ROKOLECTIV

SONIC MANGROVES: AN INTERVIEW FROM THE ROKOLECTIV RESIDENCY

ROKOLECTIV

Adela, your live performances are usually centered around your voice, you very rarely use visuals in your shows. Your powerful songs sung in three languages explore your intimate experience of a life stretched across borders, your roots, and the connection to your parents. How did it feel to be immersed in someone else’s visual narrative?

ADELA

It was actually so wonderful! I don’t usually have visuals, because I am not very visually gifted. :) So, I struggle to open that part of the brain often. Earlier this year I also got to work with a light designer, and now Nona’s incredible stage design and visuals added so much to the experience of my music. I have performed in many different places, also ones where the immersion was only possible through the sound (smelly pubs and such). It feels very dignified and much easier for me to feel connected when there is a visual element to my performance. I am very grateful for Nona to have approached my music with such care and deep understanding.

ROKOLECTIV

Nona, while your practice is interdisciplinary and you did tap into performance art or other collaborations with musicians, you are normally used to exhibit in the frame of contemporary art galleries and museums. How did you relate to Adela’s music, and what was the concept behind your stage installation?

NONA

The collaboration with Adela, initiated by Rokolectiv, was my first exploration into stage design. I began by immersing myself in her music, videos, and especially the visual language of one of her record covers. I immediately sensed a shared sensibility, particularly in how we both relate to nature. This led me to revisit my 2021 video work Hydrophites, filmed in the Danube Delta. I extended its duration to accompany her set, allowing the visuals, her voice, and the soundscape to intertwine into an eerie, atmospheric environment.

As I edited the video work, themes like lament and finitude emerged strongly. That’s when the idea of candles came in—both as a measure of time and as symbolic presences that transform a space. I imagined the candelabra as aerial roots or mangroves, giving form to my preoccupations with transience, ecological concerns, and resilience. In this way, the stage became not just a visual frame, but a reflection on climate change and the fragile ecosystems increasingly threatened by drought and fire.

ROKOLECTIV

Adela, your songs are mostly sung in Slovak and Hungarian, which neither Nona and Emilian nor the audience understood. However, the silence in the audience, the focused listening atmosphere gave us goose bumps. It felt refreshing to hear music in other languages, and try to imagine the local stories behind them, but we may have gotten them wrong... Do you fear that your stories get lost because of the language barriers or do you use language deliberately, as a tool to engage audiences at a non-rational, emotional level?

ADELA

Ah, thank you so much! You know, I feel like one of my many roles as an artist is to communicate emotions in a way which is authentic to me. I think it wouldn’t be authentic at this point in my life if I sang in English more. I’m always happy to share translations of my lyrics and stories behind my songs when asked, but much more I’d like for people’s hearts to open up when listening to the music. And for that, language is not important. Although I appreciate that, if you do speak any of those languages, you may be able to connect to it more quickly. But sometimes taking your time with something and being a patient listener can be more valuable. 

I have recently made a big shift in my brain—for the first time in my life I think in Slovak. For most of my life, it was English, which I always saw as a handicap when I was to communicate in Slovakia. So, this is a very positive outcome of being engaged with my local scene.

ROKOLECTIV

Nona, how do you feel about these collaborations outside of the typical art world circuit? For stage installations, the pressure may be lower, and the audiences may be less critical, but your work is perhaps shorter lived, because it cannot be exhibited somewhere else or sold. You are already under pressure in an art scene obsessed with productivity, is it worth it for you to engage in even more side projects?

NONA

I have to say, this was one of the most rewarding experiences of my year—to have the chance to work in this kind of setup. I agree that the pressure and stakes can feel lower compared to the conventional art world, but I see that as a strength rather than a drawback. These collaborative formats offer something my practice genuinely benefits from. I need to experiment and stay open in order to evolve. Moving between the white cube and the black box keeps me flexible—it challenges me to think differently about space, audience, and temporality. I actually had a similar feeling during my first solo show in a gallery context, back in 2015, when I was trying out new mediums and formats for the first time. I realized then how generative it can be to take creative risks and treat the space as a kind of incubator, with the audience as part of that process. I’ve missed that sense of leaping into the unknown—it brings a different kind of energy that feeds back into everything else I do.

ROKOLECTIV

Adela, you are somewhat familiar to Romania and even delved into some regional folklore of the Magyar communities in Transylvania. Can you tell us more about that? 

ADELA

Well, I would say I visit Bucharest quite often for my community building volunteering. I am connected to Márta Sebestyén through her voice and music, which were big influences on my parents, both folk dancers. I have never been to Transylvania though, and I am very new to opening myself up to Hungarian-speaking communities. But I have a project I’m working on with Štefan Szabó, where we are singing and searching for Hungarian folk songs—mostly from Southern Slovakia where we both come from—but we have also sung some songs from Moldova, Romania. It’s been really nice to speak Hungarian outside of my parent’s home and make new friendships through this shared language, which is also my mother tongue.

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ROKOLECTIV

And what is the process once you discover an old song you like? Do you rewrite the lyrics and the melody, or do you try to preserve it as much as possible and sort of “pass it on”, with a contemporary twist?

ADELA

I try to preserve it as much as possible. Currently with Štefan Szabó we are working with a collection of recordings from Abaújszina in Slovakia, and the songs are usually recorded by a group of old ladies. The recordings are amazing, because sometimes you can hear how the ladies are smiling, sometimes they laugh mid-song because they forget the lyrics. Recently we discovered a recording of a lady who called herself “Mede”, which is my name. I also found out that my great-grandmother also took part in one of these recordings, but she wasn’t a very good singer, so they sat her far from the microphone. :) It’s a very joyful process, full of love.

ROKOLECTIV

Migration is common to both of your biographies. Adela moved between Szabadság, London, and now Bratislava, while Nona lived in Bucharest, Antwerp, Berlin, and now Athens. Did moving change the way you relate to where you come from? And how do you feel your work may evolve in the future? Is it still important for you to express your geographical identity, will you continue in a more fluid, post-identity key?

ADELA

For sure, it changed the way I relate to where I come from. I grew up believing my country is only to be left (this is also because of the international school I went to) but moving back seems to have opened a lot of doors for me. In my music, I want to honor this, so I relate to it a lot. However, I am not sure what the future holds. I’ve been back for almost 5 years now, and I feel like I am opening up to more things / experiences, both positive and negative. These feelings and realities I’m trying to express into my songs. I can’t seem to detach myself from it though. Migration is also the reality of many people from Eastern Europe for many different reasons. I was really inspired by a blurb on Bogdan Raczynski’s “Muzyka Dla Imigrantów” album reissue in 2021, which said “Immigration is the most loving change. It means loving yourself, your family, your life. This action is so profound. It changes your neighbors, streets, language, irrevocably for the better, forever.”

NONA

For me, moving between cities and shifting home bases has definitely shaped my practice—not so much in terms of content, but in how I work. It’s helped me stay open, adaptable, solution-oriented, and organized. There’s something deeply enriching about discovering new people, places, and ecosystems. I need that constant movement and exploration for my ideas to coagulate and stay fresh. While my work is evolving in a more fluid, post-identity direction, I still return to Romania, both physically and metaphorically. It remains a point of departure, a grounding reference that subtly informs my perspective, even as I move beyond fixed notions of identity.