays performance
art down on wax
Words: Rex Beckett Photo: Andrej Vasilenko
Album
Styrmir’s album ‘What Am I Doing
With My Life?’ is available on vinyl
and digitally on Bandcamp.
Most of us at some point have taken
pause to ask ourselves “What am I
doing with my life?” For Styrmir
Örn Guðmundsson—artist name
simply Styrmir—this question
came to him during a fateful walk
through a Riga cemetery and be-
came the title of his album. After
more than a decade of working
primarily as a visual and perfor-
mance artist, the now Berlin-based
Styrmir recently released his debut
record, pulling together a collec-
tion of performance pieces into a
cohesive musical narrative.
Created over time with a large
group of collaborators, friends
and colleagues, the songs were
originally performed primarily
within the context of art spaces
and festivals. “At first it was just
basically gathering people that I
liked to work with and not wor-
rying that it would have a certain
sound throughout,” says Styrmir.
“Just kind of getting a lot of peo-
ple involved. By the time we had
recorded some stuff with a few of
the beatmakers and kind of just
mixing, it slowly melted into a
musical piece.”
The medical team
The pieces are an idiosyncratic
smattering of dissonant catchy
electropop, aggressive avant-gar-
de rap, and dreamy
psychedelic lullabies.
Most of the songs fol-
low the theme of not
only the titular exis-
tential query, but also
of physical health.
“I set out to make
this project with a
theme of the failures
and perils of West-
ern medicine, which
came from a visit to
a doctor who want-
ed to get me hooked
on some steroids be-
cause of asthma,” says
Styrmir. “At that time
I was writing some lyrics to songs
and then came the idea of a theme
for a whole record, which in some
songs I follow but in some songs it
just bleeds into other directions.”
Following this theme, his group
of collaborators are credited on the
album as The Medical Team and
each hold a particular medical pro-
fession as their role in the produc-
tion. “I ended up directing the per-
formances in a way that we would
be this team of self-proclaimed
doctors,” says Styrmir. “Then it
was kind of a cryptic titling of each
person. When I invited the artists
I asked them ‘What kind of a doc-
tor would you be?’ So they self-pro-
claimed their own titles.”
Immediacy and
dynamics
His team ended up with four beat-
makers-slash-producers, and over
ten vocalists, including himself.
The final product still reflects the
immediacy and dynamics of the
pieces originating as performance
art. “All the people in the project
just have such different vibes and
energies,” says Styr-
mir. “So every time
we perform, it really
changes the vibe, even
though the songs are
more or less the same.
That also makes the
experience very dif-
ferent each time.”
Although this
shift into music was
very new for Styrmir,
it is a direction that
he plans to continue
in. “I’m really happy
to celebrate it as a
finished project,” he
says. “That’s kind of
the visual artist thinking. But on
the other hand I really want to con-
tinue making music. I was always
this visual artist. I never believed
myself to be a musician, but I will
definitely continue making music.
Then this project can just come and
go.”
“I ended up
directing
the perfor-
mances in a
way that we
would be this
team of self-
proclaimed
doctors.”
Wild man Styrmir questions his existence
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