INTERVIEW WITH ARMANDO ROSALES RIVERO

I’ve been wanting to ask Armando the following questions and figured I’d do it “next time I was in NYC.” Well, we all know what happened. So instead of asking Armando these questions via Instagram, where we frequently comment on each other’s images, I thought it best to have an interview-type of structure where I could pose my questions and he could then answer them—or not. This interview took place between July and September of 2020. You can follow Armando via his website and via Instagram.

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SMS: You’ve been a musician since 2002. How did you get into drums? When, and how, did you become interested in the visual form and in creating objects?

ARR: Drums came into my life by accident, my older brother was already playing guitar and told me something like: we should get a drumset, I answered: yes! but…who’s gonna play them? he said: you! I said: what? As you know drums are expensive, even the cheapest ones at that moment didn’t seem like an option. One rainy night my father, grandfather and an uncle were involved in a car crash, they gathered some money to pay for the damages and the other part rejected the money and started rambling and threatening before leaving the spot, nothing happened. After some time I broke my right leg badly, and while I was in recovery my brother and I manage to get those car crash funds for my first drumset.

Studio/house, Mexico City, 2020.

Intuition was a big part of it, somehow my relationship with language was very interiorized, I wasn't very talkative as far I remember, at least for the first half of my life, so drums became a substitute for that. Music and drumming for me worked as an accelerator of everything, suddenly I felt more awake, grounded, and confident to express things. Maybe one year after I started drumming, street art hooked me briefly, and from that moment I started drawing and building small sculptures. I did not have any education in the arts, besides whatever I learned in high school (that made things easier) and I only took drum classes for like a year or so. At that moment my drive for making was rooted in not knowing, my over-the-top teenage angst needed a lot of outlets.

SMS: Do you think of the drum set, and percussion instruments, as art objects in and of themselves, and if so, how?

ARR: There is a lot of beauty and creativity in drums and percussion instruments across history, it is a tricky question because nowadays you have big companies, and a lot of small boutique builders but the idea, in the end, is to sell drums, but imagine this, there is someone way before our friend J.C [presumably, B.C.], and that person for the first time hits something and makes a sound, and then repeats. An object defined by the user, and by whoever experiences the operation. That moment was crucial and still is, but most of these processes have been trivialized and diminished in contemporary culture, these objects are mostly consumer goods, but even in the worst cases they continue to carry a history and an energy that is beyond language and goes through our bodies, art is related to this and not the other way around.

SMS: Do you see your interest in sound and drums related to your art?

ARR: Yes, although I’m not a huge fan of sound art, (let's say that I’m just probably not informed enough), the visual is on the top of everything and most people remain immutable in front of a still or moving image (whatever image means). Imagine that you are walking in a dark alley and suddenly and see a Cy Tomblyesque painting, it might be interesting or it may not and you move on. Now picture the same situation and instead of the painting you hear Russolo’s Intonarumori’s sound for 3 seconds, now a heart attack or even a more visceral reaction can be your experience. In perception, all the senses are mixed, but sound for me is the most feral one. In my work sound does not have an isolated presence, but I have used it combined with other devices to trigger some embedded behaviors and preconceived responses that a lot of us have.

On drums specifically, I have a few performance pieces related, including a derived album called Imaginary Duets where most of the tracks in the album are made freely and improvised, with only one person other than me present during the recording, under the esoteric premise that just one person’s presence in silence can alter the outcome of my playing.

Imaginary Duets, album cover image.

I grew up without dividing or separating things that much, that was a key factor in how I approach everything, I try to incorporate all in my processes as a way to celebrate my heterogeneous background.

SMS: This is really fascinating for many reasons, but I’ll give you two. One, many musicians, and music teachers, will tell us that music does not exist without an audience, but I find this hard to believe. Music can be meditative. There is a recent book, “Music: A Subversive History,” by Ted Gioia, that argues that this “audience” theory is not necessarily true, and gives as example a person singing while they shower. There is no audience, so why do we do it? Secondly, most visual artists love to detail how being an artist is a solo experience, that one is tied to a studio and one works in solitude. You seem to be testing both of these points I have just described, no?

ARR: I think that there is a classic service problem here because for a huge amount of people music is entertainment or at least fits into that role, my relationship with music as a performer for the last 5 years or so is based on being alone, variations on private performances, and sporadical collaborations with bands, or composers. This reminds me of a drumming based piece commissioned for a show here a few years ago, it consisted in setting up the drums, improvise for and time between 0 and 8 minutes, unset the drums, rest for half an hour and repeat until the day ended, the title of that piece tittle is Stationary Solo Tour. The curators were concerned about the fact that the piece may only be seen by one person besides them, I told them this piece is not about the public, I was playing with (to) the room, a crazy reverberant squash court.

Studio/house, Mexico City, 2020.

The performer might be affected without an audience, and similarly, the musician that is used to playing in bands without a band, or bands without an audience, being alone playing in the traditional sense is considered practice, but maybe if you compare the figure of the artist in the studio with the composer we can have something more balanced. For me playing alone is meditative, but if I can get into flow is closer to speaking in tongues or channeling something than anything else. Maybe if you think of the artist as a composer, the studio assistants are the musicians? Do they have their own band? Haha, I will stop here.

SMS: Your “speaking in tongues” and meditative comments remind me of the great Milford Graves. Which makes me want to ask, is there a difference, for you, between being a drummer and being a percussionist?

ARR: That Milford, what a force of nature! I think there is no difference, the drumset is an economized percussion ensemble, but the language can be very different across both, I’ve tried to not see those limits. I was born in a strange town called Cabimas, in a state known for a big lake that is connected to the Caribbean sea and oil exploitation. Twice annually there is a celebration of a Black Saint called San Benito de Palermo, a massive dance procession lead by drum ensembles, Los Chimbamgueles, which are a Venezuelan musical-theatrical synthesis of the diverse African cultures that arrived in that area due to slavery and the slave trade. That event lasts for a whole day while moving through a section of the city where my childhood house is located. Being part of that experience so many times is one reason I do not want to have limits, but also to the fact that the Afro-Caribbean musical tradition was a part of my drum learning process. I liked how drummers were encouraged to embrace theses genres while mixing them with more mainstream ones. In fact, there is a lot of great drummers that come from that State.

San Benito de Palermo painting, unknown author/date.

SMS: You were born in Venezuela and now live in Mexico City. Do you travel a lot? How has the move from Venezuela to Mexico City impacted how you think and work? Is there a city you would prefer to live in? 

ARR: I moved from Venezuela five years ago, I only had travel outside the country once before I came to Mexico City. It was very strange, I was planning to leave but without a destination, when I was a bit more detached and with most of my friends already out, or planning to leave, the option of Mexico appeared. Since I’ve been here, I have visited a few countries, way more than my usual rate, but not enough to consider myself as someone that travels a lot.

The impact of moving out was very profound, and understanding myself as transient unleashed an urgency to make that sometimes bordered on the unhealthy. I naturally started to analyze everything, comparing similar underlying patterns in both places, while trying to see my work beyond the national specificities but without negating them and embracing contradictions along the way. However, I have to admit the relationship with politics and my work, and I’m still uncomfortable with that. 

I don't have a favorite city to live in, but let's say that I like to value my basic needs (you know running water, electricity, some public safety) but I'm prepared if those can't be covered. Sometimes I still refer to my work process as a survival mode, that comes from the idea that everything shifts constantly and that has led me to acutely train improvisation in any field, and if necessary, strip down the work until just my will is left.

SMS: You seem to be describing a form of self-sufficiency. If so, this is a concept that I believe is quite alien to many U.S. based or U.S. born artists. Do you think this “self-sufficiency” as I am calling it is somewhat influenced by a Latin-American type of thinking? I say this because I often think that my having lived in Mexico and Brazil, and the Texas-Mexico border, introduced me to people who made do with whatever was at hand, rather than wait for some grand God or government to provide it. What do you think? 

ARR: Tough subject, different situations raise different people, whether it is a country, city, school, neighborhood, or family. To set an example, the concept of an art grant powered by a government was foreign to me until maybe 6 years ago. There are other factors at play but the fact that the idea of the universal basic income is gaining strength seems scary to me. Maybe I’m just too traumatized, but I expect reliance solely on government to be harmful, distrust is a general feeling for me in that matter.

I find myself in another context now. But still, in Latin America, it is very different but somehow still the same. Some of my ways are changing, but I like harvesting that self-sufficiency, not an easy task at all. But a few interesting contradictions arise: it’s easy to get greedy with more options, but one can also become more dependent. Resourcefulness has a double edge; it can be satisfying but it can also be isolating.

Imagine a system that has everything against the people and wants you to do less and less, and/or wants you to serve, maybe one’s desire to do something against those odds stops being an option and instead it becomes a way of being.

I’m learning to think beyond what is possible for me, so let’s see where that takes me.

SMS: Very interesting. Speaking of “alternate ways,” I once heard Nate Wood, drummer for Kneebody, say that he sometimes thinks of alternate ways to play notes on the drums. For example, he will think of a sentence and play the words and sentence as he thinks they would sound on the drums. Do you have any similar approaches or practices?

ARR: The cadence in speaking is very complex, I have seen few musicians try to replicate similar processes, part of my indiscipline rests on not having formalized practice systems.

Although I found myself playing while listening to audiobooks, in fact…(this might sound like a confession), but I did most of my Art & Law Program readings last year via audiobooks while practicing on a drum pad, and in that case, it was very effective because it helped me keep myself alert and in a high energy state in order to be able to absorb this new knowledge [law] that was vastly far from my usual reach. It worked like an accelerator pedal. Just imagine improvising on paradiddles while listening to Texas vs Johnson (haha). A couple of months ago I was drumming to some Seneca, and in this case I did it to match the mood and to pick up on that flow, accompanying and trying to predict the climax in some sentences, and sometimes repair some collateral damages. 

SMS: This is really, really fascinating. Not only did you “listen” to court cases and interpret them as musical notations—this is beautiful!—but it also seems like you were simultaneously both the audience and performer.

ARR: I want to try that with another person reading and me playing a drumset to see and hear an actual cadence as that person reads those cases out loud. In a moment that something goes out the door stays open for a while, so maybe something can come inside. Now I remember I was reading too. I’m glad that it worked; a unique situation needed a new study method. I’m very interested in those mixed positions. Just imagine the film, the Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and the ending scene but instead all the performers are now the same, even the skeleton and the horse. 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, ending scene.

SMS: I’ve noticed that you use and play what some, and certainly some traditional drummers, would think are odd instruments. How did this come about and why this approach?

ARR: I think part of my approach these days is not far out, but I have tried to keep it that way, for example, I still like to use a drumset. Most of what I play comes out of the variety of music that I like and have played over the years. I never felt comfortable trying to put myself in genres, I’ve learned a few genres as part of being in a drum culture, but mostly I try to puzzle them, what I mostly get is somehow nutritious but still semi-digested and full of mood swings.

SMS: We’ve discussed other drummers before, like Dafnis Prieto. What drummers or musicians do you find influential to your work?

ARR: Dafnis is so great, not a fan of bursts of name dropping, but here’s an odd short one: Billy Cobham, Tony Oxley, Han Bennink, Horacio el Negro Hernandez, Tony Allen, John Theodore, non-drummers: Meredith Monk, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Phillip Glass, Robert Fripp, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Irakere as a whole, I can go on forever on this one.

SMS: Similarly, what visual artists, visual makers, or thinkers do you find influential to your work?

ARR: Lately, I’ve been blatantly slippery and less attracted to respond to these types of questions, I caught myself using them to get someplace else, so let's see where it takes me. I often get impressed by the gaps in my art history knowledge (haha) maybe because of a lack of an art undergrad but also, I’m not a great consumer of art; I tend to get very saturated very quickly. Don’t get me wrong I like art and I’ve been getting more comprehensive and sensible about many practices in the last 8 years or so, but I probably listen or get hooked by music or music-related content maybe 10 times more than visual art.

During the lockdown I have been dissecting some things about my practice and some not so current but still active art loops, an overelaboration and the demanded translation of art into spoken or written language seems to be less and less reliable, somehow I see it as filtering something but just keeping the worst part of it. I’m somehow interested in how philosophy works but also in the unclear as opposing forces, for me there’s a driving push and pull in that it can only result in a misunderstanding that I see as a source of energy.

SMS: I keep distinguishing between “drumming” and “visual art,” but I think I am doing this structurally more than ideologically, which is to say because I am interested in how the two relate or do not, and how you relate them. Do you think of them as separate practices and discourses?

ARR: In my life, they come from the same place, one got pushed out first but then unburied the other, they are twins, they have managed to live on their own but they are inseparable and in constant feedback. This question reminds me of something that I experienced a couple months ago during breathing practice, I was lying down holding my hands and while I was drifting off it felt as if my left hand was being held by someone else, instantaneously I said, “shit! who’s this creep?” and after a while, I slowly came back just to realize that we were the same. Most times I get repelled by the constant urgency of categorizing everything and within creative endeavors that seem more frequent lately, maybe it does more harm than good, who knows.

SMS: Seems like some good drugs! Seriously though, I agree with the categorization in regard to the arts, but not with regard to law. Law has to have categories in order to function; art does not, and should not, as we’ve been describing. The problem though, with art having no borders, is that we quickly get what we have now: everything is art! Artists describe themselves as being “activists”, “writers”, “educators”, “protesters”, all at once, and so on. Why? Why do they have to categorize themselves according to pre-established norms and concepts? Why isn’t “artist” enough? And why does art have to be and do everything? Mike Kelley once said that people expect too much from art and life. I think he was right.

ARR: Man breathing is a hell of a drug haha. I believe in hybridized practices, but there’s a lot here let me break it down. One thing that induced me into the Art/Law relationship is that they are opposing forces (most times). I prefer to flow between interests, but that does not mean that all those have separated tags. I still find having just one box of junk more interesting to deal with than 10 smaller ones. Categorizing that much seems to work like both a commercial tag and a bureaucratic requirement, one that may be powered by academia amongst other structures, and consciously or not the desire to belong takes over quickly. They work as rankings or dividers both in life and within a drawer. If I expect nothing from seeing art I can then be surprised or delighted if something happens.

SMS: Are you working on any new projects, and if so, how will they take form and how will they be made public?

ARR: Yes, I have managed to develop a few ideas in the last months, new ones and some others that needed a lift, but to take them to full completion is very complicated due to the current situation, I assume that your question on the form and how they will be exhibited relates to that. I've been thinking a lot before Covid on private experiences, limited social interactions, and the individuation of audiences. Sometimes “new” conditions, like Covid, come as no surprise to me. I still believe in physicality and presence so I’m not planning to go digital any time soon. I get the potentiality in the format for other artists, and I’m clear that the conditions before this were far from ideal but damn we also need so much less screen time.

Perseguirse (Selfchase), inked concrete, raffia rope, plaster, 27cm x 18 cm x 26 cm, 2020.

SMS: I completely understand. I see more and more people now walk their dogs in nature with the dog leash on one hand and their cell phones in the other, staring at the phones intently and giving these objects more attention than their surroundings or their dogs. Why even bother having a pet?

ARR: Animals are both fascinating and a lot of work if you have them. I would throw my cell phone in the trash if it wasn't for my family and friends abroad and some work-related tasks. Normalizing the production of digital content as art without any physical support, that might be opening a weird gate, not for art itself as that has already been done, but rather on what certain power structures consider is necessary to make art possible, and that’s where it gets scary, especially in times like these. 

SMS: What do you think is “wrong” with the so-called “art world” at the moment? What is one thing you wish more artists would do more of or less of?

ARR: Maybe I already dropped other hints before, and this is not new at all but I think that a lot is categorizing, although I totally support difference, groups are getting more specific and somehow against each other, the polarizing factors exist but they are being stimulated and fired up from the top, is not an easy scenario, reactivity must be reframed, I have no plans or advice on this situation, to be honest, but to me specificities have us more separated from each other than ever. There is a lot of trust in language.

Maybe it might be interesting if we as artists try a bit less to translate ourselves into language for a while (haha). A not precisely silent word strike. As you see I took a considerable amount of time to answer this interview [It took Armando about one month to answer the first set of questions], which clearly says more about my relationship with words than whatever I manage to write. A lot going on and also not. Odd times.

SMS: You know it: Here comes the usual interview question. What are you reading? What are you listening to? And are there any good films you recommend?

ARR: I haven’t been able to focus that much on books lately, just zapping picking them up from the bookshelf and reading for a few pages and throw them around. Quite a salad, Le Bon, Kirkegaard, Seneca, Vila-Matas, and I’ve been watching some talks on Lacan, Winnicott, Preciado, Epicurus, Borges, and a lot on the gut microbiome, mineral depletion, bunions, fasting, breathing, sodium and magnesium (haha). I haven't been watching movies lately and I’m not clear on why. But I just rewatched, The Landscape and The Mist, 12 Monkeys, and Waking Life, and probably some Netflix crap that I can't remember. I have been listening to stuff more, such as You Won't Get What You Want, from Daughters, Earth: Hex; or Printing the Infernal Method, Art Zoyd: Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités, Brutus from a band from Belgium solid live performances, Zael and Ardor: Devil is fine, Dafnis Prieto Big Band: Back to sunset, and Las rítmicas 5 and 6 from Amadeo Roldán, and my own tinnitus.

SMS: Thank you, Armando. Lots of great ideas and questions here that I know readers will surely appreciate. Cheers!