AI FEN
Ai fen is a Polish/Chinese composer, musician and producer based in Prague. The artist’s namesake project unravels the Self, exploring her identity as a biracial, multinational woman growing up millennial. Through sweeping tracks and visceral performances combining soprano flute, keys and a dramatically fluctuating vocal, Ai fen engages audiences with her particular blend of “screamo-pop” or “trauma-pop,” blending experimental pop together with techno, neoclassical, drone and ambient elements with live incorporation of keys, soprano flute, samples and of course vocal performance.
Interview by Natálie Zehnalová
You studied Critical Theory and Neuroscience, can you describe your journey through these fields and to music?
For my bachelor degree at the University of Wisconsin I did a double major in Literature and Psychology with a specialized focus on cognitive neuroscience. The literature major just kind of happened because I was taking so many literature classes anyway that I ended up having enough credits to major in it as well. I come from a very practical, science oriented family. Both of my parents are doctors, as well as my grandmother and several aunts and uncles. As a result, I always felt pressure to pursue something “practical” as well.
After leaving home I went through a period of tiny rebellions. These minuscule moves away from what I felt was expected from me started with going into cognitive neuroscience rather than medicine, but after working in a lab I realized I didn’t want to go into research at all. I simply didn’t have the personality for it. I freaked out and ran away to Europe, supposedly for just a year to take that cliche year off teaching English and traveling. I got into a masters program here at the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University and ended up doing a masters in critical theory. Once I finished, I didn’t really know what to do with myself either, so I interviewed for the doctoral program in critical theory and got in.
Soon after that, I met Daniel [Vlček] and we started ba:zel. I stayed in the doctoral program for about a year after we started ba:zel. To be honest I was still clinging to some kind of sense of security in doing something that had a structure around it. A pivotal moment for me in deciding to let go of that was being in London where my doctoral advisor gave me a contact for the novelist Tom McCarthy. Part of my doctoral thesis was related to his work, so my advisor thought it would be beneficial for us to meet. We ended up meeting and I told him about being torn between working on the doctorate and music, and he told me that I’d only have the energy to pursue my passion now, being young and without much responsibility holding me back or taking up my time. He told me to focus on what I really wanted to do. Having the subject of my doctoral thesis tell me that was just too much of a go ahead from the universe for me to ignore, so I took the plunge and decided to focus solely on music.
Your music is introspective, but what you’re interrogating is not as much your personality or identity and far more the cultural mechanisms, societal norms and expectations that have shaped it. Can you outline your personal journey insofar as it is relevant to your work?
I believe that we have the responsibility and privilege to examine who we are by tracing both our personal family history and the way it has interacted with cultural mechanisms and societal norms and the way that these elements interplay in our now. I spent most of my twenties just reacting to everything that came my way with an incredible sense of wounded egocentricity. Only after I began to focus on music was I able to start separating myself from my emotions. In doing so I started to be capable of rewinding deeply, becoming aware of how my emotions were not just reactions to recent events, but complicated snapshots of, as you say, the expectations of societal norms and cultural mechanisms interplaying with my personal history. I had a lot of armor up for a long time. But music forced me to be introspective because it demanded to know what I had to say, and why.
In ba:zel I started very formally, our first album Eye Draw(s) the Line uses contemporary critical theory as an entry point to examine my emotions. Our EP Scene 7 uses dreams while our upcoming album uses politics of exploitation and the pain surrounding the state of our world, climate change, the destruction of nature and mass industries. While the music is very emotional and personal, it still holds everything at arm’s length.
After hearing some early Ai fen demos, one of my friends, the remarkable Canadian artist Foonyap, asked me: Is this the work you’re afraid to show? Are you being emotionally risky? This really made me dig deep, because I realized that I wasn’t making solo work that I was afraid to show, still coloring within similar lines, trying to play the same safe game.
You chose your Chinese name – Ai fen – as the artist name for your solo work. What motivated you to survey this part of our identity that has always been there but long remained unaddressed?
I believe that to get to an understanding of ourselves on an energetic level that goes past our existence in our bodies and in time, we need to peel away the layers that have been wrapped around that part of ourselves. Part of that is coming to terms with what has been bestowed upon you, and that means your heritage, your ancestry, your culture. For many children of immigrants, names are signifiers of that. My first name was a signifier of my Polish culture whereas my last name was a signifier of my Chinese culture. Sandwiched between the two, Ai fen was a signifier of the mystery of resolving those two identities and making peace with the unknown factors of my cultural and personal history.
Your music merges elements of various genres — including ambient, screamo, techno, and darkwave. Can you describe your creative process?
Ah, I hate this question because I really have no idea :) It’s different every time but it always begins with a sense of discomfort coming out of an emotion I can’t really quite place. The only way for me to work through it is to sit and try to sonify it. Sometimes it’ll begin with a lyric, other times it’ll begin with an idea or a desire to write something with a particular element. With postforever especially it’s hard to talk about a creative process because that album was written over the span of three years in which I was learning to produce. So a lot of the time I’d sit with an emotion but have no clue how to crystallize it. I’d play around a lot and eventually something would resonate with how I was feeling and I’d go in that direction. But sometimes I’d surprise myself while working on a track because suddenly I’d find myself changing a key signature or doing a complete 180 on the track’s mood. That happened in “As I Thought” and “I Like Breathing.” I was producing those tracks and out of nowhere found myself screaming.
Vocal experimentation is a vital part of this project; your solo music involves screaming and breathing as an act of transformation and liberation. What have you learned about your voice and ways in which voice correlates with identity? Has your sense of identity changed since you let go of the fear that your voice will be viewed negatively?
I learned how deeply intertwined my sense of unease and fear in being on stage was related to the fact that I was singing. In using my voice I felt I was essentially showcasing myself, and in the beginning I was very timid. Because I wrote all of the music for Ai fen, I had much more room to experiment without any kind of witness. It was still frightening for me to take this kind of vocal experimentation out in public, but somehow being alone on stage was a source of strength rather than weakness or fear for me. I was able to absorb completely into myself without someone else on stage playing with me. This is because when I perform alone I only have to tune into myself, I am communicating with myself essentially under a microscope. This might seem horrible to some, but for me it felt like an unbelievable privilege to have that space, and it seemed like a waste and even lack of honor and respect to go about the performance half-assed. It isn’t that I’m not afraid that my voice will be viewed negatively, those insecurities are hard to get rid of. After all, you’re performing for an audience and you want to connect with them. But I realized that going at it in a roundabout way — trying to cultivate a voice that would please everyone — would please no one, and especially myself.
postforever, 2020
Your debut postforever grapples with how we understand time, how we tend to divide history into a series of “posts.” How do you understand time; or what would be a more accurate way to conceptualize time in your opinion?
I think I’ll always be trying to wrap my head around time, without any kind of sound answer to how I understand it. Einstein theorized that time slows down or speeds up depending on how fast you’re moving. So theoretically, at the speed of light you wouldn’t age, time would “stand still.” But of course that’s only talking about time and viewing it through changes we see in physical matter. What about the time that lapses in our minds? That time is stretchy, snapping into a microsecond or expanding into what seems like centuries dependent on our perception and emotions.
So part of me feels like time doesn’t exist, that it’s a construct supported by the incredible slowness at which we move. But as I get older and see the physical changes in my face and body, it gets harder to view time in that way and I find myself getting caught up in the anxieties related to getting older, moving towards death. At the same time, it’s thrilling to recognize a sense of expanding within myself that’s the complete opposite of the sense of shrinking and wasting away that we’re taught to believe accompanies aging.
The past year and the forced halt we’ve experienced has been extremely confusing with regards to time, many of us have been mentally stuck in March [2020] for months. You described alternating between outbursts of productivity and doubts when we spoke during the first lockdown, how has your experience developed further throughout the year?
Although the first lockdown was frustrating, I rode it out on the momentum I had built planning the release of the album, the tour, and everything surrounding that. I was so hell bent on productivity and in denial during the first lockdown that I barely let myself grieve [over] what had been cancelled. I was still in “business as usual” mode and just told myself that I’d be touring in autumn or, at latest, early 2021.
So what’s most difficult for me is now, when the ecstatic bloom of summertime outdoor shows has faded and all that’s looming ahead is a massive question mark. At the same time, I’ve also gained a kind of calm that’s past a sense of defeat and resignation. Sometimes it feels eerie and my own stillness in the face of so much uncertainty instigates anxiety that paradoxically eradicates that stillness. Which is good because instability is the true nature of things. Many of my social relationships have fallen apart, but my close personal relationships have taken on new hues that anchor me. Things have become so raw and unabashed, and I’ve had the pleasure of living very honestly on an emotional level for the past year.
Because of the pandemic I’ve also had time to take a step back and evaluate how I want to live my life, and maybe the insane pace of the music industry isn’t for me. I’ve reevaluated how many shows I want to play a year, trading the idea of touring as much as I could to being absolutely satisfied with playing a handful of truly excellent shows a year. All of the shows I played in the summer window were amazing. [They were] very well curated and I’d like to keep that level of quality moving into whenever playing live shows again will be possible.
postforever came out in February 2020, and soon after the pandemic hit in full extent and most shows were cancelled. What has been the most challenging about not being able to perform and revisit the album with a live audience?
Right after releasing postforever in February I went on a mini tour with Austrian artist The Boiler. The tour was just five shows in Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic and conceived as a kind of “test run” before the bigger tour in spring via Queers to the Front Booking with Swedish artist Tropical Vampire.
That mini tour was amazing, it supercharged me with enthusiasm, conviction and courage. I returned from that tour literally days before everything shut down and all the borders closed, so I went into the first lockdown full of adrenaline. I shut myself away in the Sumava countryside and just channeled all of that disappointment, rage and terror into new material.
The summer and early autumn was amazing because I got to play a few concerts where half of it was new stuff I had written during the lockdown. The set changed a lot and I feel it became much stronger, so I suppose in retrospect I’d say my shows benefited from the lockdown. In retrospect, it feels like there was no pain in not being able to perform postforever in front of a live audience as much as I had planned. It’s strange, because I know I had that pain, but playing several strong shows in the summer mixing new and old material wiped out that sense of disappointment.
You then reached out to the method of remixes [post postforever] as a means to re-experience the album. How did you choose the collaborators and tracks to include? Can you describe the collaborative process?
All of the artists on the EP had complete creative control. I just sent them the stems and got magic back. It all started with Dikolson — I was having coffee with him back in 2019 when it was no big deal to meet in rooms full of strangers. We were talking about music and I mentioned I would be releasing a solo project in 2020. He was curious so I sent him the first two singles and asked him if he’d be interested in doing a remix. Originally I thought I’d just release his remix after I released the album. But then the pandemic hit and I decided to make it into an EP.
I’m part of the Trigger Collective which runs out of the Synth Library in Prague and provides a safe place for women and non-binary artists to meet and connect. Once upon a time workshops and events were in the mix too. During the first lockdown we were all in touch, meeting in cyberspace and chatting. I posted that I was going to be putting out this remix EP and asked if anyone wanted to have a go at a remix and Evil Medvěd stepped up. Lucia Udvardyova from Baba Vanga recommended MA’AM to me. I’m good friends with Kkraus and told him I would be doing the EP and he asked if he could do a remix as well. Jested contacted me himself after hearing about the EP and asked if he could be part of it. My spring 2020 tour with Queers to the Front Booking was supposed to be with Tropical Vampire from Sweden, so we were already in touch and it seemed right that she should be part of the project as well in lieu of us actually touring together.
post postforever, 2021
Your songs are deeply personal in a way that for example a techno track isn’t. How was it for you to let others reinterpret them?
It is an immense honor and pleasure to play my music for others. It is my fondest hope that people reinterpret them and that their own interpretation can mean something to them personally. I think that’s really beautiful — this idea that I can present something about such a specific set of my emotions and experiences and someone can have a completely different take on it. I love talking to people at shows about specific songs or my motivations behind each of them, but I’m also more than happy to let them take on a life of their own for someone else.
Can you tell me about the transformation of [the track] “As I Thought” into “Not As”? I like the introduction of guitars, an element that, at least for me, sounds very familiar yet at the same time unusual in the context of your music.
Dikolson was the first producer who undertook remixing my music. He was in the game so early on that at the time we talked about it I had only two tracks ready to remix, my first two singles “As I Thought” and “This Analog Desire (Makes Me Slow).” Dikolson chose “As I Thought” but at the time the working title was “Not As.” Somehow that name kept getting rewritten on each new version of the remix he sent me and I just never realized that the track on the album was in fact now “As I Thought.”
post postforever further destabilizes how we understand time and order and the meanings they are meant to produce. What is the next step?
A lattice of new intricacies followed by a plunge into unfamiliar territories. By that I mean new material that continues in the direction of postforever, convoluted electronic landscapes with complex twists and turns, and material that moves off of the map. I’m craving finding a new way of writing, recording, producing and performing.
Last year has been unprecedentedly tumultuous and monotonous at the same time. How do you feel you have developed, grown as an artist between the releases? Or personally?
I feel that this year has served to make me calmer, more capable of viewing things from above and with less of the anxiety that bubbled up with every release. I got a few fleeting but clear glimpses into how I’d like to function as an artist in the future: playing less shows but with more attention to quality, taking my time in releasing without paying attention to when I should put out something new and allowing myself the space to really experiment, to not be obsessed with productivity and output, to let things flow without the sense of having them slipping past me.
Not being able to really plan tours or play shows has made me feel simultaneously less rushed and more anxious, a strange combination of emotions that I have to resolve through stillness and shifting my focus to things outside of making music, art. By that I mean really cultivating rituals of self care, respect and love that I perform not as ways to grease the wheels of production, but simply to become a better human being with more empathy and understanding, towards myself and others.
Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share?
Hope to see you all soon.
postforever and post postforever are available now
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