LETKISS CRIBS FEAT. ELENA RENÉE PEREIRA
Who is Elena Renée Pereira?
Substance in-between species, a hybrid flower of sorts, interlaced with a city landscape study of German, Indian and Dutch. In otherness inspired by cultivation in species, patterns and revealing anthropogenic narratives for imprint and form.
Ravi Shankar or George Harrison?
George Harrison is the man to refer to, but then everything is referential at times.
Bangalore! You are so wonderful!?
Most likely sunny, ‘Home in the City’ with change of weather in variations of sun. Shining light ‘lashes’ on an orange-brown clay surface fragmented by a plethora of trees, blossoms and coconut produce at every corner.
Five minutes in Taj Mahal are like a year in any other place?
Incomparably infinite, time polished in the materials tactility that transcends the pediments of hand carved floral imprints in marble.
What’s your favorite Satyajit Ray movie?
“Two” (TV Short) comes to mind, easily. In a cinematic frame of black and white interpreting the imagination of a child.
An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words? (Mahatma Gandhi)
In a sense of orientation a manifest for the muscle memory.
There’s always someone you want to punch?
Probably yes. I have made varied nature punching bags with flowers, patterned and embodied in surface techniques in various weights & lightness. That I practice and study in time. Variations in the materials create curiosity and more expression to the touch; imagine punching a pillow or a tree – these dexterities make it interesting to punch.
Creativity is intelligence having fun? (Albert Einstein)
In simulacrum of the ‘same’ to keep you ‘sane’ and in terms of focused at ‘play’.
When you are struggling with your creativity, what do you do?
Nothing, in solitude somewhere still, staring at the same corner for a prolonged time span until things move from light, extending and influencing different corners with prevailing patterns occurring.
Silk does for the body what diamonds do for the hand? (Oscar de la Renta)
Fascinated by the context, there is something beautiful in the variations of processing from the raw matter to its polished material sense.
Materials that have been processed a lot naturally. Like ‘sea glass’ the more polished the softer and tangible it becomes.
Do you have a favorite wallpaper pattern?
Beneath the patterns of all would be pre-digital – pre-industrial and made from the wooden blocks like we still see being made in India today. An inscription of time in flushed repeats of nature in the family of flowers in imagination next to its repeated or mirrored construction. Always with a ‘ flaw’ that defined the human imprint of making. Nowadays, it’s sad to see that machine production is designed to replicate the same ‘ flaw’ because it sells for higher prices, pretending to be handmade when it’s not.
Florals and botanicals clearly are a huge inspiration to you?
Embodied and embedded perceptions reflecting the power of mirroring images, in nature – culture debate. Revealing some sort of psychoanalytical space in representing the state of mind and our observed nature for bringing the outside in.
What is the most significant development in contemporary textiles in the past 5-10 years?
Lending properties from hybrid and indigenous knowledge with natural color appreciations and less color. Within empathy for nature of plant based materials. Zero waste cycles with ideas of natural extractions made available for the masses. Reviving leftovers in fiber and plastic and remolding them for fabrication.
Materials count?
Perceptibly everything is a compound of something, which breathes and inhales and thereby lives like we do. Accountable from the raw to the processed and in its final leftovers.
Everything is designed?
Every creature designs in a daily performance.
Palm tree or rubber tree?
The natural fan for me is many variations of palm tree swaying in continuous dance with the wind.
Do you have a favorite fragrance?
Home made essence mixtures of mostly rose, lavender, and maybe sandalwood in different concentrations at season.
Your most important piece of furniture?
A chair with double function for work and play. I simultaneously build up cushions and objects that facilitate more and other functions to a better chair. Reveals yet the most complex design challenge to one day make a perfect chair in a hammock extending.
Happiness is a small house with a big kitchen?
In selective ways it’s the space where real experimentation happens, and where the ancient campfire exists or insists on being lit daily.
Your goal in life? To go somewhere without your mobile phone?
Speculate about future material processes and make absurd material discoveries every day. Collaborate in slowness and pace from domestic daily rituals in indigenous knowledge and cultures that could plant imaginations. Usual aberration in a day is unconditionally undigital. Surreally into the future.
_Uwe Buschmann (copy editing Silvia Strauch)
