If Strangers
"Dust"

Description Natalie Beridze

If Strangers: this concept emerged recently, during Covid19 lockdown, as a result of which, CES - as many other institutions sought ways to continue their existence, by altering teaching process, in compliance with new regulations.
Our course at CES (music production and song writing) went along with school's adjustments to lecture in front of lucid screens, divided into multiple windows, which created diverse hindrances, since our teaching methods would not survive through online interaction with the class.
As physical interaction now seized to exist altogether, we had to come up with an alternative version of lecturing, which would be both educational, practical and would result in a ready-made product.
Our newcomer students on the other side of the screen, (most of them complete strangers), joined us in our online project / lectures, with slim to none understanding of what they were up to. All they knew was group name:”Collab19", and that it was not going to be our "normal" course.
We decided to do a massive collaboration together with our 11 new students, including both of us - lecturers, making total of 13 participants. The challenge was to put out a ready album at the end of two months.
technically the process was: we would randomly divide ourselves into groups of two or more people and each group would start a track, by sending each other stems, then working further, adding their stems and so on. during our next online meeting, we would discuss the process, sum up what we've achieved during the week and pass previous group's half-made track on to the next couple and so on. Each track at the end would be written and produced by multiple participants, including lecturers.
the process immediately became so inspiring and stimulating, that by the end of a week, we would have several ready tracks on our drive. Certainly, pandemic made us more disciplined and hard-working at the time, as there was not much else to dwell on.
We considered the abundance of risks that this process carried. As we basically indulged and promised 13 strangers, including ourselves to create something not only for the sake of overcoming creative "hibernation" during pandemic; not only to escape our often times desperate need to fight boredom, but rather to compel ourselves to create a product, which would outweigh and outgrow the very reason and circumstances under which it all begun.
This process took us to the unknown journey, resembling the process of reading good poetry, where the words are not supposed to merry, yet they translate huge mess into emotional momentum, which one will never forget.
By the end of two months, we came up with the name of the collective - If Strangers and named the double album "Dust" resulted in 21 tracks, to be put out as a digital release at CES Records, in July 2020.
As a result of Covid19 pandemic and the process it made us jump into, If Strangers - as a project will continue as a sequel, with other groups of strangers, regardless of the future of pandemic.
We came to believe, that each and every sound stem, which was exchanged within our group during the working process, provoked, nurtured and educated each one of us, regardless our experience, age or taste. At first, it made us overcome our daunting anxiety and boredom, yet in the process, I believe, we learned to embrace boredom, as one of the most valuable tools of exploration, self-analysis and indulgence.

I mentioned boredom, because it directly corresponds with the name of the album - "Dust", which can be perceived in many ways, but I personally recall Joseph Brodsky's assay "In praise of boredom", where he writes: "... For boredom is an invasion of time into your set of values. it puts your existence into its perspective. the more you learn about your own size, the more humble and the more compassionate you become to your likes, to that dust aswirl in a sunbeam...Ah, how much life went into this fleck! not from your point of you, but theirs. You are to them, what time is to you; that's why they look so small. do you know what the dust says when it's being wiped off the table? "Remember me", whispers the dust".