SVETLANA ZWETKOF

ART | LANGUAGE | SOUND
SAN ANTONIO, TX 78209


“ill - messenger poisoner version” (2023) by Shouter Whisperer. Grungey art rock, drums by Alejandro Abeledo.


Rick Weaver: “windfall of free-shifting artistic currency: music, performance and rolling language built soundly on and off precarious boundaries, supplemented with extended, elongated new text color wheel. Each performance from Zwetkof breaks from the last; each set a complete picture. Her album ‘Prehistory (horse n buggy days)’ cements adaptation into poetry at the speed of folk.”

Yeah I Know it Sucks: “…the future is now & Svet’s songs and music is simply time & basically genre-less. Not afraid to do whatever that makes sense, providing the act of brushing teeth along with harsher noise & twisting her extremely warm and kind sounding vocals in a way that makes miraculously lots of sense in it’s togetherness.”

Sarah Gill for Art Grove Newsletter: “Svet’s work as a multidisciplinary artist showcases the value of curiosity and levity in one’s practice. You can venture into new territory without fear, while still being grounded in an area of expertise.” SCHEDULE

Slugger Witch demos to come this winter.


CURRENT PROJECTS

Slugger Witch (2024--?) - synthesizer, electric guitar + bass, vocals - electronic grungey/doomy art rock made with Jared Flores of Flowerss.

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Gouache + watercolor paintings.

Zines.

Celtic doom spirals. A fear of the brown bull.
ACCOLADES

The University of Texas at San Antonio - MA Reading & Literacy (incomplete) - 2021-2022

Mount Holyoke College -  BA Linguistics & Studio Art - 2013-2017
   cum laude, high honors in art thesis
   Phi Beta Kappa & Mary Lyon Scholar

Svet @ Texas Noise and Ambience 2018 - Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Rousay/Zwetkof Tour - midwest United States - summer 2017



BIOGRAPHY

Svetlana (“Svet”) Zwetkof is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in San Antonio, Texas. She grew up in Greeley, Colorado where her childhood was spent handling pinecones, holding funerals for fallen squirrels, and using leaves as pretend currency. In 2013 she moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she attended Mount Holyoke College. During undergrad she studied Studio Art and Linguistics, ultimately completing a senior thesis project entitled “Gloomy Swamp, Breathless Mud” that used video/sound installations and clay/wax sculptures to explore the psychological terrain of trauma via geological metaphor. For this project she waded through lakes and creeks, cast wax directly in clay, and recorded vocal arrangements that dealt with grief and reclamation.

In 2017, post-grad, Svet moved to San Antonio, Texas to follow a musical thread that related to the sound art and a cappella music she explored during college. Since that time, she has had many strange (and “odd”) jobs and performed in a number of bands and experimental music projects, including the solo vocal/noise project called Svet, an art rock band called Shouter Whisperer, and her current electronic duo project Slugger Witch, which is performed with her partner Jared Flores.

Svet seeks to further her education soon and is returning to a life of pinecones, ambiguous sculptures, epoxy clay, handmade paper, and wax. Current project topics include Celtic doom spirals, a fear of the brown bull (a concept inspired by the Irish epic of The Tain), and victim advocacy for survivors of sexual assault. PAST PROJECTS

Shouter Whisperer (2023-2024) - synthesizer, electric ukulele, vocals - art rock
   one released album

Svet (2016-2023) -  vocals, synthesizer - experimental/ambient music
   seven released albums

Jejune Stars (2018-2019) - synthesizer, vocals -  indie

Ston the Band (2023-2024) - synthesizer - wonky tonk

Rousay/Zwetkof Duo (2017-2018) - vocals - experimental improvisational drum/vocal duo

Gloomy Swamp, Breathless Mud (2016-2017) -  wax sculptures and video/sound installations

“gave into this lonely state” (2024). video collage, voice, synthesizer.

Serendipity
Might be the thing you care about the most

What is serendipitous
About taking a human life and being let off the hook?   
“I Wore Her” (2024). Cotton rag paper made from recycled clothes + overbeaten in Hollander beater, sterling silver plated wire.
“Form in Darkness” (2024). Cotton rag paper made from recycled clothes + overbeaten in Hollander beater.“My Grandmothers Buried My Abuser” (2023). Earth, tea, cloves, miscellany, antique spice tin. “THOU ART” (2017). video/sound installation, voice, abstracted field recordings.

woman thou art god.
woman thou art god.
woman thou art god.
woman thou art god.

i will give you everything you need to know.
i will tell you how to make the flowers grow.

    Untitled (2016). Amherst, MA and Fairbanks, AK. Graphite and ink.
“Gross” (2016). South Hadley, MA. Hollander-beaten abaca paper with embedded trash.




“Endless” (2018). Digital photography. Don’t talk to me I will harm you

Don’t talk to me

Don’t talk to me I will disarm you

Weaponless and naked, entrails on floor, you’ll be


I will harm you like a ghost

The ghost that lives in your house

Creaking above and below floorboards simultaneously

I knock all of your things down


An arrow pierces a sword

I pierced my own earlobe

With a thumbtack in the dark

Bloody cheeks I scuff my knee

Like Saturn I devour everything


And when you’re sleeping

I am a creature in the corner licking its wounds

And when you’re sleeping

I am the incubus, night paralysis demon making dreams for you


Don’t talk to me I will harm you

Don’t talk to me

Don’t talk to me I will disarm you

Weaponless and naked, entrails on floor, you’ll be

Bare

You’ll be laid bare

All your weaknesses, successes, failures, creations

You’ll be laid bare

And I, I will have job be done

Oh I, I will have job be done

Oh I, the victor of this squabble

I will explode like the sun


I will sift through the hot coals, I will walk into the fire

My toenails blacken and curl

I wear my wizard’s robes

I will rake through the field how you drag me through the mud


And I, I will have job be done

Oh I, I will have job be done

Oh I, the victor of this squabble

I will explode like the sun


Don’t talk to me, I will harm you

from “Harmful Creature (Creature of Harm)” (2023) by Shouter Whisperer

“Devil’s Crook” (2017). Wax, clay, acrylic + wood plinth. Made myself a wet hot little fucker writhing in the Colorado summer

I stopped cutting up worms

And you, you had a june bug in your hair

And you, you had a june bug in your hair

And I smashed it up without a care

from “Colorado Summer” (2023) by Shouter Whisperer

“Krokodil” (2016). Cotton rag paper made from recycled clothes“puppy dog” (2023) by Shouter Whisperer
I added it up

The sum of our parts

I thought I was pregnant

But I was not


I conceived of a child in my mind’s eye

Neglected by everyone who I ever loved

A child called puppy dog

You forgot you ever named it that

You forgot, you forgot.


And when the winter came I swam in menses and I thought

Oh how terrible to be a neglected child, a puppy dog


“Fan” (2017). Wax, clay, land









“Crusty Thing” (2017). Wax and clay “Sleeper” (2024) by Slugger Witch

I took a xanax and it didn’t work

I took an anti depressant and it didnt work

I took a day of rest and it didn’t work

I took a day off work and it didn’t work


One day the sleeper will wake

One day the sleeper will wake

But until that day I will be resting in my grave


“my neighbor steps out late one night” (2016). Wire, cotton rag paper, abaca, natural plant dye



“Protection” (2023). Glass spice jar, ink, cotton rag paper, rocks, salt, lavender, seed pods “Parable of the Sower” (2023) by Shouter Whisperer

I don’t ever want to work this hard again

I keep tending to my dying garden

And she’s molten in the hot sun and I’m a placid lagoon

And we will absolutely kill each other 


I’m a sower not a reaper, I’m a sower not a reaper, I’m a sower not a reaper

I’m a lightning bug not a signal repeater


There’s a space between the sign and the signifier I’ve been struggling to fill

Packing my cheeks with newsprint with smiles I’m struggling to fill

And I don’t have the patience for it

I am so fucking exhausted


I’ve been moving like a metal, I’ve been moving like a lightning rod, I’ve been moving like a dowsing rod

Whatever a spirit will latch onto

I’ve been moving like a phantom taking ketamine

Eyes half open I’m crouching beneath my own window


And I’m searching for that something in the nothingness of this

And thus it is I fulfill and unfulfill gym membership

If I saw your fleshy spine running three paces before mine maybe I maybe I maybe I maybe I


I’m a sower not a reaper


“I bury your harm” (2023). Glass spice jar, essential oils of clove, lavender and rose petal, collected objects embalmed in soy wax.
“oily” (2023). video collage, voice, synthesizers, drum machine.

you came in too hard
broke all the vases
the bricks left their mortar
i saw your face
oily under your wool scarf
and you said, “fuck you
don’t look at me
don’t look at what i’ve done”                                                                                           

“Black Lake, Black Rock” (2017). Sculptor’s wax, recycled wax, beeswax, clay.    
“grass” (2018). Tall grass fibers cooked and beaten into sheets of paper.
“Skin Rug” (2016), detail. Cotton rag paper made with recycled clothes, Hollander-beaten abaca paper, embedded trash.

“dza dza dza dza” (2016). sound collage of voice and tool sounds.


“Celtic ancestors doing the cleaving” (2024). ink pen on artist-made abaca paper. “Celtic doom spiral” (2024). embossing from woodblock and relief ink on artist-made recycled paper.
Study from Irish medieval figure sculpture from a knight’s effigy, Killkenny, Ireland. (2024). Ink pen sketch.
Study of Ulysses from the Sperlonga sculptures. (2024) Ink pen sketch on cardstock.
 
“Kennedi’s dead plant with some methyl cellulose, etc.” detail (2024). 
Failed plant transplant, bound to clay balls, lavender, dirt, rose, and cloves by methyl cellulose. Some mold spores included.“Death Rattle” (2024) by Slugger Witch

I didn’t know what to expect

I didn’t know what to say


When you left my butterflies turned into elephants

I felt sick to my stomach

I felt depleted


I didn’t know what to expect

I didn’t know what to say

Can you surrender to me breath

Can you say what you have to say

In pursuit of fair dreams

I dream of you

Mistakenly


You knew the tide was coming in

And my back was turned to the ocean

And you were full of excuses

So tell me why was I swept from my feet, from feet from floor

And from floor I was dashed into starboard and port


I didn’t know what to expect 

I didn’t know what to say

Give me butterflies or give me death

The death rattle of an elephant

I! Gave! It! Away!

I gave it away


When the end comes near

When the moon pulls tide

When my girlfriend the moon blinks her eye

Eclipse marking the passage of time

Then I will surrender the butterflies to a parade

Surrender my body to the grave

I didn’t know what to expect

I didn’t know what to say

“Traces of somebody” (2024). Handmade recycled paper, embossing from woodblock and relief ink.

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