Mary (“Oh-chur") Ocher is an all-round expressive; visual artist, innovator, filmmaker/director, poet, singer and songwriter. As a creative of Berlin’s thriving art scene, she is habitually involved in projects across art, literature or film at any given time, but it is her music which will take her on the road to New Zealand, Australia and South East Asia later this month, reaching new audiences. Those discovering her music for the first time need not be introduced by genre; Ocher’s counter-culture of sound, combined with her DIY art style, create a suitably chaotic cosmos for her spellbinding voice to run wild in. Some of her most recent praises include two songs which are now slated to appear in a film musically curated by Sean Lennon, an award from Berlin’s Underground Film Festival for her short film Pawnshop Santa in February this year, and playing alongside Cat Power, Moby and Ariel Pink at The Art of Elysium’s Genesis show at LA’s Ace Hotel in late 2014, to which was invited by Karen O and Rain Phoenix.
Uninhibited and multi-dimensional, Ocher is just as captivating behind the rustic strokes of live guitar as she is playing quiet keys on the piano, and the expansiveness of her repertoire can be heard on her most recent double anthology where she has collated nine years of song “sketches” from the foundation up in raw, de-constructed fragments.
For those that may be unfamiliar with your music, how would you introduce yourself and your discovery of the art form?
My social media summary suggests outsider torch singer, so I guess there's a bit of both in what I do, but also perhaps a bit of neither. I think we all stumble upon art when we're very little, don't we? The only difference is that some move on and consider it a form of play, while others choose to never grow up and keep their little infantile fancies, ‘cause they're plain fun, or ‘cause we've never actually learned the language of a grown-up world.
The blurb for your current Asia/Oz tour is a wonderful opener; “Mary Ocher is possibly possessed by demons, perhaps by ghosts of deceased prophets." Do you have many personalities that come out through your music?
The songs tell stories and these are told through characters. I suppose that's the nature of a stage in that it allows you to play around with identities, characteristics, and to try out different voices as mean of communicating ideas. There's so many ways to tell a story - you can be menacing or humble, straightforward or held back. Each variation would have an entirely different air about it.
As an artist born prior to the digital music age, how have you witnessed its evolution, and is it a positive one?
We're living in a very interesting time, and it's almost as though the past is alive in the present. We have access to all of the documented data that was ever made and we are more educated than any previous generations. The next generation will be even more educated, having grown up with it from birth.
I was born in the 80s and grew up with illegal downloads for every album that was ever produced and digitalized. And I've heard music that was just a decade earlier out of print and piling dust in someone’s basement, so it's absolutely mind-bogging that folks just ten years older couldn’t access these things, that is, if they were lucky enough to even be aware they're out there.
"At the same time, with the constant flow of information, it is much harder to stand out."
You're competing for attention with so many more acts, because everyone publishes their work online, but it's definitely much more a blessing than a curse…it just created a whole new series of challenges.
In a conversation with online UK magazine The Girls Are you discussed the obvious challenges of being a female artist, suggesting that it was going to be your “mark of Cain” until you died. Do you see your work as an artist as being persuasive in deconstructing the idea of what it is to be a female musician?
It's very hard to judge the work itself without context. When I preach to the choir, whether it be playing to the privileged white left-wing, or queer communities around the world, of course the work is accepted and liked because it speaks the same language. The real challenge, however, is to reach listeners outside of those familiar, comforting circles. In the indie rock circles, or anything with guitars, most labels and promoters are men (that stretches to experimental music, synth music, conceptual work, and all art in general) in Western Europe, and you often forget that society is still not there yet in terms of expectations and what is appropriate for women to aspire to, or how to act.
"Being a hard worker and learning how to sell the idea of the work perhaps teaches basic survival skills for that world; you are constantly being told you can't do this, you'll never succeed in that, being told that you’re a nobody and you’ll always remain one."
It’s like you are constantly being shown your place. With female socialization you perhaps become less vulnerable to that. Or perhaps I've always possessed this certain male quality, a certain arrogance, of nodding politely and thanking them for their honest (degrading, abusive) advice, and then I just moved on and got my shit done without their (or anyone's) help. You learn to work even harder and never let anyone discourage you, though sometimes it really isn't all that easy and you just want to stop - but stopping is not an option.
"A mark of Cain is perhaps a very grave and pretentious way to call it, for I'm only female, and not belonging to a very peculiar minority. We are supposedly 51% of the world's population. It is huge and ironic that we even have to discuss this. I hope to see the day that talking about being a female artist (or a gay/black/migrant artist) won't be a subject worth mentioning, just like the colour of our hair."
Mykki Blanco wrote a beautiful post about travelling to Russia for shows and the experiences in the streets as a gay, black extrovert, and it was really wonderful to read. Now, that's a deconstruction - infiltrating the core of a society that is propagandising a scary and homophobic identity by standing in the front of the struggle, in a place which is becoming harder and harder to act openly gay (or to be identified as such) with the authorities making it illegal. It’s just completely incomprehensible to me in this day and age (having been born there).
If Virginia Woolf were alive today, what do you think she would have to say about the role of women in creative industries and whether we have progressed in strengthening the female voice?
We have reached financial independence, which was her main concern in the 1920s, and everything she described derived from that. We have not yet reached entirely the level of authority or seriousness that (certain) men are entitled to almost by default, for a woman in any field is still considered (unofficially, and perhaps even against certain codes or company rules) first a women and then an executive, a lawyer, a doctor, or an artist.
"You are still being objectified by every person you meet, woman or man; we learn to objectify ourselves."
Most journalists describe the way you look before they say a single word about your work. A few months ago Meredith Graves of Perfect Pussy summarized that in video interview really well.
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Ocher has recently released a double anthology of recordings (The Fictional Biography of Mary Ocher: The home recordings (2006-2015, parts I and II), and will also be embarking on a tour across South East Asia, New Zealand and Australia between mid-April to June, 2015. Ocher is also releasing a 7" of Man Vs. Air featuring drum duo Your Government in July (preview below).
