Victoria, you do many things – you build instruments, sound installations, are involved into sound art and noise music, we could talk all night about your numerous projects, but you have a flight soon, early this morning. So let’s start right away with some basics and see how deep we can dig. How did you got involved with sound in the first place? Was it through your studies – did you study art or media?

VS: Yes, in college I studied art, first illustration and print making and later I took a sound art class and there was a workshop by Jessica Rylan. After the workshop she said that my soldering was really good and she asked me if I wanted a job. She hired me to build synthesizers for her company Flower Electronics.

Oh wow, that’s great!

I ended up working for her for five years until I graduated, and we are still friends. I saw her a few months ago at a conference.

And how do you classify your sound works – as art or as music?

I think it is both. It is arbitrary where to draw the line, they are part of a spectrum.

Let’s go further back – how did you grow up, and did art, music, or sound play a role? How was the situation in your family home?

My mother is a refugee from Cambodia and she had me when she was 17. In the 70s she had to escape the work camps of the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian Civil War and came to America with no money. She got involved with gangs in San Francisco and met my dad. As a young mom she would party a lot and went out to dance, and listened to a lot of dance music. My earliest memory is when we were in a laundry mat (laundromat) and listened to a cassette tape. We were sharing earbuds and it was the Beijing Opera, which is very high pitched (Victoria is imitating the sound), a sound that is very uncommon in every day western life, so it stuck out and it is my first sonic memory so to say. 

No other music you have been exposed to?

Of course, I also listened to the radio. As a kid I loved to listen to Korn and darker stuff in that direction. In high school I was learning guitar and got into noise rock. There were the seeds of experimental music, and I was hungry. I would download stuff all the time a lot from LimeWire, Soulseek and other torrenting sites. IDM was also a big thing for me. My first boyfriend and I bonded over an IDM forum. Around 2007, when I finished my bachelor’s and graduated. Listening to Autechre, Aphex Twin… and that leads to more experimental territories too. Yeah.

What project did you do for your bachelor?

Modernist manicures was the last performance art piece I did. I painted peoples nails for free with these different modernist painters: Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and such abstract expressionists. I was really pissed off at the way art history is taught in school. Like this is art for art’s sake, that has its own inherent value, because supposedly it is pure – outside political thought, context or agenda. And that is bullshit! I wanted to take modernist art and do the exact opposite with it. It’s big, I made it small. It’s supposed to require no skills, I needed a lot of skill to do it, and so on. That was the last visual arts thing I did, but I think it somehow ties in with my sound art practice now.

There is a lot of performance involved in what you do, which is typical for noise music and whereas sound is invisible, performance is visual. How do you tie this together? And does the way you look in a performance play a role?

Enormously… there are a few different things. First of all – if the music is diegetic like in a film you can observe it, seeing the origin of the sound and how it is generated, I think it is compelling for people in opposition to a person behind a laptop or just twiddling knobs. And secondly – to me complete abstraction in visual art has no radical potential anymore, whereas complete abstraction in sound is uncomfortable and challenging… Confronting people with challenging sounds is important, but also making sure that the context is emphasized over and over again, e.g. my specific body, the space we are in, the people who are there. I bring attention to these specific relationships, this pile of meaning. Creating an interface between these meanings and the meaninglessness is a really rich place to be in.

When you perform there is a lot of action and colors, you seem to constantly come up with new ideas and concepts. How important is space for your sound?

I try to tailor every set to the specific space, of course creating feedback is the easiest to employ site specificity, I also try more to bring attention to architectural features of sound. If it is a reverberant room, I like to play the room. But there are also social vibes… if it is a shy crowd I like to go directly to the people and challenge their comfort zones. I like to start at the stage and then move everything off stage, just challenging preconceived notions and traditions in musical performance contexts.

Today performance and sound related content is being teached at art schools, but you taught yourself how to perform or to build electronics?

I never took any performance classes or so. I just started a band to impress a boy when I was 25. But the big thing for me is that I learned how to make the electronics. I feel like a mom towards the gear I make. If it breaks I can fix it or make a new one.

To me it is amazing that you can build electronic gear or instruments! You learned all of that when you worked for Jessica?

I learned analog electronics from Jessica. In addition to that I learned how to do micro-controllers and building Arduino-stuff. I learned how to do my own microphones, my own speakers…

But how exactly did you do that? You learned with tutorials and manuals from the internet or of friends, in workshops or how?

The seed was planted by Jessica, and some more through this class called “How to build almost anything” on digital fabrication that I attended, and the rest just followed. Just looking at things, exploring them and figuring out a plan how to make it.

Is theory or discourse e.g. in experimental music or sound art important to you?

I think it is important, to think about sound. Sound is a lot more complicated and harder to talk about than visual art, it is much more intangible. Whereas visual arts you can describe with so many words – dark, light, pink, blue… Capitalism has not really subsumed sound as it did with visual arts, though with Spotify they try hard. I think there is a lot more radical potential in sound because it hasn’t been completely ossified by language. Many discourses are just coming up like the ethics of field recording and this is all very much basics related to the abstraction in sound, but there are so many other related questions where a discourse has yet to be unfolded… sound is a lot more related to feeling… I am passionate about thinking about sound and talking about it, yes!

What about your artist name – you use Victoria Shen but also Evicshen tion. Eviction means being forced to leave – usually a house. Is it related to leaving one’s comfort zone when listening to your music?

That is a good explanation! Eviction is a huge topic in San Francisco at the moment. But the basic explanation is the combination of my name Victoria Shen with my middle name Elizabeth. Funny enough it is a legal term and it is a nasty term, that’s why my t-shirts have this bloody metal style, so it simply plays with music and lifestyle.

Let’s talk about your turntablism trio with Maria Chavez and Mariam Rezaei, with whom you performed at donaufestival or at Unsafe+Sounds in Vienna… How would you describe your part of the performance?

Within this turntablism project I try to highlight more the poetic edges of the objects I create, the innovative gestures I do with turntablism, that I haven’t seen before in this context.

How did you meet each other in the first place and how did you come up with the idea of collaboration?

It was during the pandemic when I moved into a house and had again space to work on things. I had all these ideas in my head. One of them was to make acrylic nails that had styluses in them. It was a bit of a joke, because I did not understand how women manage to work on anything with these long nails? I thought maybe I could use them to scratch and play records with them. And I made a video of the needle nails, with the styluses in them with which I was manipulating a record. When it came out on social media it circulated a lot in music and art scenes. Eventually people were sending it to Maria Chavez and then she reached out to me. In the chat she mentioned that she was on a podcast with Mariam Rezaei recently and that we should all meet and have a conversation. We then had a zoom meeting that was three and a half hours long and published under Mariams podcast. In the course of the conversation we thought: why don’t we perform together this would be amazing. And very soon after we met for the first time in Glasgow to play Counterflows festival and the next day we played Rewire Festival.

What did you talk about, do you have an example?

For instance Maria had mentioned that I should get a lawyer because people would come after me, cause for a young women out there who is doing challenging stuff it is a hostile environment. Only a year after that Beyonce released a promotional video with British Vogue where she had needles in her nails. And it was crazy for me seeing that… I wrote to the video director and they even admitted that they should have credited me, and in the end they added a credit. Maria just commented: I told you! 

How and when did you get interested in vinyl or the turntable? 

I did not grow up with vinyl, I had tapes. But when my record came out in 2020 I was making speakers at that moment and I thought: What if I turn the sleeve of the record into a speaker, so people can listen to the record through the album cover art? I made a limited edition and it was really well received. This made me think of the possibilities of vinyl which I never really thought about. The next thing with vinyl was the needle nails, then I made some cutup records splicing different records together like Christian Marclay and others did before. Or I made records with silicone and resin which I could duplicate as often as I wanted and I could embed objects into it. I was also working on pitch with the different speeds of turntables. Then, eventually I wanted to make my own turntable.

When you say that, it sounds like it is the easiest thing to make a turntable… but it is not.

Well it is just a motor basically and with an Arduino you can change the speed: make it really fast, or you can make it go backwards, or very slow. I was also making self scratching turntables, or a modular with a Eurorack module (insert photo). Like Détournement of the Situationists, turning the turntable into something according to your needs. Or I turned the record into a speaker that is vibrating on the turntable, generating the sound. It is not super loud, but when the needle hits certain parts of the speaker there is a feedback.

Where do you build all this stuff?

My workshop is in my kitchen/ living room in my tiny apartment. [Victoria shows me a photo of her workshop] 

It seems that in the art world working with dead media is popular at the moment… What did you find out through your experimentation with vinyl?

Well I appreciate it because it is a material, it is a physical thing. If you want it you can make records with very few resources. And you can transduce very easily with a horn and a cactus needle for example. Like a speaker and a microphone have the same components, and a record and a record player also share components too, that’s very elegant. You could do a locked groove footwork record very easily digitally. If your computer broke you can not remake your computer. I am really into this idea of accessibility, with analog technology you can rebuild stuff easily. I think the record is going to outlast a lot of digital things.

Maybe for you it is easy, for most people I assume it is not. Do you also do workshops to share your skills?

Yes. If there is funding please connect me and I am happy to do a workshop in Vienna!

In academia and the experimental/abstract turntablism it seems they completely neglect one if its main roots: the hip hop turntablism. They don’t give respect and credits for this. Mariam is the only artist I know that also incorporates the classic hip hop techniques in her experimental turntablism practice. What’s wrong with the people in the art context?

I must think of John Cage and reported situations with blues musicians… There is such an elitist or even racist exclusionary attitude, or maybe it’s gatekeeping and insecurities. It is a damn shame, because Hip Hop is one of the last terrains in pop where there is room for experimentation. Hip Hop is using many avant-garde techniques and strategies like sampling or cutting. How is academia continue to support themselves – having people paying tuition – if they continue to be so narrow-minded? It is a bullshit attitude.

You were also on tour with clipping.… how was that? They are experimental for a hiphop formation, but they are not Dälek, still doing the traditional rap too with beats more towards electronica, and sometimes a bit of distortion. Though more experimental than the hip hop mainstream. How did you get on tour with them and how did your music fit in there? How was your sound received in a hiphop context?

An agency reached out to me saying they wanted to tour with me in Europe. That was very exciting to me. But then the agency fucked it up somehow and did not write me again. So then I was contacting them directly asking if they know the agency and if it was going to happen. They already thought that I was on board. The tour was planned together with Zebra Katz, but unfortunately also because of the agency not responding Zebra Katz canceled and did instead a tour in the US. But because of that I could be in the van with them and everything was very nice and simple. They are so funny and so kind, we had such a good time! I have so many good memories. My music was well received, people were very receptive. I think it is because of my performance and the visual aspects of it. In Europe the crowd was very mixed and diverse. Though also in the US audiences became more diverse, also in noise. Colorwise but also on the gender front it has gotten a lot better.

There are more female identified arists in noise music these days, but how is it for you? Is gender still an issue in noise or sound art?

There is some weirdness, that’s for sure. It has improved immensely, especially listening to stories that Mariam and Maria went through… this DJ thing seems to be especially hostile, but also in general there were a lot more setbacks. I think at the moment it even helps to be a female.

Just at the moment and just in some contexts… because in the past year and decades many women put effort into changing the situation.

Yes, because there has been injustice since forever. And it is barely scratching the surface, even though there are more women, most still don’t get paid as much, and there are still fewer women who get recognized in music history or in institutional contexts. I am thinking of Maryanne Amacher, it is really unfair what happened to her and many of her generation. And we still platform a lot more white males… nothing against white males, except for patriarchy. I think a lot of the interesting stuff is generated by female identified artists.

Coming to an end – since I have not been to the US for decades: How is the situation in San Francisco at the moment? I heard that it is really hard to get affordable housing and that there are a lot of homeless people.

The area has always been very accepting of outcasts and freaky people and that is why I feel most comfortable in San Francisco. But I have to say that this influx of tech people made it a lot less friendly and interesting. And if you meet those Burning Man people there is just nothing behind the mushrooms, it is sad. As far as I can remember there have always been homeless people but it got worse, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. You can’t leave anything in your car, cause your car window will get smashed. To me this is a perfect sign why the tech utopia does not exist and will never exist. Their entire attitude is anti-humanist, not necessarily the single individuals, but their impact as an organization or community of interests. Most of them are just not empathetic people, just very basic people.

But hopefully there is an interesting music scene?

There are still freaks who make it happen and younger people moving in and creating scenes. Mills College (the first women’s college in US) had a positive influence on the music scene as it had a graduate program on experimental music. Pauline Oliveros, John Bischoff or Zeena Parkins where professors there. But recently the music department was sold, due to the merging with Northeastern University, it is very sad. There are venues and labels of course like Rat Skin and Oakland has a lot of cool stuff too. There is something going on almost every night. I am happy there, but the past couple of years I have barely been there. I am traveling 8 months of the year, this year it is the same. This year I will be touring in Australia, New Zealand, China or Japan. To Europe I have already been seven times this year.

Is this not stressful or even bad for the health to tour so much?

[laughing] It is bad for my body, but I am having a lot of fun. I try to do yoga every day, that keeps me from drinking too much.

What do you enjoy most in working with sound or performing noise?

The complete freedom! And that it shows you how arbitrary the rules of “music” are. In terms of simulacrum or Disneyland – Disneyland exists and it is considered a fantasy world, to convince you that reality is not a fantasy world. But in reality all fantasies are hallucinations. We are all just interpreting data streams and then agreeing on something. Without getting too metaphysical – doing noise is so great because there are no rules, you experience sound and music so much richer and deeper. Sound is a mysterious medium because it is invisible and intangible but we know it exists, it’s like the wind that you can’t see but you notice its effect on things, a phenomenological mystery. You look outside a window and you can’t see the wind but you can see it pushing the branches of a tree around. It is the most hard to pin down medium. Sound is literally volume, it takes up space. Sound is a massless volume in a sense. To me it is like sculpting experiences. Text is over, painting is over – sound is not!

This seems like a perfect final statement. Thank you Victoria!