ÖÖÖ [I+M] Interview+Mix | SUSU LAROCHE
Interviewed by Yuän ZHANG (ÖÖÖ)
ÖÖÖ：
Your images carry the texture of memory, yet not memories of this life. They seem to belong to a more distant continuum, like memories from the bardo state in the cycle of time, entangled with reality and forming nightmares that possess the soul. Where are these visions rooted?
SUSU LAROCHE:
In an akashic dream world that I feed with my research wormholes.
I’m drawn to journeys, moments of transcendence, catharsis or conflict. I’m driven to create things I haven’t seen before, informed by my interest in mankind, history and the supernatural.
ÖÖÖ：
What dreams visit you most often? Are they among the sources you draw from?
SUSU LAROCHE:
Daydreaming or lucid dreaming is probably more influential than dreams. I enjoy creating parafictions which draw on everything around and within myself.
ÖÖÖ：
How has being of both Egyptian and French descent informed the qualities or sensibilities you embody today?
SUSU LAROCHE:
My heritage has influenced me creatively and politically, in ways that I know and probably many more ways that I don’t. It’s ongoing.
ÖÖÖ：
What about witchcraft?
SUSU LAROCHE:
Reading is an important discipline for me and I’ve read a lot around witchcraft and magic in its most primitive forms, across different religions. I’m interested in the sacred and interpretations of it from The Golden Bough to Bataille.
My parents were into classic horror films, and we’d see Christopher Lee in the street when I was going to school, my dad would explain all the lore around the films we would watch, this is the earliest I can place the supernatural world being an interest.
ÖÖÖ：
As if chaos and death have intruded, appear and annihilate. Corrosion, burning, ghosting, contamination shift the ways of seeing. Resonating with a sort of impression of wounds, blood, fire, and repetitions of an absent gaze.
How do you produce these through technical or material interference?
SUSU LAROCHE:
I’m more material than technical generally. I enjoy working with my hands and finding new ways to mess with the physical form of the image, finding states which resonate between the physical form and the composition/imagery.
I think this approach resonates in my work across other mediums – the medium might differ but my approach will always be to find its limits and work with what I can find in the edges.
ÖÖÖ：
You created your own tarot deck. It feels like a time of black water in a sealed chamber. What guided its emergence? Have you, or anyone you know, used the deck for divination – Any particular experience?
SUSU LAROCHE:
I wanted to create my own imagery in relation to the meanings, as I had seen a lot of alternate tarots that emulated the imagery of other decks, such as the Rider-Waite one, rather than seeking to create original interpretation.
I find readings with that deck are often misread according to the image and the narrative it implies rather than the meaning of the cards, so I wanted to have a remove from anything prescriptive or narrative heavy in the image.
They took around 4 years to make and I worked hard to research and produce each card according to their true message. They’ve been used many times for readings, by myself and others who are more proficient in Tarot than I, the feedback has always been positive, the meanings and messages hold true.
ÖÖÖ：
What narrative underlies your latest album War Against The Lie, released on Doyenne?
SUSU LAROCHE:
In the British Museum a couple of years ago I came across a smashed head presumed to be one of queen Puabis women, merely named ‘body 53’. My subsequent obsession with researching this initiated the narrative I created for the album, it became about Puabi: people finding her tomb and becoming entranced in an act of devotion which summons her voice in the thick air.
ÖÖÖ：
In the music videos for SIN LEVEL and For Enki from the album War Against The Lie, the frames array like a spell. Women appear as shamanic or priestess-like figures, carriers of self-performed ritual. One braids and drums. Another spins, hands raised. Two presences, shaped by separate inheritances.
What feminine archetypes do you manifest through them?
SUSU LAROCHE:
I was thinking about Sufism, faith and dances of devotion. The videos are scenes from a narrative film I am working on inspired by the tale of Saint Rabia of Basra. She was freed from captivity when her master saw her bathed in light when she was praying.
I wanted to capture the movement which precedes trance states, like whirling – and other Sufi rituals. A state of possession, made possible by the act of getting lost, within the private rather than communal acts of ritual.
ÖÖÖ：
Is the listener or audience meant to become the vessel in this sensory rite of offering, or a kind of absent yet invoked spirit?
SUSU LAROCHE:
A vessel that submits, or a witness.
ÖÖÖ：
In the album description, we read your writing:
“the discovery of the tomb of an undocumented prophet
stagnant air & unlabelled wine draws the founders into a dervish
rousing a moth who perceives this vision his afterlife
the lie was something we heard once
and mimicked long after”
What words did you give to the voice that chants in these tracks? Are your incantations always self-made and pleasurably so?
SUSU LAROCHE:
The words are chosen via a cut up process of my own design, on this album I worked across books of Sufi and Sumerian poetry and the epic of Gilgamesh.
Some refrains are phrases of my own design and I was also playing with the idea of glosolalia, creating an instrument from my voice by using wordless textures. I imagined that singing to be Puabi as she materializes in the thick air of the tomb, forming into verse in points of clarity, alongside the voice of the moth who observes.
ÖÖÖ：
What shaped the mix on ÖÖÖ this time?
SUSU LAROCHE:
It’s a mixtape of some of my old favourites from my music collection.
ÖÖÖ：
Any books or films you would recommend?
SUSU LAROCHE:
Lately I’ve enjoyed The Psalm Killer by Chris Petit and an Iranian documentary called Zananeh.
Mix by Susu Laroche
Images & video by Susu Laroche
Artist Info
Susu Laroche
Susu Laroche is an anagram of Chaos Lure Us and a multidisciplinary artist & musician of Egyptian & French descent.
Her 16mm short films have screened internationally including at London Short Film Festival (UK), Samawah Cinema (Iraq) and Nihilist Film Festival (USA). A comprehensive DVD collection of her cinematic work was released by Purge.xxx in 2023, while her debut photobook Chaos Rule Us was published by Wrong Eye Books in 2021.
Following releases with Xquisite, Haunter Records and Accidental Meetings, her third album War Against the Lie was released this year on Doyenne, following the launch of a collaborative project with Mobbs on Modern Love.
She is one half of The Fertile Crescent with collaborator Oxhy, curates the acclaimed Seraph FM event series at Ormside Projects, and maintains an active performance schedule across the UK and beyond, with recent appearances at Cafe Oto, Belgium’s Meakusma and Italy’s Lost festival.
