Amidst Daemons and Demigods: heith for King Kong
heith's multidimensional universe is an exercise in the substance of emptiness.
heith and Bianca Peruzzi in conversation with Julieta Colantonio for King Kong Magazine 'Branded' Issue No. 20. Berlin, 2025.
A story on what followed Escape Lounge (PAN)’s live offering: a dramaturgy conceived in collaboration with Bianca Peruzzi and performed with Leonardo Rubboli at Atonal in Berlin.
Both a statement of intimacy and a celebration of the elusive, the twelve-chapter piece discloses the elemental codings of our too-human condition.
Do you recall any moments that felt like being in a state of suspended present?
Heith: Yes, sometimes. Sometimes it happens on stage. And the other night (at Escape Lounge presentation in Atonal in Berlin) it happened, I think. In those moments, when you can be fully in the present without any distractions, sometimes you perceive time as very slow, and sometimes very fast.
And sometimes all at once.
Heith: It was special for us, something impossible to create even if we wanted to. It just happens when a lot of things connect and you cannot control them: in a room, in a situation, you can’t control all the energies. It is hard enough to be in control of your own energy.
During the photoshoot, the connection between you stemmed from the previous night. You were still linked with this egregor figure.
Daniele: Somehow, I needed Leonardo (Rubboli) to be there. It was nice to bring with us the same feeling we had the night before.
Waking up in this foggy, sort of dream reality, hungover was very present, and we captured that.
that which cannot be dissolved
Thinking of language as the substance that fixes the elusive, what can you share about ‘heith’ as a syntagma?
Heith: From the start, this project has been about searching for a language beyond common sense. The word heith doesn’t carry a meaning. It’s about moving ideas, sounds, and aesthetics across worlds. I don’t really work with concepts, even if it might look that way. I'm fascinated by how reality and significance can be twisted by creating images or storytelling through the ages. In the end, reality almost doesn’t exist; it’s too easy to manipulate.
How does alignment manifest in your work?
Heith: It’s a very intuitive process. What I try to do with my practice is connect to an essence rooted in emotion, instead of truth based on ideas. Aesthetics and sound are just mediums; a way to bridge to some kind of otherness. I play around with things, and if something works, I feel it works, and I don’t ask many questions about it. If it doesn’t, I’d better go for a walk or get an ice cream.
Did it take mastery to reach there?
Heith: Maybe I’ve only reached this point now. In the past, I overworked things, but I’ve realized that often, the less I work, the better it is. I try to leave more space, be emptier. Recently, my main practice has been learning how to be empty.
Surrendering the thinking mind to something greater—how do you do it?
Heith: I take care of myself—my emotions and my mind. I stick to the simple to reduce effort and overthinking. Even my diet: I often eat the same dish for weeks, then change it. It’s a meaningful action, a choice that helps my mind stay in some kind of balance: not one that keeps me standing in the middle, but one that lets me move from an extreme to the opposite one.
To explore polarities.
Heith: I think there's a lot of duality in what I do, especially in my music. And I see it in the outcome. There are two aspects: one is related to song-writing, and the other to some kind of esoteric approach to music. They usually don’t go along very well.
Because words go against the unknown?
Heith: Words invade some kind of storytelling or narrative, while the more esoteric practice doesn’t; it creates an open field.
If we think of the premise (from Marie-Louise Von Franz) of unknown participating factors leaking through and shaping work, how does it relate to you?
Heith: I think the unknown is some kind of drive to make it, to make music or whatever. I feel an attraction to the idea of mystery: that something not visible or tangible in any way could happen. That’s also why, maybe, every time I try to reach something in my mind, I end up finding something other. Technically, I often can’t translate specific ideas into something concrete. I don’t even know why, and most of the time it feels like failure. So I started approaching it not as failure, but as what it is.
On expanding our westernized worldviews towards other possibilities.
Heith: Some aspects of Eastern philosophy have been very inspiring for me over the last few years because it tends to approach emptiness or some kind of void you can simply embrace. Even the sole idea of a Japanese garden, which is mostly empty, but you can find beauty in that space that is still very precise, clean, and calculated in its emptiness. If something is not finished, there is always the possibility of finishing it; but if something finishes, the story ends, you know?
coordinates of collision
Thinking of the collaborators that shape the universe that is heith: Is there anything —consciously or unconsciously — pulling them towards you?
Heith: I never thought about it. But there is definitely something they all share, and it is their capacity to be in the moment, instead of projecting themselves, their practices, or their ideas into something next, or something previous.
There is a paradox between this and the development of Escape Lounge, your latest project. Even if a concept was not a starting point, looking back, it acts as a counterforce to this notion.
Heith: I think this album has always been part of my life. Since I was a child, music has always been my escape, and I never fully realized it until a certain point. Coming from a little town, music was capable of projecting me somewhere else. This is also why I probably never stuck to a specific genre, sound, or style, because even as a child, I realized that every sound could bring you somewhere. And if this was my escape, then I would like to be able to escape in as many ways as possible. So the idea — which is not even the idea behind the record, but something I carried with me for my whole life — somehow emerged, and in this record, I felt the urge to express it. And it was fun to realize that it is not even an escape now. When traveling and living in London, I was going to Stansted Airport every time, and I saw ‘Escape Lounge’, which made me start thinking of all these things. Actually, it is my life. I’m not escaping anymore through music, but it is actually the opposite: a way of being present in my life instead. There’s some kind of duality here as well, because it started as a way to be out of touch with reality, and somehow it became reality.
Growing up in a small village and music being your way of escaping to other worlds, are there any symbols or archetypes that played a role in your relationship with selfhood?
Heith: There have been figures I can relate to, but they change quite fast. My perception of self changes quite a lot. I was talking with my friend Ruben Spini yesterday. We did a residency together in 2016 at Fondazione Prada in Venice, and we spent three months there. I was 22, he was 20. For both of us, it was one of the first institutional experiences in art. We were saying that in some ways, we were more radical back then than now. We were taking some things for granted; we both had problems with others at one point. It was nice to see how things changed, but in the end, for some reason, not so much. There’s something inside us that is still the core of our personality and of our approaches, which is actually the same. In ten years, the perception of self can change a lot, but still keep some kind of core authenticity to oneself, which you cannot change.
How does this connect with the collaboration around the visual dimension of your project?
Heith: I’ve been collaborating with Nico (Tirabasso, aka VISIO) for many years. We met at Macao, in Milan, when I was 21 and he was a year younger. We’ve influenced each other a lot, but there’s no specific approach. Each time is different. I think with time, the experiences we share with friends can become more meaningful, and others disappear. Some would represent a kind of transformation, and through that transformation, we can find coherence in them sometimes.
Berlin Atonal, nunc stans
Tell us how the creation of the audiovisual piece for Escape Lounge’s album started.
Heith: I met Bianca Peruzzi last year for another show. We immediately clicked, so when I started working on this show, it felt very natural to involve her. The first idea was to have this straight light from the top.
Bianca Peruzzi: A beam of light was the starting point the project. Something very unnatural, non-human, tending towards a source in the sky, and at the same time, the focus, in the end, was on a very simple, loving action of friendship between Leonardo (Rubboli) and Daniele (Guerrini aka Heith).
Heith: A small moment turned into something universal: a feeling to relate, that would usually be hidden inside the walls of our apartments. Looking back, I think it was some sort of celebration of intimacy. Bianca did an amazing job constructing a whole narration around it.
Bianca: I wanted to bring the architecture in as the core of this dramaturgy. I had never been in Kraftwerk, so it was a big mystery for me, although there is a common idea of what an old industrial building looks like in Germany: the scale, columns, and the bridges that connect each part gave me an idea of what I was interested in discovering there.
You were revealing depth in very gradual stages of the composition.
Bianca: I wanted to awaken the place, make it part of the scene, almost an ever-mutating actor together with Daniele and Leonardo, massive yet intangible. And if you think of the audience as being part of the performance, drawing their attention in as well, towards this alive third presence.
Perceptual shifts that put us in this place.
Bianca: And it creates endless possibilities for temporary mutations.
Heith: What really worked in this collaboration is that I approach a live show almost as a movie or a theatre piece in which every song brings a new scene. That’s how we did it, and will continue in the next shows, even if the places will be very different: there will be a specificity to each scene itself.
Bianca: Our interpretation of light was a natural development from the music and almost non-verbal, which is very unexplainable. We are neighbors in Milan, so the pre-construction started together, sitting at Daniele’s place, listening to his music, with my 3D simulator, and his cat. And it never felt unaligned.
What was present during the sessions together?
Bianca: Cold coffee, cigarettes.
Heith: A/C.
Bianca: A lot of talks about the gym. From angels to gym, I would say.
Heith: That’s true.
Bianca: Also deep talks. We are in the process of getting to know each other at this time because we are a recent…
Collision of universes.
Bianca: It was very smooth, felt very familiar. But also, his flat is very cozy.
Heith: Yeah, I think so.
Bianca: There was a lot of spontaneity from my perception; mutual respect and reciprocal esteem. I can’t really explain, but it is as if we were both on the same wavelength.
Heith: I feel very reassured by Bianca’s presence. She is a very stable person on set, wherever that is.
caps lock self
Do you think of anything you do as branding?
Heith: I have a strange relationship with branding. In music, I see it mostly as a gentrification model for culture. Especially in Milan, it removes meaning from culture and uses it as an accessory to put on oneself. It capitalizes on ideas, storytelling, and aesthetics: A way to make money by infiltrating the psyche with images and logos. I feel we need less of that.
Which connects to what you said earlier — an attempt to sell a closed story instead of an open one.
Heith: Yeah, still some brands can tell stories. I don’t believe fashion is only ultra-capitalist. It can be real, genuine, and deeply integrated in a subculture. History gives us many examples. But nowadays it’s harder and harder to find that.
What’s your relationship with fashion in this sense?
Heith: I’ve always liked clothes. As a kid, when I started skateboarding, I was fascinated by how people dressed. I was the youngest among older kids, inspired by their t-shirts. It wasn’t about the clothes themselves, but about what they represented and created in terms of identity, movement and belonging. Branding is often exploited, but in history, you find brands truly embodied in subcultures or culture itself.
In a tribal analogy, symbols create recognition and serve as a protection sign: you see me, I see you — we have each other.
Heith: Especially for our generation as teenagers, there was a real need to belong to something. A subculture, a niche, even if it wasn’t clear. I remember meeting people through t-shirts. Coming from a small village, I found friends just because they wore Joy Division or Throbbing Gristle shirts. That’s a kind of branding too — not about selling, but affirming an identity.
One ever-evolving with the times and shared understandings. Is there a deeper truth you have accessed through the development of ‘Escape Lounge’, your latest project?
Heith: Not really, I feel I am more confused after. And it happens every time. So, it is probably better to stop pretending for an answer, or pretending you received one.
Staying in this empty space.
Heith: But it is hard, because we always tend to answers. It is a very human thing to do: to make sense of reality, to make up explanations of what’s going on, but it’s always changing. So I am not looking for answers with my work.
In conversation with Julieta Colantonio
Photography by Gil Corujeira
Photography Assistant Alex Petrican
Styling by Maximilian D’Antonio
Set Design by Guilermina Burgos Fischer
Set Design Assistant Max Gschwendtner