Somewhere in Between the Darkness and the Light: The Music of Fat Transfer

Singer and songwriter Fat Transfer. Picture courtesy of the artist

Fat Transfer is an Oakland, California based artist who owns her emotions. Her tunes come wrapped in a sweet package and also pack a serious punch. On the track "we r enemies" from her latest EP Highly Sensitive Supremacist, she sings, "this isn't MTV, you can't treat people so irresponsibly." The sound of her music is lo-fi and delicately layered. Bells and melodious synthesizer chords harmonize perfectly with pulsating drumbeats.Some tracks are down tempo and contemplative, while others are outright dance tracks.

How would you describe your sound?
Dreamy and sentimental. Cartoonish sometimes. Sad, lovesick, introverted. My friend said it is sounds like Hall and Oates but scarier. I've also heard it sounds like massage music.

On "Highly Sensitive Supremacist," you sing candidly about tapping into emotions that aren't necessarily considered nice or acceptable (naming enemies, giving up on a struggle, allowing oneself to be sad and in pain). What was your inspiration for exploring those themes? Why is the not so nice stuff important?
One of my favorite books is called The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Akon. It describes sensitivity as an neurological orientation as opposed to a defect of the wimpy. Anyway, I identify as one of thse HSP's. My emotions demand a lot of attention. All of them, including ones that are societally devalued, like uncertainy and hopelessness. Challenging feelings are important because they're as big a part of my life and identity as pleasant ones. I view all emotions as spirit guides. They can be cryptic, contradictory, straight up bat-shit whacky. But when I'm listening and decoding them, life feels less exhausting and scary. I find that if I ignore them, my mental, physical and emotional health suffers. Making music is one of the ways I tend to them.

Fat Transfer in concert. Image courtesy of the artist

Laerke Lauta's Floating Female

[Editor's Note: Please welcome new contributor Marissa Arterberry! To learn more about Marissa, check out our Contributors page.]

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

The Art Museum at Mills College in Oakland, California is currently exhibiting a five-channel video installation by Danish artist Laerke Lauta entitled Floating Female. The installation, a commission by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), is beautifully ethereal and heavy with suspense. The videos, which are projected in larger-than-life size on the museum walls, “map internal and external states of consciousness.”

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

One part of the installation representing a more external state of consciousness sets the scene in an intimate lounge. People seated in the softly lit room are engaged in conversation, and several empty beer bottles sit on a nearby tabletop. At the center of it all, a woman in a short red dress dances to softly pulsating house music with wild abandon. As she dances like no one was watching, someone clearly is: a man reclines on a nearby loveseat, taking in her performance with a bemused expression on his face. As the woman dances, seemingly without a care in the world, the suspense builds: Does she know this man? Is she intoxicated? What if she gets too carried away? Is the man an admirer, or could he pose a threat to her safety? I suddenly become very aware of all the things women must take notice of when they go out. I began to see this dancer as someone engaged in an audacious moment of pure freedom.

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

The exhibition, which was curated by Dr. Robin Clark at MCASD, “draw[s] from a northern European tradition that ascribes romantic, spiritual, and enigmatic qualities to the natural landscape. Lauta’s works are characterized by an undertone of unresolved suspense, the latent fear of a fatal event that is not directly revealed.”

One of the most arresting features in the exhibition is a diptych piece projected on two opposing walls. In one projection, a woman with white feathered wings floats on the surface of a body of water. We can see the wind blowing her feathers; she literally embodies the Floating Female. The camera is at close range, and with her wings spread wide, the woman appears to almost be flying on top of the water. The atmosphere this image creates is peaceful and dreamlike. But on the opposite wall, a simple shift in perspective changes everything: the camera angle shifts to the side, and the same figure that looked so free now appears to be a corpse floating face down in the water.

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

With freedom comes great risk, and an element of danger. Laerke Lauta’s work brings together feelings of exhilaration, suspense, and danger. She takes her audience to the edge and lets us gaze over the cliff through her eyes.

Floating Female is on display at the Mills College Art Museum until March 13th, 2011, with a lecture by Lauta on February 22nd. For more information on Laerke Lauta and her work, please visit her web site.