LIMINAL OXIDATION

BLAUES RAUSCHEN FEST’25 Photo by Etta Gerdes

• • • MOTIF – PATTERN & PATINA // DECAY – NOISE FORMS & SLOW COLLAPSE

[shared bio]

motif of decay is a London-based audiovisual duo by Lithuanian visual artist Egle Saka and Latvian sound artist The Remains of Decay. Together we explore the beauty of impermanence through analog signal, dark ambience, and slow industrial rhythms.

Our work lives where pattern meets entropy — motif and decay. We build liminal spaces where signal and noise collapse into one another; where sound becomes ritual and image becomes invocation. Drawing from mono no aware, the bittersweet awareness that everything is transient, we treat glitch, rust, and feedback not as defects but as portals.

Using modular synthesis, analog video feedback, CRTs, oscilloscopes, field recordings, and archival textures, we sculpt immersive environments that drift between meditative stillness and controlled collapse. Beats emerge reluctantly inside dense atmospheres, carrying the body into trance, while black-and-white visuals fracture into dreamlike architectures of light and shadow.

motif of decay is an ongoing ceremony of listening and looking — a slow, devotional study of how things fall apart beautifully.

Noise is purity. It’s the raw, unshaped matter everything is built from — sound, thoughts, bodies, dreams.
We don’t see noise as interruption; We see it as the generator.

LIMINALITY AS RESISTANCE

[philosophical statement]

We live in a time where expression is louder than essence. Art is often treated as public therapy — fast, reactive, and endlessly explained. In that storm of identities and algorithms, patience, craft, and quiet devotion start to feel like anachronisms.

We stand in a different place.

motif of decay belongs to the thresholds: between analog and digital, structure and collapse, signal and interference. Our work is not confession but ritual. We move through decay not as ruin, but as revelation — the moment when form sheds its surface and turns back into energy.

Glitch, for us, is not a gimmick or an aesthetic filter; it is a way of seeing. Error is where systems show their seams, where the human hand and the machine’s limits meet. In that seam, we listen.

Our small rebellion is care: care for tone, texture, silence, and depth. We don’t try to shout above the noise. We tune deeper into it.

EX-NOISE
[ Artist Statement]

Our practice sits inside what we call EX-NOISE — a state beyond noise, where error becomes language and decay becomes devotion.

We start from hums, feedback, and broken signals. The Remains of Decay shapes dark ambient and industrial textures, using modular systems that hover between control and surrender. Beats appear as vehicles, not rulers — guiding the body through slow trance while leaving space for listening. In parallel, Egle works with analog video, glitch machines, CRTs, and digital fragments, bending black-and-white image until it feels like breathing matter.

We perform through improvisation and live signal exchange. Nothing is fully fixed; each piece is a temporary organism made of sound, light, and tension. Noise, distortion, and instability are treated as catalysts — each collapse a chance for the work to reveal something it was hiding.

Our environments are meditative, but not soft; intense, but not aggressive. Dark ambience grounds the audience inward, rhythm pulls them forward, and glitch traces the edge between comfort and unease. In that edge, we look for honesty — the mono no aware of electronic media, where every frame and frequency is already vanishing as you witness it.

Egle Saka / motif

[bio]

I work in the space where images fall apart and start revealing the hidden.

My practice began in printmaking and photography, breaking still images through databending and screen printing until glitch became my way of drawing. From there I moved into analog video, glitch machines, CRTs, and feedback systems — building a language of black-and-white textures, slow collapse, and liminal interiors.

Black and white is a relief for me. Removing colour strips away everyday noise and reveals textures, gradients, and small tonal shifts that feel like hidden states of mind. Glitch is the moment those states crack open: not destruction, but a passage into deeper layers.

I treat machines as emotional instruments and error as material. Through installations, live visuals, and my work with motif of decay, I explore the meditation of the collapse — observing how things break, morph, and become something else.

// For me an image never really collapses; it just changes state. What we call collapse is often just the moment when the surface breaks and you suddenly see deeper layers.

// I’m not interested in reproducing reality. I’m more drawn to versions of realities — fractured portraits, glitched memories, images that already carry their own decay.

// Glitch is disturbing and comforting at the same time. It exposes how fragile images and systems are, but that fragility feels honest. It gives me something to hold onto.

The Remains of Decay [Ilya Falchevsky]

[bio]

The Remains of Decay is a Latvian sound artist and modular sculptor working with dark ambience, industrial textures, and slow, trance-like rhythms. His practice is rooted in EX-NOISE — treating noise, error, and instability as core creative materials rather than problems to fix.

He builds sound from friction: the tension between pulse and void, machine and emotion. Beats surface gradually from inside dense atmospheres, acting as vessels that carry listeners through meditative, sometimes uncomfortable states. Influenced by mono no aware, he sees each sound as temporary, each resonance already fading as it’s heard.

Through modular systems, analog devices, and live performance, The Remains of Decay conducts a dialogue with the listener — a quiet ritual where decay becomes pattern, and every collapse leaves a trace.

WE CARE FOR TEXTURES. WE CHOOSE PATINA.

LIST OF APPEARANCES AS MOTIF OF DECAY [chronologically to date]

2025 LIVE PERFORMANCE: NOISEMAS’25 at IKLECTIK; Peckham Levels, London, UK

Motif of decay live AV set as part of 12 hour experimental music fundraiser event with IKLECTIK.

2025 LIVE PERFORMANCE: ZEN JERK at Endeavour Deptford, London, UK
Motif of decay duo set as part of curated evening of experimental performances; The Remains of Decay (sound), EGLE SAKA (visuals)

2025 LIVE PERFORMANCE: Bow Arts Festival at Lakeside Centre, London, UK
The Remains of Decay live sound performance

2025 INSTALLATION: 22°G GROUP EXHIBITION at TITANIKAS gallery, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius,LT
https://archives.eglesaka.com/6_2025-exhibition-archive-motif-of-decay-installation-22-buvis-group-show-at-vilnius-academy-of-arts
Print, video and sound installation piece “Motif of Decay: Glitch Quilt”, Digital print on mesh with CRT TV video installation by EGLE SAKA, soundtrack by The Remains of Decay.

2025 LIVE PERFORMANCE: Blaues Rauschen Festival at Alter Watersaal Bahnhof Herne, DE
https://archives.eglesaka.com/4_2025-performance-archive-unusual-minutes-live-av-at-blaues-rauschen-festival
Selected Live AV performance “UNUSUAL MINUTES” by The Remains of Decay (sound) and EGLE SAKA (visuals)

2024 LIVE PERFORMANCE: NOISEMAS’24 at LOKI club, London, UK
https://archives.eglesaka.com/27_2024-performance-archive-noisemas-4-co-curated-with-iklectik,-london
Live AV performance collaboration with The Remains of Decay + trojanovskx (sound) and EGLE SAKA (visuals)

2024 LIVE PERFORMANCE: ZEN JERK NOIR at Endeavour Deptford, London, UK
https://archives.eglesaka.com/23_2024-performance-archive-zen-jerk-noir-london
Live AV group performance collaboration with Iris Colomb (spoken word), The Remains of Decay + raxil4 (sound) and EGLE SAKA (visuals).

2024 STUDIO SESSIONS (LATER SUNDAY SERVICE) at Arebyte Studios, London, UK
https://portfolio.eglesaka.com/live-studio-sessions-2024
Curated series of live(streamed) audiovisual collaboration and improv sessions between Ilya Falchevsky (The Remains of Decay) (sound), EGLE SAKA (visuals, host, curation) and selected AV artists/guests

ππ