Time has a spiral nature. Events follow one another, but not in strict linear fashion. Transverse threads pierce through the fabric and create connections, like shortcuts.
Rewind back to May 1997. I was wrapping up my graphic design studies, about to move back to Turku, and most of all determined to focus on music and visual design. I founded the record label Some Place Else as a platform to produce, release and distribute experimental music made by myself and like-minded individuals. It’s a long story, to be elaborated elsewhere, but in the end of 2013 I put Some Place Else on hold, in order to reset my focus and redirect my creative energies for the future.
Forward to May 2014. I was about to graduate from my fine art studies. Sitting in a café in Toronto, I was scribbling down ideas and plans for the future in my sketchbook. That moment, PARAFERAL was conceived.
For my creative work, I always, intuitively, create a kind of hermetic working space – mental and physical – a place that by default is more or less isolated from the daily chores and the social world of human activity. A space isolated from distractions, as well as a channel to communicate the results of the work to the world at large.
Back in the day when it still made sense I had the record label as a shelter for creative works. Now, even though it may not make sense (financially and otherwise) I have PARAFERAL as an artistic research / development / production platform. On the street level it’s just another artist’s studio and workshop. Undernearth there’s a gateway to a vast network of tunnels, a transdimensional labyrinth through the mind and body of the technological animal.
The currency of the surface [exo] is Gold,
the currency of the underworld [eso] is Gnosis.
Now, May 2019. I’m finally able to invest more time and resources in PARAFERAL, especially its production side. A new website was launched recently. Although still very much a work-in-progress, it features a shop with some initial offerings. More PARAFERAL products – books, music, media objects etc. – will be made available, as well as selected original artworks.
It’s a slow process, as it’s basically me handling everything, with limited time and resources. Nevertheless, this is what I do, what I’ve always done, abd PARAFERAL is another aspect, or a new level. Some steps further underground we go…
The spiral nature. Certain periods (like the ones above), although linearly distant, seem closely related and and mutually resonant through rhizome-like energetic shortcuts surrounding the four-dimensional coil-like quasi-entity commonly recognised as an individual being.
Words are like that. Inadequate, confusing even.
