Meet Kiso Kazanchian | Visual and Performing Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kiso Kazanchian and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kiso, what are you inspired by?
Debris. From a young age, I have been entranced by “discarded” things; empty boxes of Ararat cigarettes peppering the patio of my Glendale family home, candy wrappers, receipts, furniture tipped over the sidewalk, lotto tickets exposing their bones from penny scratches…I thus fell in love with practices that renewed found objects, sounds, and spaces using human interference, such as graffiti, sample-heavy music, and marginalia (how cool is it that the sidelined drawings of monks along manuscript pages appear, in both energy and form, in my grandmother’s absent-minded WhatsApp phone call doodles?). Every day I am reminded that things never end; they simply transform. This reminder keeps me curious, present, and purposeful, albeit turning me into a hoarder from time to time.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My visual art and my dance practice alike are forms of personal collage. Both are Armenian, Angeleno, American, sometimes grunge-y, sometimes clean, and always layered. I aim to reward audiences for their attention by planting hidden-in-plain-site details into a visual or performing landscape. I was obsessed with Armenian biblical manuscripts and big dance teams for some time because I felt their makers accomplished this seamlessly. My canvases include mixed media both made and found; painted Armenian stamps pasted onto sketched Los Angeles street signs, glimpses of natural imagery besides warped logos of brands, KISO tags, and scraps I’ve held onto since I was a child. My choreographed pieces weave together movements aligned with a beat, a lyric, and a sonic texture. I never have a plan when I approach the canvas or enter the dance studio. If I do, I end up feeling suffocated by my self-imposed constraints. I am still exploring ways to get out of my head and into my body. Both my performing and visual art practices emerged alongside my lifelong journey of transmuting loneliness into solitude, and so feel very precious to me. Both I feel produce work loaded with signs, symbols, and themes I collected throughout my life and kept secret until I dared to present them to an audience.
Unfortunately, my preciousness with my work can easily lead to paralysis. Often the smallest pencil stroke or turn of the neck feels charged with high stakes and history. Like most beginnings of things, making first felt light, exciting, infinite, and playful. As I continued to make, however, and my own archive unfolded before my eyes, I felt the responsibility of maintaining momentum, consistency, and quality, as I think all people do with any craft. First it was about me, and then it somehow became about the observer. And so, the most challenging part of my journey has been, and still is, returning to the feeling of presence and play that drew me to making things in the first place. This also comes with accepting every day that I cannot control anyone’s reactions, emotions, or judgments, something my spirit knows but my ego loathes. That being said, here are three lessons I have learned along the way when it comes to creating a personally and professionally sustainable practice:

1. Do You. Everyone carries a unique collection of sensory experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Especially when you feel your experiences do not matter, make something small and remind yourself that your message, however unclear, deserves to be experienced by others. You never know who will relate to something and why. I cannot count the number of times an aged piece of graffiti or a doodle at the corner of a found page has made me grateful for the ability to see and feel.
2. Build It and They Will Come. You do not need permission from a teacher, a parent, a friend, nor an institution, to make and share something. You just need it from yourself. If you continue making things that feel real to you, you will organically collect a community of people who feel it to be real as well.
3. Be Kind To Yourself. You are not a machine. Your processes and products will change over time because you are an evolving organism bumping into other evolving organisms. Sometimes you will not make anything physical at all and worry that you never will again, and the self-critical nagging, not the absence of production, will keep you from producing. It is also incredibly difficult to make something when exhausted. Take it from my insomniac self. Get your physical, emotional, and spiritual rest, and know that creativity is an infinite well within you that you can access as you please. You can do it 🙂

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
As a Taurus, I am all about tastes, sounds, textures, and colors. For a scenic drive in Glendale to collect your thoughts or ask a friend in the passenger seat invasive questions–Chevy Chase Dr. For a good coffee– Cafecito Organico in Atwater at the end of Glendale Blvd (the order: Iced Whole Milk Panela Latte, though the fan favorite is Iced Oat Milk Lavender Latte. I am also biased because I used to work here). For food– Taco Azteca on Verdugo Blvd, the original teal-colored location, which I am blessed to have walking distance from my apartment (the order: anything). For music: anything put on by Minaret Records, Neurotek, Miracle Tech, Zulu, and Lara Sarkissian.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Funny enough, I have found my greatest success when I have trusted my own instincts, whether for dance, visual art, or music (my majority self-taught trades). The ongoing joke between me and the universe is that the things I have learned within institutional settings are rarely the things that bring me personal or professional stability. I would of course like to thank my mother and grandmother for their dedication to developing patience as my curiosity lured me from passion to passion like a leaping frog hungry to touch every lily pad in a lake. I would also like to thank them for showing me what it means to be a multifaceted, talented, funny, powerful, and creative Armenian woman. I would like to thank my father for inspiring me in his dedication to balancing his devotion to music, art, dance, and philosophy, with familial responsibility. I would also like to thank my childhood piano teacher Marina Simonian, who celebrated my ability to cry while playing the piano instead of criticizing it, and my mind-blowingly talented, intelligent, and creative best friend Zara Saraon who, beyond inspiring me, has reminded me over the course of 5 years that I am destined to make and move when I forget it.

Website: www.kisokazanchian.cargo.site

Instagram: @kisokazanchian

Linkedin: Christine “Kiso” Kazanchian