“Consider the whole of your life, what you already do, all your doings. Now please exclude everything which is naturally physiologically necessary (or harmful), such as breathing and sleeping (or breaking an arm). For what remains, exclude everything which is for the satisfaction of a social demand, a very large area which includes foremost your job, but also care of children, being polite, voting, your haircut, and much else. From what remains, exclude everything which is an agency, a "means" -- another very large area which overlaps with others to be excluded. From what remains, exclude everything which involves competition. In what remains, concentrate on everything done entirely because you just like it as you do it.” – Henry Flynt definition of "Brend," from “Against “Participation”: Total Critique of Culture”
Sigital Krutulys-Sygis (1967-1996) called himself a poet, thinker and professional dilletante. He wrote several drama works and a stack of poems, and in 1993-1995 actively participated in the development of Alytus avant-garde. He was radically critical of new capitalist relations and universal alienation. Almost none of his writings and creations have been published until this year, and his expression is a purest example of Henry Flynt's description of Brend. In 2021 January, his best friend Redas Dirzys, has collected and published the majority of Sygis (anti)literature (dramas, poems, short stories and at the same time something that does not fit any of those standards) in a form of book sequel. Pages – this is how the author suggested naming these works in order to avoid the toxic concept of art and creativity. In pages, grammar is ignored, text is transformed into matter/image and image into letters.
With Shortcoming, I tried to explore the failure of meeting a certain standard in a contemporary society. What does it mean to make something just for the sake of doing it? Without expecting anything in return and without trying to fit in in certain frameworks of the society. Us trying to constantly chase success and fame made us glorify hustle culture, being non-human, machine like creatures that are not allowed to make mistakes.
First track - Math won’t save the world is based on algorithm generated percussion pattern (made using custom build max for live device) and guitar improvisation. With this track I mainly experimented with machine and human collaboration for imperfect and unpredictable creative outcome.
The longest track and centre part of the whole project is Elephant. This track was based on an unnamed poem of Sygis, about our high ambitions that do not necessarily come true, and that it is not a bad thing. Instrumentation wise I continued my experimentation with computer generated rhythms, highly processed improvised guitar, and overlaid disintegrating cassette tape loops (for which I used another custom build max for live device that progressively destroyed loops by crushing sample rate and bit depth).
For a final track - Tale of darkness, I used another unnamed poem (he really did not like naming things) of Sygis. By using this poem of his I wanted to better look into the stereotypes of evil and bad and how we all have a not so glamorous sides of us. I have combined Sygis poem with family archive audio recording from 1995 (year of when I was born) between my father and my brother. So it happens, that previously mentioned best friend of Sygis, who has published his poems, is my father. And even though Sygis took his own life only a few months after I was born, I still have a very strong connection to his ideas and his way of thinking has influenced my own relationship with creativity.
- Gong Girl (Guoda Dirzyte)
