Introducing multidisciplinary artist DVDV, whose artistic expressions embody a mystical blend of physical and digital worlds, as she conveys her innermost thoughts to create deeply resonating works. Through her use of fashion, DVDV not only explores the boundaries of her own creativity but also reaches out to connect with the boundless spiritual realm, resulting in profound multi-genre artwork.
D: Could you please provide us with a description of yourself, your background, your practice, and your trajectory? Where does your pseudonym, dvdv, come from?
DV: Terminology gets tougher for me year by year. Every word has so much meaning (different for every human who is reading).
I came to terms that I cannot escape from my own expression of creativity and my emotional world. I went from poetry, doodling, photography, design, filming, video editing to making music compositions, singing, and creating these specific painted costumes that get re-awakened from abandonment and hide cryptic, unreadable meanings. From there, it went on into experiments of AR, 3D, photogrammetry, and I guess it will continue into whatever makes me curious next, with some things getting more stuck with me than others.
Over time, I realized I was just looking for the purest way of how to express my inside world. Making music gives that resonating feeling to me the most, next to painting and sketching. Also, poetry, playing with meanings.
Another thing I was stuck with since childhood is the world outside our home planet. The technology, the observations about space, the exploration of planets, moons, comets, etc. continues to blow my mind and soul. My practice? Besides the graphic design and photography education, I am a full-blast autodidact freelancer.
My trajectory: Complexity and chaos, only a higher level of "me" can possibly understand and trace.
The name DVDV originated from "dada," which besides "mama" is one of the first human words babies around the world seem to pick when they are trying to express things/contact in human language. "Dada" was the beginning for me to express myself in "human music." Remaining "uncritical" to my work, ready to fail many times and get up again, I switched the letters around to DVDV.
D: We know you have performed in various amazing cities like NYC, Prague, Warsaw, Kuwait City, Beirut, Italy, Barcelona, and Munich. In your work, we can often see immersive, futuristic, and whimsical spatiality. Do you feel that you gather information from the geographical spaces you inhabit when creating your work? If not, from where do you draw inspiration to create these fantastic, otherworldly sonic-spatial experiences?
DV: Appreciate you :) Yes, I do gather information from these places, also digitally. I always take my field recorder or small voice recorder with me to be able to record the environment. And wherever I go, it all deeply influences me. Every location on earth has a different relationship to space, the horizon, and its ground.
Every location encapsulates different atmospheres, roots, and dynamics. They all have their own complex portals to other-worlds.
D: How do you feel your work influences your personal style and vice-versa? How's your relationship with fashion?
DV: It all belongs together. My painted clothes are representatives of how I feel and how I wish others to feel with them. I do not like how most clothing, especially synthetic, feels on my skin. Since I can remember, I usually wore only things in which I felt entirely comfortable. If I like something, I start wearing it almost every day. Above these basic pieces, oversized coats with my paintings make me feel close to belonging, alignment, and make me feel like a peaceful conqueror. The doodles I have everywhere in my sketchbooks are the same and similar to the ones on the jackets, painted around the solar plexus of a human body. In the small town I was living, the development of my style was quite strange for the majority of people. I used it as a way to separate myself from their mentality about me, therefore, to find my own personal space in which I feel free.
D: Can you tell us about what inspired the creation of the amazing video for "00045 forgive [ AUJIK - mutual enchantment ]"?
DV: Sure, to keep it to the point: AUJIK was the inspiration, haha. I saw one of his first works called "YUKI_christ. - One Sunny Cloudy Day." He has this beautiful vision in which he created cybernetic trees, which are friendly beings coexisting with humans, aligning with them, even dancing, while not harming anyone. It resonated and aligned so deeply with me that I was wishing for a collaboration with him. We started collaborating in 2021.
Before this one, we had a different, even more extensive video idea for another track. We are still trying to figure out the logistics for it today. In 2022, he asked if I was open for another collaboration like this. He had the idea and asked me to go outside with his DJI Pocket 2 camera and film it. I was really excited and wanted to give the video the honor it deserves and AUJIK the respect he deserves.
The costume represented for me how it feels to fly, to be lifted, and be free. The track is about forgiveness and combining the state of forgiving with machines and humans felt quite interesting and appropriate.
D: In one of your most recent releases, "What is the opposite of ambivalence", your audiovisual work is composed of curved lines similar to human veins and spatial asterisms, all of which happen atop what seems to be a cross, almost like an illuminated star. Can you tell us where this characteristic imprint, also seen on your website, comes from?
DV: This is another thing I am deeply grateful for. This was the work of Sage Jenson, another truly genius person who entered my life in ca 2019. One day Sage was testing their simulations on a projector in their room while we were listening to music and co-working. This formation randomly appeared in the middle of the simulation process and Sage said: "Hey, this reminds me of you, let's save it." At that time I had a different cover decided for the release, but the image from Sage kept lingering inside my head. More and more, it was turning into the perfect cover for "targeting" the opposite of ambivalence. I do not really see it as some religious cross, more like a diagram and orientation point. The meaning of it still develops and changes as days go by.
D: You have been part of our community for so long, and you’ve come so far during these years… what have you been working on recently, or better asked: any exciting upcoming releases?
DV: Yeah, it's truly been a while. 5 years? o_+
There is a new track (🌟) that just released in a compilation by "Hyperlink" called "link003" together with producer and songwriter Poly Armor. Also, this other track got pretty big on Audius, so we dropped it on Distribution. It is a song about being in the tension of yearning and the perception of time while going through a long-distance relationship. Also I am taking a while to release & master this remix compilation of my album "What is the opposite of ambivalence" with 13 tracks, so many amazing people and friends.
There is one remix by CHEWLIE for example, which has already been released. The same applies to the album I am working on with Poly Armor. We are still in the mixing process... Also, we have an unfinished music video laying around that needs some investment. I can feel it in the air that there will be more collaborations happening with AUJIK, and some are already in the works ::)
All images courtesy of dvdv.
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