Warlock meets Manchester-based artist Kai Edwards to discuss soil, folk horror and the timeless queer.
https://www.instagram.com/kaiedwardsart
On the 30th of Jan 2020 I had a Zoom chat with young Manchester-based artist Kai Edwards, who is also a student at Manchester School of Art. I came across Kai’s work on Facebook, of all places, and was immediately captured by the enchanting timelessness of their work. Kai works hands-on with natural materials like soil and bone, and they evoke ancient forces through costume, print and sculpture, with more-than-a-hint of folk horror. Kai’s art will appeal to fans of the black metal aesthetic, I feel, as well as those with a penchant for folky, acid-tinged doom.
W: So, Metal Mystery is essentially about travelling around the country – when we can – meeting bands and visiting weird, unusual places. Weird in an ancient sense, but also a modern sense too, looking at interesting things that have happened, exploring sacred spaces and exploring that through the lens of heavy metal. And even though you’re not from the metal world, your art really speaks to me because it has that primal sincerity – there’s an honesty about it, but it’s also very playful, with a sense of wonder and enjoyment. Describe what you do in your own words and talk us through your journey as an artist.
KE: Well, a lot of my art is based around the concept of folklore and cultural objects of deep time, which is something I’m looking into at the moment. I’m really interested in folk culture and customs in my artwork and folk revival too. I work through a multi-disciplinary approach, whether its print making, sculpture, textiles, performance, collecting items… Applying the contemporary to residual culture, which is having its little revival moment.
W: Yeah, it really is. Folk Horror in particular. To ask about your art process, you work with soil a lot, and that really interests me because I love soil, the way matter breaks down and becomes this magical substance – I really enjoy making compost. I know you went around the Lake District collecting soil for one of your projects. Tell us a bit about that.
KE: I love soil, soil’s great, I agree! Soil is a huge, explorative part of my art making process. I’ve been looking at and collecting it for about two years, I think, three even, if I count my foundation. And I guess it goes back again to the deep time concept of engaging with the world around us in its present and its past. So, it’s a way to engage with the geological and the materials as such as a constant throughout human history, and into the future. And they play such a role in our everyday lives and have done for so long. I’ve been collecting in the Lake District recently, and the Peak District, going to megalithic sites and visiting stone circles and things, collecting from in and around the fields that they stand in as part of my primary research, so, yeah, it’s sort of a research project, but then I’ve also been using them in my sculptures, and I’ve been making paints out of the soils as well.
W: That sounds cool, the idea of using it as pigment. I’ve got a friend who works with clay, and she does clay therapy, and clay, of course, has this primal quality to it and that’s what’s missing from a lot of our everyday lives. We keep the dirt away, we don’t embrace it. Peat is very interesting.
KE: Yeah, it’s great for natural mark making. I like the fact it’s alive.
W: Absolutely. So, in terms of the mythology in your work… I’ve dipped in and out of various mythologies throughout my life, and I can sense a real Celtic druid vibe in your work, with the spirals and the shapes, but you also talk about runes, which is something I’m very interested in. I also feel like there’s some traditional English witchcraft in there too, as opposed to Wicca, which is cool as well. Could you talk us through that mythological journey?
KE: Yeah, there’s definitely an influence of druidism and old witchcraft, as, like you said, opposed to Wicca, because I find Wicca to be a modern religion, so I’m more interested in the everyday witchcraft of rituals, and the iconography that I use is like a tool to contribute to the folk revival within the UK. So, initially, I was re-purposing runes and carving the cup and ring marks you find on a lot of these stone circles around the UK and Ireland, to situate the ancient within my work. A lot of it, to me, feels quite pre-Capitalist and pre-Christian in its notions of iconography and witchcraft.
W: That’s interesting. You’d probably like a publisher called Troy Books, run by a witch called Gemma Gary, and they’re rooted in traditional English witchcraft. One thing she talks about, which leads us nicely into the next question, is the way Christianity has entwined itself with witchcraft, because obviously you have the devil, and, when I was young I completely rejected any notion of Christianity, but as I’ve got older I’ve come to accept that it’s a huge part of my own mythology. So even though a lot of the things I identify with are pre-Christian, I find it difficult to fully escape the Christian, even if it manifests itself through the anti- Christian at times – Satanic imagery and that motif in folklore. But I wonder, does Christianity have a presence in your work?
KE: Yeah, I think it does play a certain type of role. I guess the symbolism that I use applies to our currents as people and the folklore revival, and I think it does play a role because it’s inescapable, so its a place for me to push back against and challenge, as well as explore every now and again too, because I’m still figuring out where exactly Christianity is situated within my work, but it is interesting. I guess Christianity is the root of a lot of things in Western culture, a lot of the values that are in place now are to do with Christianity and, yeah, I do think it’s interesting.
W: I don’t know if it’s because of the pandemic or having a child, but I’ve only this year reflected on Christianity and recognized how much of a presence it has in things like family tradition, and ceremony and things I look forward to. I mean, I’m not a Christian, but from a mythological perspective I suppose I’ve accepted some elements of it, but moving on slightly, because I want to ask you about archetypes. Heavy metal embraces a lot of archetypes, usually in a fairly cliched, stereotypical way, especially the figure of the warrior, and particularly in the 80s, when you look at a band like Manowar, it’s all about swords and the hero. You also get demons, sorcerers, witches, etcetera. I wonder, do any archetypes manifest in your work, and how do you approach that idea?
KE: I think there are certain figures and entities that play a role. I’m not sure about the archetypes that you’ve mentioned, but yeah, there’s a lot of folk entities. I particularly enjoy historical costumes, I find them so interesting because they play their own role in their own set little story, whether it be local or more widespread. So I really enjoy figures like the strawman, or the Mari Lwyd, all these ones, because they have their own narratives and they manifest themselves within my work, especially in costume. But I guess a lot of these archetypes all feed into each other, which is interesting. So yeah, with costume work – I use the term costume loosely – but I guess my fascination is a lot with the human tendency to follow different things and decorate ourselves, for whatever reason or purpose.
W: Yeah, that makes me think of the Celtic gods that appear in threes, and there’ll be different archetypes within each one – there’s movement there. I think Heavy Metal’s relationship with archetypes is becoming more complex too, moving beyond the obvious. I want to talk about horror, because horror is obviously a big influence on heavy metal, including folk horror, which I’m a big fan of in particular. I’ve noticed too this folk horror revival over the last five years or so. Some people link it to Brexit, or disillusion with modernity and technology. What do you think about it? How has folk horror in particular influenced your work, and why do you think there’s a revival of it at present?
KE: Yeah, I find folk horror so captivating because it has such as direct link to overturning and rebelling against more modern consumerist values; I really like that element of it, going back to something that is more grounded, I guess. Because there’s so many things in our modern societies that have caused so much damage, if you look at them through their colonial, or capitalist point of views. So I do find it interesting to work with folk revival and folk horror and there definitely could be something to do with political pushback, because everything has been crazy, hasn’t it, in the last four to six years?
W: Yeah, I think social media has played a big role in that, because it’s amplified everything, and you either like or dislike something in a black and white sense, which puts everything in simple terms, and nothing was like that before – there was always nuance. I try and resist social media as much as possible, and I think, or at least hope, that people are hungry for something deeper and older. I went down a rabbit hole in the last few years… have you ever come across Anarcho-Primitivism?
KE: I think I have, yeah, I’ve not gone too much into it, but yeah
W: So, John Zerzan is the main thinker, and they’re against civilization. They’re anarchists and they believe that civilization itself, including symbolic culture – art, language, etcetera, is the beginning of oppression, in a sense. So, being a hunter gatherer and living in the immediate sense is our natural state, and everything else is false, or synthetic. And once you dip into it, there’s a lot that’s right, but I found it impossible to give up the symbolic, because I love art, music, literature. And also, they actually want society to collapse, and especially, being a parent, I can’t see that going well for a lot of people. But I, like you, see folk culture as resisting the modern, but I guess anarcho-primitivists would see it as the beginning of the modern, which turns things on its head. But, yeah, there’s something in the old that is very enticing at the present moment.
KE: Yeah, I think there’s a sense of community, which is very human to want.
W: Absolutely, and ironically, that’s what social media is about, isn’t it? Seeking out community, but often it can alienate people, and leave you feeling a bit shallow. But a big part of this project is about connecting with real people and places. But back to timelessness, it feels in your work that you somehow embrace a slower time, but also timelessness: it feels both new, and yet deeply familiar. Why do you think that is?
KE: This concept of deep time is an idea that is so interesting to me, and it’s really helped me recently to pull together the ancient and the present, involving the contemporary discussion. So, a primary one maybe being queerness, not that queerness is contemporary, if you know what I mean, but I think it’s got something to do with the extension of human experience with nature rather than in nature.
W: That’s interesting
KE: Yeah I think that humanity, nature, identity all run in tandem with each other.
W: Yeah, I get a sense of that, absolutely. That brings me nicely to my next question, which is about queerness. So, I’m not an academic, I’ve spent some time in university, but I’m not from the art world, and I suppose queerness is something a layman might associate with the contemporary, or the post-modern. What are your thoughts on that, and how do you reconcile the ancient and the postmodern, in that sense.
KE: Yeah, I guess applying queerness to folk art is a way to involve a contemporary discussion, which isn’t actually contemporary – we’ve always been here.
W: Sure, absolutely, but I suppose if someone walked up to me in the street and said ‘what do you know about queer art,’ I’d instantly say Postmodernism, that’s just where I’d place it in my head. So, I suppose you’re really challenging that and that’s fascinating.
KE: Yeah, I think something like queer definitely transcends time, even though it has its places within the discussion in the art world, I guess it can fit within, but is also bigger than any category like Postmodernism, even though that’s where its usually discussed or recorded, it has its place within folklore, and nature, and time because its existed there too.
W: Yeah, absolutely. I think that idea of the ancient, or the timeless queer is really fascinating – I’ve not come across that before, maybe through my own lack of exploration, but I think that’s really fresh and something I’ll think a lot about. So, in terms of queerness and the outdoors, and ritual. What does the word ritual mean to you, in a broader sense?
KE: I guess, there’s obviously bigger ceremonial things, but ritual can be anything that is routine, or important to you, whether it’s collecting sticks, or making sure you brush your teeth every morning. I think there is something interesting in repeated actions or celebrations. I’ve looked a lot at the equinoxes and the solstices. I feel that ritual is a broad word, but it can be also be individual at the same time.
W: I was just thinking that. See, my first dabbling with the occult was with Satanism in my early teens, and ritual in that context is very personal, because Satanism is all about the power of the individual. But, for me now, I think of it more in a community sense as a collaboration. And I suppose, the more mundane things – setting a table, can be a socially cohesive ritual. I like that aspect of your work too, the robe that you’ve made was really cool, and it made me think of ritual in a scientific sense. Is there a scientific aspect to the way you approach ritual?
KE: Sort of. I guess I am interested in science, but I’ve not really applied it to my work properly. I think it is definitely something that I’m interested in doing. I’d love to be able to look at some of the natural materials I work with, look at them under a microscope say, because there is a lot of science in magic and ritual, and there’s also a lot of magic and ritual in science as well.
W: I think so, I mean, for years I wasn’t interested in science at all, but my girlfriend runs an art collective called Paralab, which merges art and science, and they go out into the field and the moors and they do amateur experiments, they collect moss, and stone and rust, and I’ll go along and watch, and as I’m watching I think, this feels very witch-like, to look at them you’d think they were doing a ritual and there’s an interesting link there that I’d not made before.
KE: Yeah, yeah definitely. I was meant to do something with the university, which, unfortunately got cancelled, but a group of us were going to go and help to rewild a part of Salford which felt really quite folklorish, or witchy, but it was also very scientific at the same time.
W: Salford’s wild enough!
KE: I can’t remember which part it was, but it was a group project that the uni had organized
W: That sounds fascinating
KE: Yeah, I’m really sad that I didn’t get to do it, but hopefully one day…
W: Hopefully you will in the future, I love things like that. Rewilding is something that I’m quite passionate about, and I think people underestimate how much it can be done on a small scale, like, you can rewild a patch of your garden or whatever, it doesn’t have to be re-introducing wolves, but that sounds great, you’ll have to let me know if that goes ahead. So, on your Instagram there’s kind of a mission statement, and a lot of it really resonated with me. It says ‘re-purposing the mark humanity had on the landscape in a time when living alongside the environment was still essential is my own personal engagement with the relationship humanity and nature have as inseparable entities.’ I like this idea of repurposing the mark humanity had on the landscape, could you expand on that a little bit?
KE: Yes, I guess humanity and nature are one of the same, and if you look at the mark that humanity had in this Neolithic period with all these carvings and stone circles, they’re all natural objects that have been moved or recreated, and I think exist together, but also, we exist together as a driving force: nature and humanity, but also there’s things that we do that can affect one another, even with us being one and the same. I guess looking at dominant culture and how it seeks to differentiate between the human world and the natural world, I think I enjoy the notion that neither of them can be truly separated and I think looking at these carvings and the mark that humanity had, whether it be ancient or taking steps on a walk that you’ve done during lockdown or something, I think it’s very interesting to look at what’s up for grabs for us to repurpose, whether it’s mark marking from 5000 years ago, it’s too old to have a meaning…I think that element is really interesting.
W: I think it absolutely is, and I think there’s almost an obsession, in the occult world certainly, with authenticity sometimes, and it becomes more like re-enactment in a sense. And even if you re-enact things exactly how they were 1000 years ago, you can’t get in the mindset of someone around then, so this idea of repurposing I find interesting, and I suppose honest in a way. The ‘nature’ word went out of vogue for a little while, people associated it with the Romantics and saw it as separating us and nature, but I like the word nature, and I don’t see myself as separate from it and I like the fact you use it in a way that is inclusive of yourself and us: it doesn’t have to be us versus nature. So, do you have any thoughts on that, what nature is?
KE: Yeah, it’s a really interesting word. It has been Romanticised, but then also I feel that we are in such a poignant time, where it’s very important to start working alongside rather than against, definitely with climate change, and all of these things, I think it’s definitely something that we need to hold at the same level as ourselves because for so long it hasn’t been, and it’s not sustainable to keep going, I guess.
W: I suppose it links to the civilisational notion of trying to escape nature, and I suppose that manifests itself nowadays in things like transhumanism where they’re trying to go beyond nature, and that’s something that doesn’t appeal to me because I do feel a part of it, but then anything can be natural, can’t it? Plastic – I mean, we made it and we’re natural. But yeah, I like the word nature. That’s great, thanks so much Kai, thanks for giving up your time; I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. I think your work’s fascinating. Here’s some metal recommendations for you. It’s metal, but there’s some acid-folk tinged stuff in there too. Anything else you want to say, or talk about?
KE: No, I think what we’ve talked about has been really good. You’ve given me a chance to talk properly about my work, which has been really nice.
W: That’s great, and the purpose of this is to connect with people across different worlds, and I’m sure some metal fans will love your work. Thanks so much again and keep in touch.
KE: Thank you, it’s been great.
See more of Kai’s work at:
https://www.instagram.com/kaiedwardsart