PROMISED WORKS by Sarnal Key

This project came about through time spent at an artist residency at Riga House in so called Columbus, Ohio. The vision for the project was completed with the support of a grant from Greater Columbus Arts Council.

Riga House was a sanctuary, a nursery of memory-agency, a space that invited me to foster parts of myself that I had neglected, parts of my past that I had deemed unworthy of exhibition, an antidote to self-doubt. I hauled much more than I needed up the steep stairs to the studio, an array of notebooks, collage material, some books, and the whole of my music-making equipment, only to soon recognize a calling from beyond the material present. To find inspiration for new work, I revisited my archive of unreleased audio compositions that I had spent hours submersing myself into over the past several years, works that had not found homes on any of my full-length releases, works that I had eventually deemed undeserving of exposure. To nurture these parts of me, this sonic community of digital beings I had made for myself, I shared afternoons and evenings with the waning Wolf Moon over Riga as I curated, polished, embellished, nominated, sketched, and promised. Ultimately, my time at Riga ignited the flame that moved me to work on a new cassette release of my harddrive-relegated kin - works that exhibit my favorite parts of what I call digital folk music-making: playfulness, curiosity, mood-sculpture, and having fun with software/hardware limitations and shortcomings of expertise (with a deep well of spirit). Making something beautiful with simple means, much like the ethos I find fostered at Riga.

digital folk musician based in milwaukee

contact: gananchev@gmail.com