Digestivo “follows the flow” and becomes their own organism: On their second studio album, “Mofo”, the producer and visual artist builds their own version of experimental music and explores their personal Amazon
Text and interview by Pedro Paulo Furlan.
São Paulo / Ananindeua, 18h. A couple of months after the release of their album “Mofo”, the producer, performer and visual artist Digestivo sits down with me to talk. Coming straight from Pará, more specifically the outskirts of Ananindeua, Distrito Industrial, Digestivo understands what it means to be at the margins, and found art as a way to express their lived experiences.
“I don’t really feel comfortable and free to express myself always, I think I feel way more free in my own work”.
Digestivo remembers being an artist since a kid and fostering their dream also since then. On the search for ways to express their inner movements and motivations, since their feelings to their identity as a non-binary person, they found all the different ways of creating art that they are involved in, nowadays.
Now, in their second studio album, “Mofo”, meaning mold, Digestivo puts themselves up as power-force, not only of the underground, but, also of the experimental music scene in Brazil. Putting themselves as a transmitter of messages that talk about what it means to be a producer in Brazil, besides their own inside flows.
“Mold expands, and doesn’t only expand onto other people, but, also as a form of language”, Digestivo explains to me about their most recent album, telling me: “I feel like I could deliver an album that goes beyond a music album, it’s an art album”.
Where is “Mofo” born?
When I ask them where the Digestivo name comes from, the artist laughs and explains: “I wanted a name for my Instagram that was cunty”, they tell, telling me that they tested a lot of body organs, identifying with Digestivo, meaning digestive, at the end. In love with the conceptual, the producer says that the final decision contributed to the creation of their own concepts, besides becoming a name that’s easy to remember.
The choice of their artistic name came along with the moment when the producer decided to become an artist, officially. As soon as they got into visual arts college, at 19, Digestivo started producing from there on, in 2016, starting from photography, falling in love with performance in 2018, and with music production in 2019.
Crediting their start in music to the experimental producer Arca, one of the biggest figures of the international underground scene, Digestivo tells me that after seeing her perform at the Yaga festival, in São Paulo, they fell in love with the idea of creating electronic music: “I started putting it in my performances”, they say, “I mixed performance and music, two of my biggest passions”.
The connection between Digestivo and art started way earlier, though. When they were younger, the artist, that’s 28 now, lived in the countryside of Pará, close to the community of Nazaré do Mocajuba, in Curuçá - in that place, Digestivo got to know a photographer that had travelled there, and that inspired them to dream with an artistic career.
“In that first contact I had with him, he made me think that that was what I wanted to do too, to become a photographer”.
Getting to know that photographer, that became their professor at the Universidade Federal do Pará, was the moment that Digestivo realized they had to become an artist. But she didn’t stop at photography, deciding, though, to build a world of their own through visual arts, performance and, of course, musical production.
“Mofo”, Digestivo tells me, was when they solidified this dream of living from their music, also. Produced along three years, the period after the release of “Visceral”, their first album, the record that would become “Mofo” was presented to the public little by little, all throughout their performances, tours and even their master’s thesis.
“I had various eras, processes, while I produced ‘Mofo’, I was producing with time, following the flow, following what I really wanted, what I was feeling”.
The digestive flow
Graduated in visual arts, with a post-grad and masters in the area, Digestivo dedicated their academic career to studying their own creative process and their own way to create their art. In one of their researches, the musical producer describes their production as a flow, interpreting herself as a body in flow, always following “what I’m feeling, my wills, you know?”.
“It’s a poetic vision of mine, about how I feel different from other artists, in front of a vision that goes beyond what I can see, beyond what the other is seeing. I like to leave things open”.
Inserting themselves in all aspects of their art, Digestivo’s expression extends from their sound to their performance abilities, to their own outfits. The artist highlights the creation of an universe, a world where Digestivo exists in their complete form, as the main piece of their artistic ethos.
“I try to create an environment as if it’s from another world”, Digestivo explains to me, saying that the first step is to decide the universe where they materialize in that moment. For their performances, that world is created mixing the musical production, the space they’re occupying and even their steps as a body.
“In this other universe, I create myself, I materialize in a being, a creature, an organism, and I start to interact with these elements that I create, that are this biome”.
Besides being a musical producer and a performer, Digestivo also assumed the responsibility of creating their own outfits for their performances, in a way that completes the universe where their persona lives. The artist, that has always been in love with fashion, sees their pieces as part of their performance, matching them to the story they’re telling.
Creating pieces of clouds with silicon fiber, and producing wearable pieces with that material, Digestivo materializes the propagation of their art, and, at the same time, their own status of unreality.
While building their own outfits and styles, something that’s part of them since they owned a thrift shop that sold its pieces in front of their house, the artist fulfills their persona’s vision, that is, at the same time, a fantasy and full on expression of their reality - joining personality and environment, with a bit of northern Brazilian culture.
The Amazonian organism
“I realized that the work of an artist is not only about themselves, there’s a whole culture on top of it all”.
Answering my question about their next steps as an artist, Digestivo explains to me about the central idea of the next phase of their production: “I want to talk about my origins”. Beyond their own perspective, the artist, that centers their creativity on self-expression, wants to talk about the Amazon, inserting the environment they grew up in, onto their art.
Until the release of “Mofo”, Digestivo’s art described their inner universe, “my head in chaos”, as themselves explain, but, even in that record, the artist decided to insert elements of the culture of the Brazilian north. With instruments from the Amazon and sounds from the ecosystem, the producer braided the Amazon into their music.
From here on out, the plan is to intensify the Amazon representation in their work - “I’m from the Amazon, I’m making electronic music, what I do is part of the northern culture of Brazil”. Highlighting their presence on the scene in Pará, Digestivo tells me the importance of seeing themselves as a pioneer, and, from there, trace their own path, walking the line between what already exists and what’s new.
“I think I’m only becoming aware now”, Digestivo says, explaining that, little by little, they realized the path they wanted to follow with their music. Now, dedicated to explore different sounds and braid into them the sounds of the environment where they grew up, the producer prepares herself to release her next projects.
“I’m really on this route of continuing to experiment, to make my music even more danceable, but, to explore something that’s more Brazil, play with technomelody”.
On their two next albums, Digestivo wants to continue to tell the story of their own self-materialization, but, now with a new importance. In love with technomelody, “It’s impossible for someone from Pará to not like it”, an electronic music style coming from the northern region of Brazil, the artist wants to include the sound on their next projects.
“The dream is to release two albums about the Amazon, one with designs from the Amazon and one that mixes it with other Brazilian cultures, and throw myself into the world”.