GREBNELLAW: On Creativity
Marianna
Do you have a routine for entering into a creative headspace?
Grebnellaw
Play hard. Have fun. Getting onboard the creative rollercoaster is easy, getting off is harder, but you can always jump. I meet with friends, scribble a few notes on a piece of paper and make sketches of monsters and other ideas I want to bring to life.
The internet is magic, you can click your way to heaven, preferably in bed with lots of coffee. Clicking is magic by both todays and medieval standards. Afterward, your head will feel like a pressure cooker of creative bombs.
Marianna
Do you have habits you've built for yourself to foster creativity?
Grebnellaw
Research. Reading. Watching images of Inflatable objects, bubbles, spheres, and subatomic particles inspire me. I am emotionally attracted to wearing huge inflatable shapes. Feeling big and soft makes me feel powerful and ready for anything.
I’m also fascinated by the fact that the human breath has the ability to blow up gigantic forms. I like how a smooth biomorphic shape can contain a person's breath for days. It's just intriguing.
Marianna
Where do you think ideas come from?
Grebnellaw
The brain is a cosmic cellphone bombarded with calls from the primordial energy of the Big Bang. It’s the movements of atoms and molecules! Ideas are not generated by the brain but rather received from the endless universes out there. But I believe what makes us open to receiving an idea is because we have a problem that needs a solution. Interacting with others is the best way to come in contact with this energy.
Marianna
What does creativity mean to you?
Grebnellaw
That I can look into a wall and feel it morphing into a warped, strange shape beyond anything I have ever seen before. It gives me the power to transform my life, myself, and my surroundings.
I can break down my body into subatomic particles and then put myself back again. Fueled by a desire to redefine life, I can manipulate matter, refuse hierarchies, and jump beyond the status quo.
Marianna
So many creatives are pivoting and finding ways to adjust their creative process during the quarantine.
How have you been channeling your creativity during this time?
Grebnellaw
Quarantine affected me very much as I went to Spain for a short visit but I am still here in a little town in Andalucía 4 months later. I intended to work on a large public installation named ‘Supersave the World Art-Pop Action’ but due to the Coronavirus, it was canceled.
While being in Spain, the project shifted into a series of interviews/performances on Instagram with artists from different cities in the world. I was very fortunate to be in lockdown under good circumstances and could transform it into an opportunity. I thought it was very rewarding to work with the limited number of objects I had in my suitcase and what I could find in the house where I was living. I discovered I work well around fewer choices and this was also the idea when I a few years ago decided only to work with the red and white color code. A sort of reduction, a minimalism away from the overwhelming choices of capitalism.
Marianna
How have you been creating in the current cultural climate?
Grebnellaw
Well, clearly I discovered the virus is in charge of this planet and we don’t really know how it is gonna run it.
Until we know more we just have to twist around like human rubber dolls and perfect our survival skills. Humans are busy taking the power from the gods so they can reshape the world, society, and themselves and I’m not an exception. My population of inflatable subatomic beings will take over and create superabundance through multiplication. We possess the infinite cornucopia.
Marianna
What unexpected turns did your life take to lead you to become who you are today?
Grebnellaw
A trauma.
Marianna
What sources of inspiration do you use to foster creativity in your work?
Grebnellaw
The surrealist game ‘Exquisite Corpse’ is kind of an early A.I. that explores the mystique of accident as a collective collage of words or images. It mixes old ideas to create something new. It always works to give you something comical, strange, and fresh.
I love to meet people and I also find it inspiring to extend these conversations to plants and animals. I think you should talk to them directly about climate change and the Coronavirus. Non-human conversations open up some pretty interesting territory. My list of inspirations would be very long but I am really into Nanotechnology since it offers many exciting solutions for mankind.
Marianna
What creative projects are you most proud of?
Grebnellaw
Actually the project that is nearest and dearest to my heart came about after a few not so successful endeavors. About five years ago I started to work much more collaboratively with my stage performances. It started to become extremely exciting every time because you never really knew what was going to happen.
We were like a weird baby army of nano freaks exploring gender, sexual orientation, and just anything that popped into our heads. Anyway, I pushed it all the way so that on one grand glorious night we were 25 people on stage. It was incredibly challenging to create all the costumes but yet a very valuable experience.
For me, it also was very profound because since I was a child I wanted to create a whole population and spread them all over the world. First I had turned them into drawings and after that, I wanted to activate them through music. So in the end what became of all this was the art and music project Grebnellaw which is really everything I hoped for. It is like a fertility ritual where all the monsters come to life. Miss Corona put it all on hold, but we will be back rawer and crazier than ever!
Marianna
How do you make sense of chaos in your life?
Grebnellaw
Ride out the storm. Making sense out of chaos is basically living.
Marianna
What advice would you offer to those struggling with creative blocks?
Grebnellaw
It’s normal, nothing to be freaked out about. You could perhaps become the world’s first idealess artist. It's almost more interesting and difficult to not have one single idea than to have a hundred. If you can create a career out of it, even better. But if you really need a quick fix, you can steal somebody else’s idea and tweak it into something fresh.
In any case, I don’t believe there are any new ideas, it's more like there are new combinations of old concepts. You can also offer to help to work on somebody else’s project. It will free you from the pressure of being creative and focus more on enjoying.
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About GREBNELLAW:
GREBNELLAW is the cosmic seed sown in early spring that brings to life new beings, forms, plants, animals, and humans. It’s an ongoing creative process that uses pop music, visual art, and performative elements to address contemporary issues. It also acts as a liberating force from social pressure and prejudice with ad-hoc performances that happen in the moment. The performances are site-specific, uses the “three-minute-pop song” format and a red and white color code to communicate an easily recognizable style.
As a visual artist, performer, or singer/songwriter Nosslo-Grebnellaw Aniluap has presented collaborative works in the following contexts: Tokyo (Mejii Shrine), New York (Guggenheim Museum, MoMA), San Francisco (SFMOMA, New Langton Arts), Buenos Aires (Teatro Jorge Luis Borges), Hong Kong (Hong Kong Studio Theatre), Paris (Fondation Cartier ‘Les Soirées Nomades’, Auditorium of the Louvre, Palais de Tokyo), Rome (The Coliseum, Rialtosantambrogio, Fanfulla 101, Forte Fanfulla, Circolo degli Artisti), London (Hysteria, Vogue Fabrics) Berlin (King Kong Club, Fab Lab, Kim Bar), Shanghai (Bank Gallery).In 2010 Wallenberg contributed with costume designs for a presentation of Edgar Varèse’s music, named Varèse 360° at the Holland Festival, and in 2013 she designed costumes for Beethoven’s Fidelio at the National Opera de Lyon and at the Edinburgh International Festival.