veiila
veiila, a duo of vif nüte and bes eirid, who recently have been increasingly blurring the line between music, literature and visual arts, intend to expand their creative and sonic palette and build upon the music from their upcoming album with wild leaps into electroacoustic experimentation and digital sound-design exploring the fleeting nature of the Present through the prism of existentialist and absurdist philosophy.
Two months at Zvjezdane Staze, dedicated to the work on a new album. Iзvoriшte is the path for projects that run outside any programme, shaped together rather than through an open call.
Concept
attempt to shift the focus of the individual from the machine-like timeless existence to momentary nature of human life through the medium of music, sound-design, visual arts and written text, exploring the connection between human and time, the imperfection as the essence of beauty and feeling as the basis of the human life.
to be realized as audio and video recordings of musical compositions, accompanied by a written essay and presented as a digital / physical release and a sequence of live performances.
we chose the quotation of jean-paul sartre as the title for this project as this line reflects something that used to trouble the human intellects for centuries and yet seems strangely forgotten in the modern day – the fleeting nature of the moment that constitutes existence.
our intention is to utilize the vintage detuned piano residing at the premises in order to capture something that belongs only to the current moment in time and space, the essential „now“ of that specific moment, whatever it may be.
our memories are not being recalled, but reconstructed from scratch and rewritten over and over again.
we are imperfect, undetermined, inconsistent and infinitely different, unlike the perfection, determination and consistency of data storage and machine algorithms, but that this is exactly what makes us human and what constitutes beauty.
Who they are
veiila’s history starts in 2014, saint-petersburg, russia, when bes and vif, who were both previously involved in other mutual projects, decided to experiment with some vintage synthesizers and sequencers – an experiment that launched their career. […] veiila’s debut album „the nation of one“ came only in 2020 as a cd release on uk’s experimental label wormhole world records.
in 2022 everything changed – russia started a war in ukraine and in march of that year, in an act of protest, the duo left their home country, preferring rootless exile to conformity. eventually settling in vanadzor, armenia, veiila revealed their new direction – a keyboard and guitar centered sound backed by interactive live visuals created from vif’s graphic artworks, while their lyrics took the central part in their music, exploring themes of alienation and schopenhauerian existential pessimism.
Where the work goes
The residency carries into two concerts. One in Tuzla, at the Atelje Ismet Mujezinović. One in Sarajevo, at a venue chosen together, with the Historijski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine among the possibilities. Photographs, videos and texts made here may find their place in these performances.
Since 2023 their concerts run on vif’s pen drawings, traced by hand from paper into vector, then animated through modular software that responds to the signals from their instruments. A degree of controlled randomness means the visual performance is never repeated in the exact same way.
The work is intended for release on the Prostor label, in digital form and as a physical edition.
Listen
Two studio albums, a live album, a b-side compilation, an EP and some twenty singles and live covers. the nation of one (2020) came out on the British label Wormhole World Records, sentimental craving for beauty (2023) on the American darkwave label Projekt Records. The deluxe edition below adds b-sides, first demos and live recordings to the second.
Every veiila release is titled after a literary work. the nation of one comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night, catch’22 from Joseph Heller, a betrayal of persistent idealism from F. Scott Fitzgerald, sentimental craving for beauty from John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga. The project made here takes its title from Sartre.
„the sound of beautiful alienation“
On tour
- 29 Aug 2026 DiliRock Festival · Dilijan, Armenia · info →
External
Registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina · RF-242