Manifestos vs. Minefields. Trajectories of Contemporary Art

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Manifestos vs. Minefields.

StRes Manifest

Trajectories of 72

We are a part of contemporary Russian music. StRes is a union of very different composers. Our differences unite us. We care a lot about our creative competition. There are leftists and rightists among us, those who disseminate ideas and those who pick up ideas, contemplators and dramatists, authors of mania and depressive types, extremists and fundamentalists.   Our aesthetic platform is our approach to language and tradition.   We are against the simplification of language, against the academic use of the means of expression of the past, dalliances with the audience which, seemingly facilitating perception, in fact makes the level of communication significantly lower. The domination of academism in the music of our time causes reaction. The concept of an author’s death is significant and worthy of attention, but it becomes a subject for manipulations by cultural neoconservatives. On the other hand, an abstract image of a socially useless composer devalues the music-making and the live growth of the tradition.   Music is developing the way it always did. Today its development is related to new technologies and new communicative techniques, as well as to the historic experience, which gets more and more enriched with every minute of an accelerating history.   Music is the most powerful machine of memory among all produced by culture. Music, just as sex, can reach the bottom of the unconscious mind.   Any machine of memory, even the most avant-garde one, runs on the fuel of remembering. That is why StRes is against the preservation of tradition. StRes will burn tradition in the sound furnaces of the new machines of memory. This is how tradition has always been preserved. To live an experience together does not mean preserving an object of remembrance. To preserve is to surrender. One can preserve a piece of architecture or a museum collection, but not music. Music stays alive only in motion.   StRes does not support tradition; StRes supports the tradition of handling tradition. History, including the history of the past, is being written today. Our aim concerns the continuous revision of tradition generally thought today as the misfortune of new music and that it cannot overcome the huge gap between the specialized composer’s experience and the listener’s experience. We believe that art itself stands on this rupture. A piece of music is neither its score nor its sounds, its perception nor product. It is a road, a communicative bridge built over the abyss between the author’s experience and the experience of ‚a man from the audience’. And the more dead this abyss, the more keen is the feeling and the state of no gravity and freedom from dogmatism and rules   Systems of values and stereotypes, including our own, are the structures whose resistance StRes will overcome.

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Contemporary Art RU

Sergey Nevsky, photography by Harald Hoffmann

Dmitri Kourliandsky, photography by Natalia Kourliandskaya

First published as StRes Manifest at www.stres.iscmrussia.ru/manifest.html. We thank the authors for the permission to reprint it.

glissando #25/2014

On the opening day at the tenth European Bienniale of Contemporary Art, Michael Piotrowski, director of the State Hermitage Museum, compared Manifesta 10 with a  Carnival. Indeed, the Biennale and the Carnival have many things in common. They cannot be treated as an ordinary phenomenon, rather the opposite. For both events people prepare for a  year or two, discussing the program, polishing parts, creating the entourage. They also represent current life, new trends, preferences, style, manners and the period. Finally, there is the festivity saturation, involving a large number of people, providing a high level of interest from the audience and the possibility of extending the main purpose of the event. It was not a Biennale, nor a carnival, but manifestos that became a symbol of transition periods. Manifestos fought with the ’infected’ tastes of the public and they were used as an antidote and accompanied endless discoveries. The decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union was restrained by the reaction, discreet in terms of behavior, modest and careful in the quality of artistic actions. The 1990s according to the Russian version are often credited with the definition of ’dashing’ for sudden freedom. In such an atmosphere of desert evaporated liberty one can find the renaissance of the aesthetics of epatage. The new millennium changed psychological time, the perception of reality. Imaginary and evident shackles, which constrained the development of art, crashed down. In the 2000s there was a  cultural breakthrough, a boom of contemporary art, the engine of which laid in the first futuristic revolution, a guiding line for all artists, a revolution that used manifestos as it’s man weapon.

Georgy Dorokhov, author unknown (credited as “just a good photographer in Novosibirsk”) Stating the strategies of their artistic method, a principal otherness, futurists formed a set of declarations of intentions. This code of laws, as Scripture, later became a source of inspiration, the constitutional right of those who modeled the future of art. Often, these rules did not allow objections: discussions, but not corrections. Manifestos often contained not only theoretical principles, or the basics of a new language, but also philosophical views on the nature of changes, preconditions and consequences. The notion of the future, realized in the present time, became a metaphor, which reached its goal 100 years later.

In present times, as before, manifestos are the engine of progress and changes. Thus, most mass-media in the 2000s brought manifestos for domestic and public use. The well-known media website Look At Me was often accused of snobbery and excessive bias. When they changed the editorial board, the new team wrote a manifesto, which denied the former views and preferences. It was exactly this change that helped to update the journal and bring a fresh approach to the data stream, „to write about things that are really modern,” to withdraw the opposition ’our’ - ’not ours’1.

Manifestos vs. Minefields

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A successor of the Intellectual portal Openspace.ru - Colta.ru addressed people with a manifesto written for it’s launching. The site exists on crowd funding, and does not have a powerful patronage – only a public board of trustees. In order to accumulate young and progressive-minded people around, the team of this information resource has written a declaration of rights and duties, mission and responsibility. „...We want to see that a certain picture of the world can find a place in the media,” - the chief editor Maria Stepanova said. In public articles they appealed to the reader’s consciousness, their off-line role. „This mass had its corporality and temperature. It was a very sharp and somewhat frightening sense of intimacy” - Michael Ratgauz noticed2. So journalists looked for ways of communication with the addressee, checked their strength and appealed for financial support. A similar situation occured in March 2014 with an independent TV channel “Dozhd” („Rain”), when the campaign staff was forced to appeal to the audience with the manifesto, confessing: „The time has come when we are left with one hope. It is you, our friends.” They talked about independence, necessity in support and the fragile fate of such a powerful undertaking, now forced to be in isolation – information, political and finally broadcast3. Manifestos today are also a  method of communication. Peter Bankov, a Russian designer, has established his relationship with the world through posters, which he publishes on Facebook regularly. Drawing for him is a  daily messenger with easily readable codes that replace numerous posts or tweets. Capacious, graphical, sketchy visual text, omitting unnecessary details, carries important information or mood. In the winter and the spring of 2012 during so-called ’white protests manifestos have become a  unique way for musicians, writers, journalists and poets who wanted to express their position on the political situation in Russia. In a  monologue, a  slogan, prose full of allegories and verse libre „cute, nice, intelligent people”4 expressed their thoughts. Here one can hear insistent questions, find timid answers: a  manifesto is a  space for reflection, illusions and facts, challenge yourself and the public. It is important to remark on several main trends in the musical life of the 2000s. – Manifest as a literary statement, – Manifest in an annotation to the work, – Manifest as a type of music.

To declare their thoughts or declare a  collective phenomenon, until now manifestos, constructed with a specific form, length and style, are the most popular genre and way of communication. In the late 2000s there were several anxious manifestos from the musicians’ side. Different groups raised questions on the future of Russian culture, contemporary music and the status quo. They created a certain type of discourse: a detailed text with a  clear structure, containing the problem, the historical data, apprehension, suggestions and resolutions. The latter is a fundamental difference of futuristic thinking people: they give a sober picture of the world and the addressees of the text are not only artistic people, but also government officials, those who can manage the situation. Evgeny Dukov, a  music sociology professor, on January 27, 2010 published in Openspace.ru an alarming letter in the form of a  manifesto5. It was due to a  dangerous situation in the Russian Philharmonic life, left to the mercy of fate. Not only a lack of concert organizations, but also disadvantages in the law, governing the operation of these institutions, their classification and functions, are able to destroy fragile and highly chaotic activities. In an effort to overcome disconnectedness, to find financing support for large projects, the author writes a series of proposals and suggests starting their realization by common efforts and patronage of the government. Following Dukov’s text, on February 8, 2010, a new open letter appeared, containing another manifesto. This time the initiative was taken up by three composers; Dmitri Kourlandsky, Boris Filanovsky and Sergei Nevsky6. This leading trio could not avoid paying attention to the critical situation in the contemporary music field. „Modern art is our mental currency”, the authors said. This alternative to traditional, academic art was removed from the political field of vision to people with regular knowledge. „It is almost absent in our media space” the composers summarized their idea. The article was written in order to draw attention to the existence of young composers in Russia, whose reputation in the international scene is obvious. Nobody sees them and wants to listen to them in the homeland: there is no platform for the ensembles, no specific education based on contemporary experience, no financial support for this initiative. They declare,”New music has no profit,” but then add that classical music lives on state subsidies too.

Surprisingly, the Ministry of Culture, the addressee of these texts, partly heard these appeals. The result did not lead to totally autonomous financing of ensembles, however some of them received independent funding. All in all, in Moscow after the initiative of Maxim Serebrennikov, there is a „Platforma” space for contemporary culture. In Perm, thanks to the support of the local administration, they created a center of contemporary culture. In St. Petersburg, the Aleksandrinsky Theatre constructed a new stage only for the purpose of new productions. In every place one can often hear experimental music projects and lectures by leading experts. „Now it is time for us to have a deal”7 – the portal Interviewrussia.ru created such a column and thus it has drawn a line under the level of a governmental initiative in the development of the cultural life of Russia. The manifestos of the 2000s are becoming more accessible due to the existence of Internet services like SoundCloud.com, Classicmusic. ru, Bandcamp and the Ableton Live program, making it much easier for young musicians to establish new compositions, with each of them being a manifesto of creative intentions. This was the „Manifesto of new Russian life,” meaning that now there is no necessity in having a producer or even a record company. Such structures could pull all artists down in an unstable situation. Viral online campaigns now replace loud headlines and classic radio hit parades. Musicians join together, forming teams or associations. Offline art-addicted people meet in lofts and creative spaces, like „Red October” in Moscow and clubs. In 2014 in Ufa, one founded a  rap group called Manifest [МанифестЪ], which became a  symbol of youth underground culture, „the legend of Russian Rap.” Epatage determined their direction. Three young men, Sergei (Kisliy), Kirill (Maclay) and Ilya (Chris) identified themselves as the Labour minded representatives of cultural life against the backdrop of the ruling parties. Their first LP album About people and penny soul [O ludiakh i ludishkah] marked a clear boundary for the social status of their listeners. Another union, called Structural resistance group (StRes), established an interesting example of mature composers’ work. They found common views on contemporary classical music. “The idea of grouping came from the necessity to work together and to activate the new music live in Russia, to increase the interest in the newest trends and tendencies, and to create and structure an active space for new music.”

glissando #25/2014

Lidia Ader

StRes was founded in 2005 by six composers: Valeri Voronov, Dmitri Kurlandsky, Sergei Nevsky, Anton Safronov, Boris Filanovski and Alexei Sumak. Later, Georgy Dorokhov, Anton Svetlichny and Vladimir Rannev joined them. The latter group as a whole functioned for several years (2005-2010), appearing in the most intense turning point in the modern history of music. Circumstances required the appearance of a solid group of musicians that could bring their views to the masses, and lead and motivate them using contemporary trends. Their manifesto is a  statement of views on public tastes and society. They identify themselves as „leftists and rightists among us, those who disseminate ideas and those who pick up ideas, contemplators and dramatists, authors of mania and depressive types, extremists and fundamentalists.”8 Their enemy is their own stereotypes and values. They could not avoid a fire: as futurists, who burned pianos (usually on paper), StRes „will burn a tradition in the sound fire-boxes of new memory machines.” Among composers one can find many people who established a  bright literary talent. In the 2000s they invented a  new type of manifest – an annotation to the work, a preface that can serve different functions. On the one hand, the composer helps the listener, helping him or her to find his own way in the new space, explaining the system of signs and shapes, drawing attention to the important and strong points. On the other, the readers’ system of coordinates, after reading the annotation, deprives them of the possibility of self-construction of this world, reconstruction of the sound texture and translating it into his or her own language. In 2007, the St. Petersburg Choir Capella organized an unusual project, „Without a  home.” For this occasion St Petersburg composer Boris Filanovski composed one of his most striking works, bzdmn, decoding the word „homeless” [BeZDoMNiy]. The fourmovement composition consists of „psn bz slv” [pesnya bez slov], songs without words and alternating „prpvd” [propoved’], sermons. In order to decipher its meta-content one uses an annotation, where the composer indicates the key moments, allusions and instruments. Boris Filanovski summarizes his credo as a „lifelong construction”9. The same year the group Lyapsis Troubetzkoy continued to fight for the sake of homeland. „This is my manifesto. I’m number one, I’m the best” and, thus, with no exclamations, easily and freely musicians declared their independence. On September

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25, 2008 they released an album Manifesto. It was their first album, which could be legally downloaded from the Internet and this was the first step towards the demonstration of their independence of the record business industry, a  step toward their audience. The creation of the album took the whole fall of 2007, then they recorded the first acoustic demo songs Clip and Manifesto. “Listen, bourgeois! Listen, proletarian!” Life is changing, and we are changing with it is what Lyapsis declared on the basis of a new life in their songs. In the first clip for the song Manifesto one can hear peaceful music, full of major chords, optimistic in spirit, while happy cows go to be slaughtered. The music is energetic and dynamic, spread-eagled in mood. This is supplied with an image of a‘fresh’, starched Lenin, who makes a show in a farm, welcomes the audience, and ingratiates himself with politics. Even then, the clip was subjected to a  ’devilish’ title and the public did not really accept it. Therefore, Sergey Mikhalok completely rejected it after all. Nevertheless, after the release of Manifesto they got past the point and created a new style over the next few years. In February 2014 members of the anarchic syndicate Lyapis Crew published their manifesto to the new album Matryoshka (known as a  Russian doll, or nesting doll). This time their theme is a  lost image of a mother from the XIX century, symbolizing motherhood and fertility. Apparently, they show how it turned into kitsch, being used as a pop-doll, and lost its identity. Matryoshka is in their view a  representative of a  mass culture, tasteless and indiscriminateless The name itself, transcribed in Latin letters, shows branding technology, widely used in the 2000s. It is not a translation, but a sound imitation, it is not an original, but a frame: the musicians of Lyapsis Trubeckoy want “to develop their own language, art and culture”10. In the clip they establish Matryoshka, who is used for export and combines images of a sinful Russia. The Matryoshka of the 21st century represents Russian history, terror and myths: mummies, vampires, tombstones, destroyed houses, patterns of cobwebs, boxers, shahids, beggars, a drunkard, prisoner, builder, old stagers, skeleton, humanoid. The Matryoshka of the 19th century would be a Russian beauty, a peasant woman, but here they disappear in a fog plunging into the abyss of hell. Supernumeraries in the image of a black mummy-matryoshka comment on what is going on at present, appearing from

the chaos. Three key characters of this video are the devil, dancing on scorching lava, Grigori Rasputin, sternly walking around the streets with an ax,scaring the weak, infantile inhabitants, and Lenin, the Lyapsis’ favorite hero. A  mausoleum tint of the face, angel wings, chaotic motion, dictatorial speeches at the podium, decrees against a background of orthodox crosses – such a Lenin appearing in their songs for the first time. Unlike the first manifesto, full of optimism and freshness, this statement is filled with gloomy thoughts about the unpromising future; the collapse of the empire and the impoverishment of morality. Lyapsis forces their fans to hear unpleasant thoughts about the cultural fall, to think about the traditions and values. Pussy Riot is already inscribed in the annals of world history. Everyone, from those who were sympathetic and supportive to those denying and confronting them, heard their manifesto. St Petersburg composer Ilya Demutsky used the last words spoken in Khamovniki Court on August 8, 2012 by the punk band member Maria Alekhina for his monoopera. Wagnerian in spirit, Strausslike in concentration, strained in melodic line, the whole work is built on the post-romanticism tradition. Alekhina is shown as a suffering hero, put in a hopeless situation. This model and type of utterance resemble characters of expressionistic operas. Moscow composer Georgy Dorokhov is known as a serial rebel. In 2009, he composed his first Manifesto for three plastic foams, which instantly became a regularly performed work at festivals of contemporary music. 5 minutes and 3 plastic foams: the piece is ascetic, relieved and tight. There the manifesto is not used in the sake of manifesto. There is no designated program, no epatage, all these things one might expect according to the laws of the genre. The composer does not protest, does not prove or represent. Manifesto is only the revelation of the author, whose coordination system of the work changed the coordinates. The key to this will be the variables x = instrument and y = performer, but the result of this equation will be always different. In this case both components’ freedom is determined only by timing. Plastic foam has rich sound transformation properties. Squeaks, rattles, rustling are the basic articulation dictionary tool. Exposure allows you to ’hear’ each instrument, setting a  moderate tempo, and carrying out the regular inclusion or exclusion of timbres. Using a  dynamic form, Dorokhov relies on

intensification of the motion. In Manifesto the musical text is only partially fixed. This work puts us in a condition of rational reality in which the front side is replaced by the back one, and the classical ’beauty’ is changed to a nihilistic ’simplicity’. In the hands of the composer there are graphical lines, in the hands of the performers there are bows. Dorokhov’s instruments are old batteries, garbage cans and railroad tracks. He did not avoid chairs: The second Manifesto is entirely devoted to them. Here, the three performers consistently and simultaneously break chairs using a hammer, an ax and a saw. Epatage and rationalism are united by the composer’s habit of using unusual sounds. 20:00 Moscow time: it is the time for the ’news’ on the central channel. The main event of the day is the signing of a manifesto On the most gracious gift of property rights of free rural inhabitants to serfdom peasants by Alexander II. These reports were compiled and used in a  musical composition by the composer Nikolai Khrust in 2011. This work was commissioned by Elizabeth Wilson for the Italian Festival «Eastowest». The Manifesto of the land and the freedom or how it was actually was created for the actor, basset horn and string quartet. In his work Khrust uses the variety of texts: the original manifesto from February 19, 1861; General statement about the peasants, announced on February 19, 1861; the memories of General Field-Marshal Earl Dmitri Milutin, made in 1860-1862; news from newspapers of the time as reported by ITAR-TASS and news agency Rosbalt; as well as the text of the Federal Law of the Russian Federation On general Principles of Local selfGovernment in the Russian Federation, dated October 6, 2003 „and a  recording of the Mayor’s report in Korablino (Ryazan region) on March 18, 2010. The last one was treated as a folklore text and at the same time the ’freshest’ political source. The text develops from the whole to its parts, interrupted by the „game in the parts of speech,” according to the remark of the composer11. The rules of the piece are simple: the vocabulary of the performers is strictly limited. The first violin gets the verbs, the second one the pronouns, conjunctions and numerals, the viola the prepositions and the lecturer gets nouns. The cello took the function of adjective. While the first four bars went on, someone chanted a selection of words in random order. It is easy to imagine that the key verbs, such as „ascertainment”, „to submit” and „appointed” are side by side with „recruit”, „soul” and „number”. Playing the game in

glissando #25/2014

Lidia Ader

politics there are no politics and the ease of the verbal juggling rules sway the destinies. The freedom of people is in the bag. The paradoxical nature of the work is enforced by the translation of texts into Italian. It adds a note of poetry and mystery to dry and straight theses. There is no subtext in selected declarations by the composer: only the opposition of epochs and historical collage. Part of the manifesto is reproduced word by word, and only the state manifesto is theatrically exposed. Language conflict is underlined by the fact these documents are crucial for Russian history and have had a huge impact on current life. This is why, finally, there was a manifesto about the manifesto. So, what is a manifesto nowadays? During times of an unstable political situation, the manifesto is the only instrument that helps to state the exact position of a person in the form of a  document with its own status. A manifesto in this context is not just a statement from the rostrum, but an explicitly written statement. Recent evolution of artistic manifestos in contemporary Russia evolved in a particular historical context. In a classic, professional branch it became relevant at the moment of the crisis of Soviet tradition and due to the emergence of mobile communication between Russian and Western composers. The culmination of the Internet’s sharing of works and relevant articles, of increasing the amount of contemporary music performance processes, happened in 2008-2010, which was preceded by a long process of accumulation and followed by the stressful process of integration. During this period we see the highest number of manifestos, creation of groups, programmed actions, and meaningful statements about rights and responsibilities. Pop culture, having a  shorter, but no less intense way in the 2000s, only occasionally uses declarative language and gestures. Such creative expressions tend to arise in the depths of the individual style of the musicians or groups, not as a short-term need for communication with the audience, but as a creative method, genre, and manifesto. For ones manifesto becomes a matter of life, for others it passes unnoticed. Artists have different approaches, principles and guidelines. But for all of them it is important to have one thing: communication with the audience, those for whom they build and destroy the Universe.

1  Daniil Trabun, We are changing. In www.lookatme.ru/mag/archive/look-atme/184378-my-menyaemsya. 2  Were we are 2012. Interview of Anna Krasilschik with a team of Colta. ru // Bolshoi gorod. 2012, December 14, www.bg.ru/society/takie_dela_201215970/?chapter=11. 3  www.tvrain.ru/sos/ about/#manifest. 4  Dmitry Olshansky, Manifest. In Afisha.ru. 2012, May 18, www.afisha.ru/ article/dmitrij-olshanskij-zhurnalist/. 5  Evgeny Dukov, Otkritoye pismo kollegam i druziam. In Openspace.ru, 2010. January 27. www.os.colta.ru/music_classic/ projects/155/details/15796/. 6  Dmitri Kourlandsky, Boris Filanovsky, Sergei Nevsky. Otkritoye pismo kompozitorov. In Openspace.ru. 2010. February 8. www.os.colta.ru/music_classic/ projects/155/details/16034/?expand=yes. 7  Armas Wisktrem, Manifest novoi russkoi muzyki. In Interviewrussia.ru. 2012. January 22, www.interviewrussia.ru/ music/manifest-novoy-russkoy-muzyki. 8  StRes. Manifest. In: www.stres. iscmrussia.ru/manifestr.html. 9  www.filanovsky.ru. 10  Matryoshka. Manifesto by Lyapis Crew // lyapis.com/3434/. 11  Nikolai Khrust, Emancipation Manifesto or How It Was in Actual Fact. Author’s score. P. VIII.

The research was made with a support of Russian Foundation for Humanities and Sciences (RGNF), project 13-04-004

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