The video for “Forlorn” is utterly captivating. How did the collaboration with Amorphokyria come about? What was it about her art that drew Amenra to working with her? What was it that drew Amorphokyria to Amenra?
CHVE: A few years ago Liza’s work caught my eye. Her sculptural jewelry spoke to me and drew me in to delve deeper into her world. I quickly sensed the vision and strength that came from every creation made by her hand and eye. There was a certain depth to her and her work. As I am curious by nature, I reached out. People that breathe and live their art are incredibly rewarding to work with. Or just be around, frequent. They inspire and give by proximity. We got in touch and exclaimed our mutual respect for each other’s work and started a long stretch of artistic exchange. I think the dark and despair-like nature of her sculptures, all round imagery and even person resonated with me as it and she feels very familiar.
We met in Paris last year, and set the idea in motion to work together in film. As we had already written our new EPs with AMENRA, I let her listen to the different songs, and let her pick the one that spoke to her most.
Pre-order: AMENRA De Toorn & With Fang And Claw out March 28th via Relapse Records
AMORPHOKYRIA: The sound of AMENRA endlessly inspires me, it feels like abstract prayers whispered in a Godless temple… I think of their pieces as rituals or a potential passage through darkness toward catharsis. Absolutely raw and visceral sound that purges the weight we carry in our souls.
Their sound compels us to surrender, to confront, to release.
For my own creative stimulus, they are an integral force, really. Inhabiting that liminal space where vulnerability and power collide, which is the very terrain I navigate in my own work…
In our visual universes I also felt closeness, a certain ritualistic intensity, the eloquence of decay.
When the opportunity arose to collaborate, it was pure honor to me.
At a time when we’re constantly bombarded with distraction, where we’re constantly offered ways to numb ourselves from mental and emotional suffering, “Forlorn” is bringing us into the agonizing present of pain. Why is that important to Amenra and Amorphokyria?
CHVE: As much as we need to be able to step away from it and silence it for our own peace of mind, there is no way around it anymore. The global scale of negativity and even misinformation is a constant onslaught on our wellbeing and that of the world. That exact distraction also brings us news of constant global suffering. Whereas a few decades ago, no one’s knowledge reached much further of the confines of their village or city that they lived in.
Pain is ever present. If it’s not yours it is someone else’s. Every creature with a whim of empathy suffers the consequences of its sometimes helpless situation. Yet it is important to see reality of Pain for what it is. The cruel nature of mankind needs to be known. Only then we are able to combat it with all our might, and every inch of love that we have inside us.
Even though it all seems trivial sometimes in the great scheme of things.
Soon you will speak of us no more.
AMORPHOKYRIA: I think I’m more of an alert spirit, refusing to dull the edges of experience, even when it cuts deep… No escapism. I prefer to sit with the rawness of things.
Not because suffering is to be glorified, but because it is a force that shapes us, confronts us, and keeps us truly alive.
To face the full weight of emotion, without avoidance, without sedation, means to remain awake, critically engaged with the world around us. It sharpens our perception, keeps us from becoming passive to what should not be tolerated.
In a time where we are submerged in endless stimulation, much of it designed to distract, pacify, or manipulate, I believe choosing presence over avoidance becomes an act of defiance.
For me, “Forlorn” became the space to embody this philosophy.
Allowing to see Pain as something cyclical and transformative.
A ritual, a passage — it can be destruction or renewal. In its full, unfiltered presence, there is something sacred.
The lyrics to “Forlorn” and the video for it seem to be speaking to the irony of human life. The lyrics, to me, are describing how most of us have died and been forgotten. How many ancestors do we have that we can’t name?
CHVE: That is a fact, most of us creative people are fighting so hard to either spread our views on things or venting our frustrations on others, but in a few years time, the legacy you’ve built for your entire life fades into thin air, sooner or later. But it does give us a sense of longitude. And it will always be important to create things of beauty in this wretched world.
AMORPHOKYRIA: Honestly, to me, there’s something haunting in the way the music piece “Forlorn” confronts the weight of existence.
I wanted to think of a Body — as a prison, yet also a vessel of memory.
To try and capture that tension between presence and erasure, between the weight of lineage and the void we ultimately return to…
On the other hand, Amorphokyria’s visuals speak to how much we strive and bleed and suffer from birth to death, how intense and all-encompassing our lived experience is only to one day disappear into dust. Is that the interplay of ideas Amenra and Amorphokyria were going for with “Forlorn”?
CHVE: Most definitely.
AMORPHOKYRIA: I don’t believe anything truly disappears in the universe. Nothing is lost, only transformed. I believe existence moves in cycles: the soul returns, learns, unlearns, and is reborn once more.
To me, “Forlorn” embodies this paradox of struggle and impermanence, not as an ending, but as part of an eternal recurrence…
The world around us is marked by brutal events, by suffering that echoes through generations. This reality to some extent shaped the way I envisioned the symbolic narrative of the video.
What are we all fighting for?
CHVE: I think in short we all strive to make our life here on earth worth our while. We aim to build and contribute in our own individual ways — some to destroy, others to rebuild. Do we strive for a sense of restored balance? A sense of rest, peace on earth? Some people have distorted ways of getting there, I hear you say. I don’t know why we act like we do. But we do.
We crave a sense of recognition of that search, that sense of being here “for a reason,” having contributed. Be it by getting a sense of pride from a parent, a sense of acknowledgement from peers..
The fights for freedom worldwide are the ones of most value to us all.
AMORPHOKYRIA: We fight not for permanence, but for meaning, for ideas, for dignity, for the right to exist in peace. To elevate and honor human life, to resist oblivion not with fear, but with the refusal to be silent.
Perhaps that is the real interplay between AMENRA and myself in this collaboration?
A recognition that suffering is inevitable, but so is the will to endure. The cycle continues, and so must we…
“Forlorn” is off the upcoming EP With Fang And Claw, a record that you described as exploring Amenra’s earlier work with the Mass series and opening the portal to Mass VII. What part of your 30-year journey does “Forlorn” explore?
CHVE: I think it’s always important to not forget where you come from…ever, and respect that part of your life. Hold it in high regard. In “Forlorn,” you look back in a way on that timeline, the years of hard work that mean the world to you, but nothing to others. In the grand scheme of the universe, we are but dust.
