Florian-Ayala Fauna


Florian-Ayala Fauna is an American artist, musician, poet, and music producer. Fauna is the main member of the post-industrial music project uncertain.

Personal life

Florian-Ayala Fauna was born in Norfolk, Virginia. At age 5, Fauna moved to Bombay Beach, California in Southern California along the Salton Sea. She credits the place as an inspiration to her music. She described it as a "post-apocalyptic-looking town." At age 12, she began experimenting with sampling and rough recordings with a microphone.
In 2002, Fauna lived in the exurb community of Indio, California. At age 21, she moved to Buffalo, New York where she has a been part of Buffalo, New York's experimental art and music scene. Fauna experiences esoteric visions which is involved in her art due to temporal lobe epilepsy. She has chronic fatigue syndrome and an intersex related condition that plays a role in much of her art. She identifies as an androgyne and transgender.

Art

Fauna is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France, a Coil-themed exhibition in Berlin, Germany, and in the United Kingdom as well as locally in Buffalo, New York. Fauna's artwork utilizes collage, film, painting, photography, and poetry. Her work includes occult, psychedelia, chaos and spiritual enlightenment. Animal imagery include deer, foxes, goats, hares, birds, and wolves. She cites the Surrealists as an influence.

Music

uncertain

In 2007, uncertain began as the solo project of Florian-Ayala Fauna. Initially, she made ambient and drone music with the computer programme Ableton. Her first album glass fawn was an ambient soundscape about a deer getting lost. It often involved field recordings, processed sounds, and tape loops while their current cycle features albums about a family of foxes done with composition, sampling, and complex music production on Ableton Live and Kontakt. Influences include Aleister Crowley, Arvo Pärt, Coil, Current 93, Thelema, and Throbbing Gristle. As of 2016, Fauna is the main producer and collaborates with others, primarily with Felix Keigh who is her fiancé and main vocalist.

Live performances

uncertain started doing live performances in 2013. Cities for live performances have included Boston, Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, and New York City. However, her chronic fatigue limits touring. They use visuals such as the use of animal masks, candles, lights, video projections, and ritualistic costumes. Live shows have included performances alongside TRNSGNDR/VHS.

Collaborations

Fauna has collaborated with former Coil member Stephen Thrower, Esperik Glare's Charlie Martineau, and others. Thrower contributed an opening track to her 2016 album Dark Night of the Soul. She has also frequently done artwork for Swiss post-industrial musicians and artists Black Sun Productions. Her most recent collaboration was with London-based industrial hip hop artist Ubik MCDXCII, providing production work for the track "Rites and Ceremonies" on his album "Blackout Blinds".

Reception

In February 2013, Orange County, California alternative weekly OC Weeklys Dave Barton called dancing with the blind "atmospheric and haunting" and "one of the most evocative titles for an album I've ever heard." In August 2016, The Publics Cory Perla described both her art and music as "otherworldly." In March 2017, British music magazine The Quietuss Russell Cuzner summed up her music as "somehow fulfil a similar aesthetic to the artist's equally prolific visual art that often depict animal heads as if charged with some kind of hidden power, part gothic horror, part Gnostic totem." In December 2019, Columbus Alives Andy Downing said God Is a Man Eater was "dense, buzzing, six-track song cycle."

Politics

Fauna supports anti-fascism and identifies as an anarchist.

Discography