On August 9, artist and musician Diana Burkot (rosemary loves a blackberry) will present her album snowfake, currently being prepared for release by Smikkelbaard Records, Netherlands. Burkot’s performance at one of Garage’s Voice as a Strategy evenings will also be a premiere for her new material.
The reference to a snowflake in the name of the album has to do with the crystal’s structure and development, which the artist finds symbolic. The "branching" of a growing snowflake is similar to the creative process: delving deeper into the subject, doubting and straying from the original vision, we develop our idea into a complete work. Snowflakes also grow in many different ways: their instability is the key for the variety of form. Similarly, Burkot’s experiments in related disciplines allow the artist to discover the multifaceted essence of whatever captures her attention, while the unstable, changing nature of her approach enables her to study it in depth. Burkot’s music does not limit itself to a particular genre. Working with a variety of sound and visual forms, she makes installations as well as performances.
Snowflake is the perfect metaphor for true and cold beauty of logic, systems, and order. It symbolizes the artist’s striving for the highest (im)possible form, the clearest way of conveying the original idea without any loss of meaning. However, when we want to capture natural beauty, we are bound to get disappointed. As it falls from the sky, the snowflake melts and disappears in the sludge under our feet. So what is beauty? Why does something wonderful turn into a fake, a counterfeit? Can an artist ever be satisfied with what she has made? How does one cope with the fact that whatever you create is but a temporary achievement, but never an absolute?
"I’ve worked on this album for six years, making and remaking music and video" Diana says. "Video is one of the key tools for me. You can’t stream my tracks online but you can watch videos with them on my Vimeo channel. This is one of the few platforms that allow you to re-upload videos without the loss of data, including the number of users who’ve watched it. I have re-uploaded my works dozens of times."
Guests of the evening include Diana’s collaborators Katerina Florova, Lyolya Nordic, Vesta Burkot, Anastasia Alikhina, Maria Anaskina, and Nastya Gvozdeva.