"Straight From The Can"- An Interview With Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson

 

 

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson is a visual, sound and performance artist born in Akureyri, Iceland in 1977. He currently resides in Germany. Sigtryggur has released recordings on many labels as well as shown his art and performed internationally. Troy and Mikey exchanged emails with Sigtryggur over the past few weeks and had some wonderful conversations. After the interview, there is a link for a download of a piece Sigtryggur recorded for Fruit of the Spirit as well as a link to his Bandcamp page.  Thank you Sigtryggur for taking the time to talk with us as well as sending us all of this fantastic art, video and sound to share and thanks to our readers for supporting Fruit of the Spirit. 

Mikey- Greetings. I hope all is well on your end. Not sure what time it is where you are or where you are at the moment? I’m in Brighton, UK and it’s 5:15p. I’m at work but got some free time on my hands so I thought I’d get the interview started. I added Troy to the email so he’s gonna jump in at some point and ask some questions as well. Firstly, I’d like to know a bit about where you grew up and what life was like at a young age for you?

Sigtryggur- Hi Mikey! Hi Troy! Great hearing from you. I just got back home myself, it was the first good warm spring day today where I´m living in Germany. My son and I had to travel with the train all day, so we were stuck inside the train most of the day ha ha.  Oh well.  So now I´m having tea, relaxing and thinking back on my childhood.  I was born (1977) in Akureyri, Iceland, it´s the second biggest city in Iceland far up north and today the population is around 19 thousand.  I remember having a lot of fun with the neighbor kids and we were quite free just running around playing all kinds of games, as it´s kinda small there so it was difficult to get lost, and I VERY much remember the time we got a video recorder ha ha -- I think that´s where it all started for me. It really triggered and hit a good soft spot ha ha - whatever that means - but I bet you know what I mean. Actually at first it was a super 8 projector, we would watch 8mm films like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin etc. I loved all that stuff and got obsessed with that, and still am when I think about it now.  I think there was at first a betacam video player at home before VHS,  and in town there was one place where you could rent a few movies on betacam tapes, I mean they didn't have much but I would rent the same tape anyway, over and over again. It was a collection of Popeye cartoons, I could watch that over and over again. When I turned 6 years old I remember my parents asking me what kind of cake I would like to have for my birthday but I wanted to have spinach, which I had just found out about what is, as back then in Iceland you wouldn't really get that at your local grocery store - well, at least that´s what my parents told me back then ha ha. Anyway, I just wanted the kids at my birthday party to eat spinach straight from the can just like Popeye, all in one go! There´s this one Popeye episode which is probably my absolute favorite called "Poopdeck Pappy" where Popeye´s dad (who´s 99 years old) wants to go out every night to have a good time and Popeye is trying to keep him away from the bars and wants his 99 year old dad to stay in bed at night to sleep as he shouldn´t be going out every night at that age - it´s so good. 

I moved to Reykjavík with my family in early 80's and of course a big change as it was a bigger city and I remember there was a video rental just around the corner to our home and on Sundays they had special deals and in the morning I was already at the door of the video rental waiting for them to open up and counting my coins, figuring out how many videos I could rent.  I was also crazy about Droopy and other Tex Avery cartoons. There´s this one called "Deputy Droopy" which I remember peeing myself from laughter. Woody Woodpecker was another obsession as well and there´s this episode called "The Barber of Seville" which I cant get out of my mind - it´s such an intense episode from the 1940s version of Woody Woodpecker, the first one actually, maybe the first punk rocker (?) - at least looks like it. Man, I could go on and on about more cartoon heroes I was and am still obsessed with.  There´s tons more of course.  Back then I actually fantasized about the world being like in a cartoon, and I would act out some of these scenes and characters from cartoons. I loved the Smurfs as well, and in Iceland it was the first ever cartoon which got dubbed in Icelandic, and it was this Icelandic comedian Laddi that dubbed all the voices, ha ha - even for "Smurfina". I think the VCR was like phones/internet is for kids today. Ha ha.  

Troy- Me and my brother Aaron were obsessed with cartoons and we also had a projector and older camera. Do you remember Ub Iwerks? 

Sigtryggur- Oh yeah, of course. I remember Ub Iwerks. His style of drawing has an intensity that I very much relate to. Often I like to google him and others just so i can look at the images online. There´s a goofy episode I was crazy about as a child called "The Olympic Champ". 

Troy- Do you ever feel a sense of magic and play like the characters were alive in some way? And possibly still are? Do you ever feel like these characters possess you in your arts? 

Sigtryggur- Absolutely!  I really have no idea how they came up with all that crazy weird stuff.  It´s so far out!!!  And so inspiring!  You can also tell that these cartoons were not made just for kids, as some of them are just so psychedelic and beautifully messed up, long before people were tripping in the 60's, ha ha.  My favorites of those are coming from the Max and Dave Fleischer studios, the cartoons that came from that studio some of them are just incredible.  Of course Popeye The Sailor Man came from there, the early ones from the 30's.  Then there´s the amazing Betty Boop, where you had also characters like Bimbo and Koko The Clown etc. There are two episodes featuring Bimbo which are pretty famous for being so far out and wild and those are "Bimbo´s Initiation"  and "Swing You Sinners!" from 1931. Both are total classic Fleischer studio cartoons which I highly recommend! Also growing up in the 80's, it was the peak of the kung fu and ninja movies coming out on VHS, movies that are in a way are like cartoons of course. I loved that stuff as well. 

Troy- Why look for ufo's when some people experience extraterrestrial existence through cartoons as aliens or nature beings? Or perhaps don’t realize what they are coming into contact with. Many reports of cartoons being very disturbing for some people, more than horror etc. These cartoons are very “beyond words” and even very much like what people call a psychedelic or shamanic experience.

Sigtryggur- Funny you should mention UFO's as the last few years I´ve been so much into watching UFO and any alien related documentaries. Even though I haven't really made up my mind about that whole thing, I just like to watch those documentaries and some of the old(er) ones are real fun and I find it inspiring to watch.  There´s this one called "UFOs: Past, Present and Future" from 1974 which I think is just amazing, love that documentary.  My very favorite and best part of the documentary is an interview with a woman who describes an abduction, they call her Helen in the film which they say is a fictional name. The interview I speak of starts at 1:04:38min. 

Troy- Helen is the name of my grandmother who taught me and my brother Aaron the Oujia board and we we both had recurring dreams of beings and things like lights. Helen is the one who had the old projector and camera. It’s where we spent our time growing up.  My grandfather only read the comics. (He) had a huge library, but in the newspaper only read the comics. Possibly the comics are beyond psychedelic...I agree I would see them in the ufo context as something so subtle that we don’t even notice what is happening and see it as a funny thing for children. (This could be) one of truly many ways into whatever people call a contact even if it with what people call “nature” as well.  I mentioned nature to Andy Heck Boyd and he said he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. However (elsewhere) in the interview he mentions pine trees quite often in conjunction with a UFO sighting he experienced.

Troy- (watching "UFOs: Past, Present and Future"): Jacques Vallee is interviewing Helen? Philip (Krumm) turned me on to Jacques Vallee. This is unreal and magical.   

Sigtryggur- Yes, he´s great...he might be but she´s just sitting outdoors in a chair and explains what happens, not so much being interviewed...she´s just explaining what she remembers. It´s so good!

Troy- Thank you. It’s phenomenal. I would like to share this. They talk about opening a "Stargate" in their home. I spoke with Linda Falorio years ago when I was on Facebook still and she told me about meeting Jacques Valle. If any of this (stargates, etc) is possible, could it generate through us all like a chain, even sub-frequencies so to say…beyond these words...but at the same time this also creates a kind of energy? Have you experienced anything like this?  I read your performances can be draining for you? Is this still correct?  

Stigtryggur- There was a time in the beginning of 2000's where I felt really good with doing performances and working on ideas for performances. Of course they have always been of a very improvised nature and spontaneous and I wanted it to stay that way but things can change without you having any say to it.  I would say my first performance I did was in mid 90's, but that would just be one offs, and then like not another until a few years later.  So when I was doing more and more performances in the start to mid 2000's things started to fall into place somehow and patterns started to appear. Not saying I was doing the same performances every time, that´s not possible, even though you work with same or similar ideas, that´s the magic of performing.  Anyway, I got a little tired of them and just mostly of myself really, so I did less and less of them and moved more into wanting to work with painting and drawing, which I did.  It wasn't until a bit later, say in like 2010 or around that time I started using that feeling that I was going through, that whole thing with feeling tired and drained and self-pity and all those downer feelings, ha ha. That´s when things got interesting again for me. So I started doing more performances where that would be my main topic and concept, just kind of humiliating myself if you will, and that way nothing could possibly go wrong. As that was the whole idea in a way. Before, I wanted my movements during a performance to go real quick (like in the cartoons) and then I would watch video documentation of my performance afterwards and get disappointed that things were moving so slow, ha ha - I always prefer photo documentation of my performances, as they become new pieces which stand on their own.

Troy- So using those “feelings” for the performance, you could feel this and put it into the performance like an intent?  This would work well at this point?  Were there any results other than the patterns you were noticing from this process?

Sigtryggur- Yes, so I would use my low self esteem that I was feeling a lot at the time as a theme/concept for the performances. In a way things would fall apart and things would go "wrong" and that would be the goal and complete ok, as that was the idea.  I build a show around that also and did a limited art book using that same idea and called it "Being Worried About Not Being Worried". The book was limited to 100 copies.

Mikey- How you perceive your own performance internally versus externally, like watching a video of yourself doing something or listening to audio of yourself talking or singing is wild. I’ve always been curious about the disconnect. I feel a certain way while doing something and then later witness it with my own eyes or ears and it’s like “nope, that’s NOT how that was supposed to go at all”. When I was young I would cringe afterward at how I sounded or looked but as I’ve gotten older I’m a bit more accepting of how stupid it comes out, hahah. 

Sigtryggur- Yes, it´s a bit the same for me, that´s why I prefer photo documentation, ha ha. For that reason and for the reason that it just looks more interesting to me and the photographs become a piece on it´s own.  I've also released sound recordings of performances, there´s a 10" that came out on De Player that also came with a booklet with photographs from performances, like the one on the 10" record.  The sound recordings were made in Rotterdam at De Player during a performance I did there.  Very proud of that release, think it came out really nicely with the booklet etc. When on tour you maybe do a performance at some place and later when you are up in your hotel room getting ready to sleep after the night sometimes you will see clips of the night´s performance already on Youtube or Facebook and I´m often very surprised how things turn out like you say, ha ha. Years before I used to do more performances that lasted only like 2 or 3 minutes, but while performing it felt like 20 minutes at least. I would stop because I couldn't do any more.

Mikey- Rewinding a bit, what kind of music did you listen to growing up? At what point did you decide to make music?  

Sigtryggur- My first favorite band was Kiss, and I think it had a lot to do with the make up though.  One halloween I went as Gene Simmons, like with that make up and my dad tried his best at imitating the Gene Simmons make up. I wish I had a photo of that as I remember it didn't look like Gene Simmons stage make up at all. I think the other kids got the picture though, ha ha. When I was 11 years old I was getting into heavy metal. This of course in the 80's and with all the satanic panic thing going on and kids committing suicide while listening to metal records and people going nuts over that fact and burning metal records and what not, so I was kind of afraid that my parents would find out that I was listening to stuff like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Accept, Metallica, Kreator, Slayer and all those classic metal bands. I would run home from school just to be able to listen to metal until my parents came home from work, and I had recently bought the Slayer "Hell Awaits" lp and I was listening to that one day when my dad came home early from work and he entered my sister´s bedroom, as she was the one who had the stereo, (I didnt have mine yet), and he went: "WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?". I was totally freaking out and told him that I had "borrowed" this record from a friend, which was a lie of course, and he was like "this isn´t metal!" and he took me down to the basement and opened a box full of his records, which i had no idea about. He took out some records and we brought them upstairs and he started playing me stuff that he had listened to, like Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Nazareth and stuff like that. So all of a sudden it was ok for me to be a metalhead and I would listen to that stuff constantly. The record that made me want to make music myself was "Scum" by Napalm Death, and I was involved in a few grindcore bands in the early 90s, but it wasn't until later, say, ´94 or so until I would start releasing stuff with Stilluppsteypa and getting more and more into experimental music.  Music is like drinking water for me, it´s necessary. I have records playing at home all day and it helps me a lot with getting things done art wise also. The stuff I'll be listening to varies. I will have a stack of records already aside, like "go to" records, and the stack I have now has been music soundtrack for a few weeks already. Looking at it now i see 4x Lee "Scratch" Perry records, the new Loop record, 2x Hailu Mergia records, the latest Darkthrone, Fela Kuti, 2x Grace Jones records, Black Sabbath, Brainticket, Susan Cadogan, Blood Incantation, Olivia Block, the latest Grouper, the Surprise Package and Judas Priest.  I like having those stacks of records lined up so I don't have to think about what to put on and just take out random stuff from that stack and put on and then one after the other.  So in 2 weeks time or less I will get out other records and make a new "go to" stack.

Troy- Would you like to talk about your recent project with Andy Heck Boyd released by Radical Documents? How did you two start working together?

Sigtrygurr- Yes, that was a really fortunate and great meeting. Well, we never met in person but I had known Andy´s work for some time already and then just last year we started chatting on Instagram and finding out that we had so much mutual interest, so we were talking about our painting and drawing practice.  So, I take these morning walks EVERY morning, the same route as well, no matter what day it is or how the weather is. I take these walks which really helps me out just to get my head straight and working towards ideas and stuff I want to do with the day, usually get the best ideas as I´m just out of bed and then I make coffee and take the coffee out with me, this walk takes one and a half hour. When I´m back at home, which is also where I work and use as a studio, I just get straight to it and with all kinds of ideas boiling in my head from the walk, and I would and still do send Andy voicemails via Instagram during these walks. So he started sending me voicemails in return which I would listen to then later because of the time difference of course with me being in Germany and him in the US. At one point, Andy started telling me that he´s been doing a lot of new recordings on his tape recorder and that he´s playing the guitar a lot lately, that kinda made me interested and of course the idea came up that he´d send me some recordings for me to play around with. So he sent me like 10 files or so with him playing guitar, field recordings and him recording some of his ideas on tape and that´s how "Ideas On Tape" came about.  I would then send stuff back to Andy and he would also send me texts that he had written for me to read and recording on my end. After a few weeks we had the material ready to be released. We sent it over to Matthew Green of Radical Documents who had released an lp of mine a few years back called "I Say To You" with recordings of my voice only. Anyway, Matthew really liked the material and agreed to put it out.  Both Andy and me are really happy with the result and how things came together. I have a feeling that more things will happen in the near future. We have talked about doing a double solo exhibition, like Andy showing his paintings and drawings and me mine in the same space, but it´s still something we are discussing still so we´ll see how things develop. 

Mikey- I know you’ve talked about certain energies involving your love for early cartoons as well as a music listener and your performances/recording/visual art but do you have any spiritual practice outside of those realms?

Sigtryggur- I would like to think that those long morning walks are kinda like that what you just asked, I really think that these walks are helping me out a lot with just clearing my mind and just getting me focused on stuff I like to do and achieve.  I just started taking these long walks like 3 years ago, but then covid entered our lives and things just got kinda crazy. I was staying inside most of the time and without me really noticing it until way later that all this staying inside was really down tuning me mentally and I felt more and more that everything was kinda pointless, just like waking up and going straight to the computer screen and reading news updates and other stupid stuff. By the end of the day I was still wearing my pyjama´s and hadn't brushed my teeth and just sitting around without any motivation. I mean it wasn´t the whole time like that as I did quite some releases during those years 2020 - 2021, but at times it was really like this lazy downer time and it was harder to get out to go get groceries and also getting paranoid being around people and all kinds of stuff like that, something I hadn't experienced ever before, at least not that strong.  I don't know how it was over at your ends with the covid lockdowns etc... but like here in Germany it was pretty much lockdown the whole time or at least it felt like it, ha ha ha. So just taking these long walks in the morning is a total life saver for me, my mind is quite chaotic and I just need to do this every morning to straighten things out and so I can get to work as soon as I get back from those walks, and it works like I've done meditation as my mind is clear of all kinds of usual crap.  But one thing that I really need to be careful of is not getting hit by a car and get into accidents during these walks because I totally zone out. I might be getting really deep into some ideas and thoughts and then I´m just walking over a red light. This one time I nearly killed me and another guy, we were with a bunch of people waiting for the light to turn green so we could cross the street and I´m standing there totally spaced out deep in thoughts and I see the light from the other side of the street turn green and I just start walking over the street and it wasn't "our" light which we were all waiting for. A guy who was standing next to me was looking at his phone the whole time and had headphones on and he noticed me starting to cross the street and this car came driving full speed and luckily the driver saw that we were crossing and hits the breaks. That day was a mess afterwards, so since then I´m really trying super hard to take extra care.

Mikey- I can relate to the walking bit. My walk to work is 30 minutes in the city (Brighton). I always have headphones in and zone out so I can tap into that deeper part of myself so to speak before I clock into someone else's sphere. I bet your day was shook after that close call you had with the traffic light! It can be hard sometimes to simultaneously stay present which can be dangerous, hahah. Lastly I'd like to ask you where do you see yourself in ten years?

Sigtryggur- Time is weird, like what I just talked about during the last two years of covid, for me those two years are like 10 years and it feels that covid was with us since the time I was born or something, like I've always had to wear a mask and stuff like that.  I really don't remember how things were before covid. Even though it´s just two years. Anyway, I don't want this to become yet another interview about covid though. I remember seeing the first Ghostbusters movie in the cinema when it came out and I loved that scene towards the end of the movie when the Marshmellow Man appears walking through Manhattan and that scene in my mind and in my memory was like a 10-15 minute scene and had a really huge impact on me as a kid seeing this movie for the first time in the cinema. Just a few years ago they showed the Ghostbusters on tv and I was just dying to see that scene again and waited for it and when that scene arrived it was like a minute and a half long, ha ha. All these years I had added stuff in my mind which wasn't in the movie so in my mind this scene was way more and longer than the actual scene.  So yes, I think in ten years time I will still be doing stuff, doing performances and working on new releases. That is something I can be pretty sure of. 

DOWNLOAD "sigtryggur berg sigmarsson_voice recorded live at home_19.4.2022"

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson Bandcamp