Wild Anima: "Since I started creating sounds and exploring my voice which was around 2011, although the wish to do it was there before, I have always felt something with energy and a connection to another way of experiencing the world. I knew that there was something extra to be explored, around sharing energy and the power of presence. The healing that can occur through this process, both for audience and performer. Through the years I explored this while playing live shows in a dream pop duo called Wild and The Fox, but was keeping this to myself. I wasn't able to put a name on it. Until very recently when I started developing my current ongoing research on emotions and unveiled the processes of the Heart's electromagnetic fields and how this communicates with the environment and others around us. It is a mix of a lot of different influences and I feel that in a way I have been doing this research for a very long time.

I sort of see the whole body of my music as a continuum and would say that, all of it encompasses these qualities. Especially in the way I use my voice and craft textures with field recordings. But essentially for the past 3 years I have been developing conceptual work that is related to the power of our heart organ and how this translates with our connection to nature and the Earth as a whole. All this developed while preparing and doing an artist residency in Iceland at the Fish Factory in the eastern fjords. I experienced a form of awakening in the months leading up to this residency on the heart's electromagnetic capacities and its function on our sensorial capacities, I feel that it is sort of a sixth sense. This knowledge was exposed to me by Stephen Buhner's book „The secret teachings of plants“. This literally changed my perspective on life and the way I interpret and create music in a totally expanded way.

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Following the residency I released an album called Alkhemy which is a term that translates just that. Our heart is an oscillator processing electromagnetic frequencies in our environment and is a way for us to communicate and understand or I would rather say, "innerstand", the world and the aliveness that surrounds us. Once we understand this communication process this allows us to see the bigger scheme of this process that is happening through the whole ecosystem and how we are part of this circuit of communication and energy current. And the more we have awareness on this the more we are able to heal ourselves and the world on the deepest level.

Another work that is a continuation of this research is the experimental short film that we just released with L.A. based artist Lush Agave, that is called "Hidden Eden". It was also developed during that residency in Iceland. "Hidden Eden" is for us a metaphor for the secret graden of creativity and how it connects us to nature and its healing potential. We interacted with the Icelandic landscape as a medium to depict our inner emotional processes and the way creativity can show up in our practice and in relation to others. This work allowed us to unveil the term "the ecology of emotions". Which for me puts a name on a lot of things I had been reflecting on since my teens and is probably the seed of my intentions in making art and music in the first place.

In this particular work we dived into the true role of creative practice and how it is vital for human wellbeing, weather this shows up as art or not. We can have the tendency to think that creativity is a plus or even a luxury, and isn't a part of the basic needs of human life. But we truly believe that it is an integral part of human wellbeing and is as important and essential to mental and physical health as other substantial needs. There are studies that show the function of neuroplasticity and the way our brains function in coherence with our hearts. I see it as a kind of gynmastics for our neurons, and I feel that without this stimulation our emotional system isn't as able to process the enormous amounts of informations we encounter through our conscious and subconscious minds daily. It has been a truly deep and profound experience to connect with the Earth through this journey. The funniest and touching thing is that the day we released the film a volcano erupted in Iceland.

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I think there is a lot to be explored on new mediums to share and experience music definitely. I personally find the album format a bit limiting and at the same time I love buidling story telling around that medium and develop a concept in that way. Though I feel that I always come up with too much material to fit just into the 8 to 10 track formating.

I like to think of creating installations and interactive concerts where the audience is truly involved into the performance and immersed into a real experience. I have participated in two amazing art experiences set up by my friend and collborator Amaury Bouquet, a French visual artist that also works with interactive installations through game play, self development and tarot among other things with his artist collective called Bimbim. I was in charge of playing live music for both events and felt really inspired to implement this into the live concert environment. Where the audience is taken on a journey through senses and exploration of a space and their own selves.

I have also been investigating how it would be possible to use the electromagnetic field on a live setting to interact with the heartfield and the environment with a mutlimedia group called Magnetic North created with two of my friends, Berlin-based Argentinian producer and visual artist Pablo Denegri and French painter Victor Gounel. I love how the HeartMath institute has been interacting with art installations through their research on heart coherence for example in their installations at Burning Man where participant's heart's electromagnetic energy would affect a sculpture of light and sound.

My biggest inspiration in today's music landscape on this matter is probably Björk and the way she challenges the mediums of exploring music in various terrains of experience.

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I think spirituality is part of everything, we seem to see it as a seperate thing from our common experience or even as something that some people are into and some people are not. As in "I'm a spiritual person" or "I'm not a spiritual person" often meaning "I am rational, I don't believe in spirit or things that you can't see.". And I think it's a little bit of a narrow approach to envisioning what spirituality is. I believe spirituality is in the experience of being human as such. When you really think about how a lifeform is created and exists and how a lot of how things in our physical world work there is this realization that, there is something bigger than our selves, our body and minds. And that to me is spirtuality. The awareness that we are part of a breathing universe where we each play a part in its existence. Art is a doorway to experience that. A common ground that we set to look at this bigger picture, that sometimes can point at the tiniest microscopic thing but that still brings out a consciousness on the overall frame that is our existence.

There is this line that is written in the zine of our film "Hidden Eden":

"Art is the bridge where science and spirituality meet, the connector between the mastery and the mystery".

In a way I see it as a middle ground where the physical is put to service for the non-physical. And that perhaps is the real purpose and function of art, to give our reasoning a way to understand parts of our cognitive understanding and parts of our psyches to exist in a physical form so we can experience it outside of our internal apprehensions. It feels that it is like a mirror effect that allows us to internalize what we experience deeper.

So in that sense spirituality is an integral part of my work and is my main drive in wanting to be an artist. I feel like an oracle translating and holding space for things in the collective consciousness to be expressed, received and transmuted. It is a constant inner work but I tend to connect myself to be a vessel for this bigger picture to have a voice through my music and art in general. It is a way of service for me to the whole of humanity and the Earth as a whole as well. I truly believe that expressing my authenticity and being willing to unveil my vulnerabilities and explore my strengths and divine pride is a way to heal the wounded soul we all carry in some way or another. While still acknowledging that in a way, we are already whole.

The pain takes us on a journey to find that truth. Art is maybe our way to experience this feeling and remember it. I feel that holding this creative space and creative energy is one of many other ways to buidling harmony for the present and future to come."

Books, websites, articles or other sources of information recommended by Wild Anima:

3 books by Tenzin Wangyal:
"Tibetan Sound Healing"
"Healing through energy,form and color"
"Spontaneous Creativity"

"The secret teachings of plants: the intelligence of the heart in the direct perception of nature" by Stephen Harrod Buhner and any podcasts interviewing him.

I love the work of Beth Pickens on creativity, her zine On artists and hopelessness as well as her books.

Alisha (Lush Agave) just shared with me this great artist Lavender Suarez who published a book called "Transcendent Waves: how listening shapes our creative lives".