‘Portuguese girl that lives in Suffolk and makes some unusual projects happen!’ says her Facebook page, reassuringly allusive and somewhat modest. I caught up with the Curator, Producer and Artistic Manager, Joana Seguro at Wilton’s Music Hall on the night of her ‘Faster Than Sound: Brainwaves’ production as part of the Barbican’s Blaze season to ask her about working with Mike Figgis’ ‘Just Tell The Truth’ bash at the ROH; along with two other forthcoming experimental London shows featuring the likes of Seb Rochford, Ollie Coates, Leafcutter John, F. M. Eimheit, Susan Stenger and a whole load of front-line musicians. But first, I wanted to find out about the girl from Sintra, the pharmacology student who became the first gig organizer for Rough Trade, who’d dabbled with Mute and Warp, co-founded London’s first electronic music festival, Ether and set up her own production company, Lumin. Science, music and love – here’s her journey.

Jamie McLaren: While at King’s College studying Pharmacology you were burning the midnight oil running around reviewing loads of gigs for the college rag, Raw. Were you drawn towards particular artists and labels?
Joana Seguro: At the end of the 90's the whole post-rock scene was exploding. I was going to see things like Arab Strap and Mogwai, and just thinking 'Oh My god, this is amazing'. I remember seeing Godspeed You! Black Emperor and being able to take pictures of their first ever London show, and I loved those early Sigur Ros gigs. The scene was very experimental, there were no vocalists, and the compositions were just phenomenal.

I was listening and watching a lot of electronic and experimental bands. It was a great contrast to what I knew. In Portugal, the electronic music is either house with a jazz twist or trance. So we completely missed on the whole techno and acid house scene. I really got into labels like Fat Cat and Warp. I'm not a very formal person, so if I saw a gig and I liked it, I'd just go up to the person and say ‘that was really good! Where else are you doing it?’

During that time, a university friend of mine pointed out to me 'you're very busy, not with your degree, but with everything else'. Something clicked.

JM: How did you make that transition from writing for the college paper to working for the likes of Mute and Warp?
JS: Very quickly. While writing with the college paper I was being fed CD's by the PR companies that cater for the students. But actually I wasn't interested in these things. They weren’t representative of what was interesting or ‘happening’ in London at the time. So I just started ringing the labels that I wanted to review and see. I'd then send them the write-up, and we just had a natural dialogue. They were putting on really good gigs and I was genuinely really into them. I remember ringing up City Slang who were putting out a Lambchop record, and I was like 'that's just amazing! That's one of the best things I've heard in a very long time'.

Now, what happened next was quite a crucial moment in my career. When I graduated, I didn't know what to do. At the time Mute were going to do an in-store event at the Rough Trade shop in Portobello to promote the new Echoboy (Richard Warren) record. But the neighbors complained to the police, so they couldn't do it. Instead they did it at the Nottinghill Arts Club. It was such a great success that I suggested to Nigel House (Rough Trade co-owner) that they should do more gigs. He said ‘we just don't have time’. So I offered, that was it. I just started doing all the gigs for Rough Trade. They gave me a desk, sharing with the accountant. I needed a computer, but my family wouldn't lend me money unless I went back to Portugal and return to Science. I was in London with out any cash, so the guys at Rough Trade loaned me the money to buy a computer. Those gigs were my first big collaboration.

I graduated in July, and our first gigs were in September. They were every week, twice a week.

This was at a time when the White Stripes were putting out their seven-inches, I'd be there playing them, going like, who's this band, let's get in touch with them. So, from being this pharmacology student from Portugal, I’d become a kind of A&R person at Rough Trade. Because of the access to artists I had, Mute asked me to go and do A&R for them. So I started doing live events with them as well. Then, the 25th Anniversary of Rough Trade happened – this was a big job for me, organising all the live events. It was brilliant. I also loved this – I got to buy records and play them to the legendary Daniel Miller (Mute founder). He was really into amazing electronic music.

I had to sit through listening to all the demo's. There were a lot of bad Depeche Mode and Nick Cave wannabes. But there was this amazing up-side. I remember producing the first ever Goldfrapp shows at the ICA, and I got to go to Sonar for the first time with the whole of the Mute company. It was a really exciting time.

After 6-months, Warp called me and said we like you, we want you to come and work with us. It was 2001 and they'd just opened their London office. I got to work on Jamie Lidell’s first album and an EP by Boards of Canada, plus the first release of Prefuse 73. It was really exciting. But to be honest, I was really busy, as at the time I was also working with the V&A on their Late Views.

JM: Do you have an appreciation for theatrical flare? Can an electronic gig cut-it as a performance?
JS: I grew up seeing a lot of performance and experimental theatre. I saw artists like Pina Bausch, Bob Wilson, and I saw people like La Fura dels Baus from Barcelona. I think a lot of these people's work piss all over most stuff I see these days. It's really cutting edge, fully immersive. Y'know, they have no respect for health and safety, and they make completely mind blowing work.

Also, at the time I got really excited by electronic music - which, let's face it, is the worst kind of performance you can imagine. At one point, I hung out with this guy and his laptop - and there's only so much you can watch. There you are, watching a bloke and his laptop in the corner, and you scratch your chin and go, ‘hmm, that's really interesting’. Sonically it might be beautiful, but then I had all these pictures of a bloke with laptop. ‘Oh? Look, it’s another bloke with laptop. Oh - and here's yet another bloke with a laptop – ah, it’s the same bloke’. That was a weakness in terms of performance. But at the same time, it was a strength because there was so much room for other types of art forms to come in. You could add a cellist, or a dancer, or a visual element -and all this would work.

JM: How did Ether, London’s first electronic music festival come about?
JS: Rough Trade wanted to do an electronic music compilation, so I started work on that. I realised there wasn't an electronic music festival in London. I had all these friends who were world re-known electronic musicians with no platform to present their work in the UK. I'd gone to Sonar, and was thinking why wasn't this happening here. So, I went and knocked on the Southbank's door and said - 'You need to start an electronic music festival'. Glenn Max had just started his job as head of Contemporary Music and we started talking. In 2003 we did it - a festival called Ether. It was the first time we did a Sonar style event in London, we had Detroit legend Jeff Mills, five stage invasions, and I got to put my Dad in the Royal Box. It was really, really exciting.

With Ether we began to look at this problem of electronic performance. What if you put it into the Royal Festival Hall - what do you do? So, we did the Warp Sinfonietta project. That was about an orchestra collaborating with electronic musicians. It was the first large-scale experiment that we did. That was almost 10 years ago.

JM: What was your incentive for founding your company Lumin, and what's your vision for it now?
JS: I had a vision of what I wanted to do, which was to be experimental - because my roots are in science, and I love being in the creative lab experimenting. Music is my passion, so I wanted Lumin to be sound led. One of the things I realised is that I wanted to keep people in rhythm with each other. Music is a beautiful starting point. And I wanted to be open to all art forms. I wanted to be free from any rigid systems or formulas. I wasn’t interested in the formal notion that you can’t add theatre to music, you can’t add dance, you can’t add visual arts, and you can’t put music in a visual gallery. I wanted the opposite – to collaborate.

I recognized the fact that I was doing projects that were very specific, and nobody else was really doing. So I created Lumin, which was a way of operating, creating an umbrella for my work to be presented under. The vision has changed, just evolved. It’s experimental which means it's always evolving and changing.

Through out Lumin there have always been associate artists. I'm always collaborating with the artists who become part of the Lumin family. There are certain people, like Mira Calix, Peter Gregson and Felix's Machines that have the same love of experimentation through sound. We're always experimenting, sometimes it's their idea, sometimes it's mine and we then develop them and make them happen.

JM: You're currently working with Mike Figgis on the Deloitte Ignite Festival - 'Just Tell The Truth'. What's that whole experience like?
JS: It's really, really exciting. I've known Mike for a number of years, he called me in for a quick breakfast meeting a few months ago and said 'I'm working on this project, do you think you can do it?' He explained to me what he wanted: 'I want to bring film, dance, debate and conversations - all these different art forms to create a spectacle and experiment - let's see what happens'.

He's a jazz musician, but I'm not really a jazzer. But despite that, it’s really funny as his jazzy approach is really simillair to my love of the experimental. I think of artists and projects as ingredients, and then I'll see what happens. I'm very intuitive in how I nurture them. He has the same respect for it, in that he takes different elements and puts them all together. It's been fascinating to work with him, taking on the role of the practical one - taking his ideas and helping create a structure around them so they can be nurtured and developed.

To be doing it at the Royal Opera House, and for them to take such a risk of inviting someone like him, and to have me working with him is great!

The caliber of the collaborative process is amazing. One of the many things that have been exciting is Mark Thomas is going to be part of 'Just Tell The Truth'. He used to have a program on Channel 4, he's a great stand up comedian – a very political, whistle blower type. Having someone like him to then work with Mara Carlyle whose part of the Lumin family, and to see how they come together is truly inspiring. Plus, other exciting moments of this project coming together are when Mike went to Manchester (MIF) for an exclusive interview with Marina Abramovic – to hear her interpretation of  ‘Just Tell The Truth’. We’re also going to New York to to film Paul Auster. Mike is fantastic at getting people to open up, really showing some vulnerability as themselves in front of the camera, which is just fantastic.

There's a lot of improvisation, you know, that jazz element - it's there.

When he's talking about it, he's like 'don’t over think it, don't come up with a polished PR pitch to say what it is, or hide the truth. Just tell the truth. Just be open about it. Be honest about the industry you operate in. Don't give the pitch, give the reality. Open up. Show the grit. The other thing he's really interested in is opening up the artistic process. There is a degree of honesty, showing the things that are normally hidden.

JM: You have two other events coming up in the autumn, one from the Faster Than Sound project. Tell us about these.
JS: Faster Than Sound came after Ether, for Aldeburgh Music. The reason I set it up, was when I was doing these collaborations what I lacked was having the time for people to have a conversation and decide what they were going to do. Up until then I was doing collaborations that were all planned in advance, people didn't sit in a room together until a couple of days before the performance. So when I started working with Aldeburgh Music it was about giving a week for artists to collaborate together face to face.

These two projects that I'm bringing to London were developed in Suffolk, in the countryside. The first one will be on the 11th September, at the Village Underground - called 'Rhythm of Strings'. I invited Seb Rochford the amazing percussionist to compose the work. What I wanted to do was invite someone who was neither a classical or electronic musician and say - 'you can work with some classical and electronic musicians, and let's see what you come up with'. And so he invited to musicians who use electronics, and two musicians who are classical players. Then they spent a week in a room, sat in a circle improvising and learning about each other. They were Ollie Coates on cello, Max Baillie on viola, and for electronics there was Leo Abrahams with tiny electronics, and then Leafcutter John. The five of them played with ideas for a week. Then they did this unbelievable performance that took place in March in Suffolk. It was phenomenal. So, I’ll presenting its London debut, it’s a pretty big deal for me. It was fantastic to have different people from different worlds learn at finding a common language and finding their musical communication and form.


Another project I developed with Faster Than Sound is English Journey, which we’ll be presenting at the Barbican. For that we had F.M. Einheit, who's from a band that was previously signed to Mute (Einstuerzende Neubauten) - he's developed all these unusual musical instruments. He's an unbelievable percussionist! I've always wanted to work with him. He’s great. We also have Susan Stenger who's involved with Band of Susans, another Mute link. And we have Ian Sinclair and the amazing writer Alan Moore. We’re also bringing people like Shirley Collins who’s bringing a folk element into it, as well as some Moorish dancers and a hurdy-gurdy player. And so we're really coming up with a performance that is part written, part film, part music - it is truly multi-disciplinary.

It's called an English Journey because it's about this group of artists going to a place and creating a narrative based on their impressions and experiences of it. It's going to be a three-part performance ‘journey’ in which the first chapter begins in Aldeburgh, then Newcastle, and the finale of the performance is about London.

The folk aspect will be quite strong. Although I'm interested in cutting edge and technology, I'm also interested in the history and the roots of each musical journey.


JM: Bearing in mind you’re someone who embraces science, technology and art - can you define your DNA?
JS: My DNA?! Definitely Portuguese. As I'm not from here [UK] I definitely have that outside perspective. I've moved out of London, so when I come here I'm doubly excited, as I'm not exhausted by it. So I have that view, as someone who's come from the outside. I'm always looking for things and I'm fascinated with what I find. I'm definitely a scientist. I'm very practical. I like to make things happen. I'm weirdly efficient. I'm also very non-linear, so I go off on tangents all the time. I'll make connections that aren't very systematic.

JM: What's your relationship to love?
JS: I think love rules the universe, without a doubt. I'm very kinda hippy. I believe that everything is connected. The way Lumin is set up, is with artists who I feel a synergy with; there's a lot of synchronicity about the work that I do. It is my passion and love for things that excite it - the fuel for Lumin. So I'm always looking for that. I hope that I don't spend much time focusing on the negatives. I always look for things to be excited for and about, and for people who do exciting things. I'm always treasure hunting, and optimistic about things. That is love - love of projects, love of people that I get to work with.

JM: Where's the most charming place in London?
JS: We're in a pretty charming place right now, aren't we (Wilton's Music Hall). This is quite impressive. It really depends on your mood, I'm really quite happy here right now, really excited about tonight. I've always wanted to do something here so I'm quite happy. But there are certain places that I go to that make me smile. I love the Southbank. I love that walk along the river. I used to live in Vauxhall, and walking from Vauxhall to London Bridge has always been one of my favorite things. For the amount of cultural beacons - it's not necessarily romantic, but I think it's stunning.

JM: Where would you go to truly let down your hair?
JS: I would go out raving. I'm a secret raver, with out a doubt. This is probably very stereotypical, but I'd probably go to Berlin with my friends to Berghain to see a full on techno rave. Just to dance for hours. I really like that club /  rave culture, and I still do. It's very tribal, that collective dancing, and I love repetitive beats, I love disco music, I love dance music. That would be it, definitely - a dark club with techno on would be how I let my hair down!

For more info on what Joana Seguro is working on, follow her on Twitter, or sign-up to the Lumin mailing list:
http://www.lumin.org
http://twitter.com/lumintwitts

2, 3, 4 September
Mike Figgis ‘Just Tell The Truth’ Deloitte Ignite 2011
Royal Opera House
http://www.roh.org.uk/whatson/deloitteignite/index.aspx

11 September
Faster than Sound: Rhythm of Strings
Village Underground
http://www.fasterthansound.com/

22 October
English Journey: ReImagined
Feat. Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore, Shirley Collins & more
Barbican Hall
http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=12536