‘Click Interview’ with Autopsia: ‘There Is No Longer Any Possibility For A Rebirth Of The Individual’

Autopsia can be easily considered as one of the true pioneers of Industrial music. The project always remained a rather enigmatic collective featuring different members dealing with multiple forms of arts. They released an impressive number of music productions, which have been mainly characterized by Industrial bombast, but still with more Cinematographic and Neo-Classic influences. The project remains very prolific and already released a few productions this year. I got in touch with core member Radovan Milinković.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: We all know Autopsia ever started in London while you later on got relocated to Prague. I think it’s interesting to know the impact a city of London -and its citizens, nightlife, art galleries & musea plus music had on your artistic activities? And what has been the impact/influence of Prague, which is a famous artistic centre?

Autopsia: It would be wrong to think that Autopsia ‘originated in one country’, or a state. One might say that beginnings of Autopsia had a cartography, which included several countries, but it’s better to say, several cities. From the very beginning Autopsia didn’t belong to any state system. Its history is a nomadic one.

Q: Autopsia makes me often think to artists -like painters, who go through different artistic periods in their career. That’s especially true for the music compostions so how do you look back to these different periods and influences? 

Autopsia: The composer seems to me as a gardener who was given to cultivate a smaller or larger part of land; his task is to harvest, to order, and to bind, in short, to transform that which grows on that part of land and the land itself into the garden.

Q: Autopsia is now active for more than 40 years so you for sure have seen a lot of changes/evolutions, but I’m really wondering what you think about the (r)evolution of social media, music streaming etc… which in my opinion are a bit like the antithesis to true artistic creation? 

Autopsia: It would seem that societies have lost their capacity for self-regulation. This capacity is now in the hands of the multinationals… There is no longer any possibility for a rebirth of the individual. A desire for hyper-centralization is the result of technology. Mass culture presupposes a failure of making-oneself-interesting, that is to say, of making-oneself-better-than the-other.

Q: Death has been always a predominant theme in the work of Autopsia, a theme of reflection and creation. How did the perception of death and the artistic creation around this theme evolved throughout the years?

Autopsia: Death is the founder of consciousness, and therefore of political awareness. Isn’t death no longer visible because everything is dead? Because we live in civilization of death? Our society is one of the few societies to have evacuated the question of death. We could even say that one of the major contributions of the Industrial Age was its disappearance.

Q: I often got the feeling Autopsia is a kind of antidote to the ‘establishment’; devoid of influences and commercial purposes or fashion trends, but a ‘total project’ that stands on its own. But how do you see AUTOPSIA? And do you feel related with other artists and/or artistic movements?

Autopsia: Autopsia never coincide completely with stereotypes of institutional forms of culture and media consumption, the activity is directed toward exclusive and hermetic way of expression. Autopsia is interested in self-controlled, programmed ‘personality’ –completely aware of its own capacities and its place in the world. The individuality means the right to have one’s own identity at disposal.

Different aspects of 20th Century Avant-Garde became, after 2000, a main interest of Autopsia. Avant-Garde today is not only an experience of the past and from the past, but also the subject, that is, the object, of history.

Q: You can look back at an impressive and prolific career, but you don’t stop to create and compose. What keeps this artistic fire alive and how would you analize the evolution of your work from the late 70s till today? What are the further plans?

Autopsia: There is a creative flow, but the true achievement is peacefulness, stillness, it is mine only, and one cannot dispossess nor trade with it. Peace and presence of mind are the real results of creative work which is controlled by the author.

This is the time in which Autopsia renovates, re-establishes itself. When you work for a long time then the creative motivation restores itself in cycles, as seasons of the year. When you say ‘I’, it seems it is something stable and permanent, but nonetheless you change along with what you do. It seems it is the same, but it changes