24/2016 Die Frage nach dem Ursprung ist die Frage nach ul- 24 timativen Ursachen, nach einem determinierenden Anfangspunkt. Zugleich aber liegt dieser Punkt jen- Ursprünge seits einer greifbaren Gegenwart. Ursprünge sind Leerstellen, welche gefüllt und rekonstruiert werden Origines müssen. Entsprechend ist Fiktion ein integraler Be- standteil von allen Texten, die Ursprünge reflektieren, ungeachtet ihrer Gattung und Funktion. Indem sie Origins imaginativ zu ergründen suchen, woher Dinge kom- men, haben Geschichten von Ursprüngen das Po- tential, sowohl die ‚Dinge, wie sie sind’ zu bestätigen als auch sie radikal zu hinterfragen. In seinem kom- paratistischen Interesse widmet sich der vorliegende Band von Variations dem Begriff des Ursprungs in der literarischen Vorstellung. In den enthaltenen Beiträ- gen werden Ursprünge sowohl konkretisiert als auch hinterfragt, sie werden bestimmt, dynamisiert und neu positioniert. So zeitlos beziehungsweise fixiert, so umfassend und allgemeingültig der Ursprung auch gedacht werden mag, die in Variations 24 enthal- tenen Untersuchungen und Lektüren zeigen ihn in all seiner Wandelbarkeit.

Variations Ursprünge Variations VARIA 2016 TIONS Literaturzeitschrift der Universität Zürich PETER LANG 24/2016 Die Frage nach dem Ursprung ist die Frage nach ul- 24 timativen Ursachen, nach einem determinierenden Anfangspunkt. Zugleich aber liegt dieser Punkt jen- Ursprünge seits einer greifbaren Gegenwart. Ursprünge sind Leerstellen, welche gefüllt und rekonstruiert werden Origines müssen. Entsprechend ist Fiktion ein integraler Be- standteil von allen Texten, die Ursprünge reflektieren, ungeachtet ihrer Gattung und Funktion. Indem sie Origins imaginativ zu ergründen suchen, woher Dinge kom- men, haben Geschichten von Ursprüngen das Po- tential, sowohl die ‚Dinge, wie sie sind’ zu bestätigen als auch sie radikal zu hinterfragen. In seinem kom- paratistischen Interesse widmet sich der vorliegende Band von Variations dem Begriff des Ursprungs in der literarischen Vorstellung. In den enthaltenen Beiträ- gen werden Ursprünge sowohl konkretisiert als auch hinterfragt, sie werden bestimmt, dynamisiert und neu positioniert. So zeitlos beziehungsweise fixiert, so umfassend und allgemeingültig der Ursprung auch gedacht werden mag, die in Variations 24 enthal- tenen Untersuchungen und Lektüren zeigen ihn in all seiner Wandelbarkeit.

Variations Ursprünge Variations VARIA 2016 TIONS Literaturzeitschrift der Universität Zürich PETER LANG Variations Variations Literaturzeitschrift der Universität Zürich 2 4 / 2 0 1 6

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Das Werk einschliesslich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ausserhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Inhalt

Ursprünge / Origines / Origins

9 Editorial

Beiträge

19 L’origine préhistorique : une mémoire trouée Chloé Morille

33 Die Dialektik des Ursprungs: Narrationen des Ich in der ästhetischen Moderne Steffen Groscurth

45 Die Poetik des An-archismus. Zum Problem des Ursprungs bei Gustav Landauer und Franz Kafka Demian Berger

61 The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde. The Soundscapes of Moscow Conceptualism and its Sonoric Dennis Ioffe

79 Friedrich Schillers und Walter Scotts Einfluss auf die Form historischen Erzählens im späten 19. Jahrhundert. Zu Wilhelm Raabes Die schwarze Galeere und C. F. Meyers Jürg Jenatsch Heiko Ullrich

91 Le carnet d’écrivain au XXe siècle : forme originelle, forme terminale Sophie Hébert

105 Ab urbe condita: Überlegungen zur Systematik städtischer Ursprungsnarrationen der Vormoderne Edith Feistner und Jakob Nied

Variations 24 / 2016 117 Et avant ? Mise en récit des origines et commencement narratif Anne Isabelle François

129 Inaugurating Ambivalence. Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child Michelle Dreiding

141 „Du riechst nach deiner Geburt.“ Erzählen vom Ursprung in Catalin Dorian Florescus Jacob beschließt zu lieben Falk Quenstedt und Sarina Tschachtli

153 Am Anfang waren die Musen. Zur Poetologie der Jacques-Erzählung in Gottfried Kellers Züricher Novellen Annalisa Fischer

165 Erste Sätze. Christoph Ransmayrs zyklisch-serielle Ursprunglichkeit Claus Telge

Forum

177 Die Kunst, Raoul Schrott (nicht) zu glauben Oriana Schällibaum

191 Der Ursprung des Vorurteils. Nachrede zum Zauberberg Andreas Dorschel

Literarische und künstlerische Beiträge

204 Sonnensturzsonatinen (Auswahl) Sabine Bergk

208 Due to an A Priori Sensation Styliani Kokkali and Nikolas Vlahakis

6 Inhalt 210 Adieux Ivan de Monbrison

212 Poems Anne Lovering Rounds

216 Die Windharfe | The Eolian Harp Betrachtungen nach Verlassen eines Rückzugsorts | Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement S. T. Coleridge, aus dem Englischen von Florian Bissig

225 Adams Laufbahn oder Caspars Theater Sebastian Lubcke

229 Der Schlaf des Hermaphroditos (Romanausschnitt) Ekaterina Vassilieva, aus dem Russischen von der Autorin

Rezensionen

240 Georges Nivat, Les trois âges russes, Paris: Fayard, 2015 David Hallbeck

Charis Charalampous, Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy and Medicine. The Renaissance of the Body, New York: Routledge 2016 Simone Höhn

Wsewolod Nekrassow / Всеволод Hekpacob, Ich lebe ich sehe / Живу и вижy, ausgewählt, aus dem Russi- schen ubertragen und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Gunter Hirt und Sascha Wonders, Vorwort von Eugen Gomringer, Munster: Helmut Lang, 2016 Tatjana Hofmann

Almut Seiler-Dietrich, „Hinter dem Seidenhimmel spannt sich die flockige Nacht wie Zunder“. Erica de Bary. Eine Biographie, Angermunde: Horlemann, 2015 Seynabou Ndiaye

Jana Schuster, „Umkehr der Räume“. Rainer Maria Rilkes Poetik der Bewegung, Freiburg: Rombach, 2011 Lucia Ruprecht

Inhalt 7

10.3726/VAR2016_61

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde The Soundscapes of Moscow Conceptualism and its Sonoric Theatre of the Absurd

Dennis Ioffe

As is widely acknowledged, the post-revolutionary Russian Avant-Garde was famously preoccupied with blurring the boundaries between art and life. This aspect also represents the quintessential foundation of the heu- ristic origins of Moscow Conceptualism. Aside from literature and paint- ing, the Russian Avant-Garde expressed itself in practical fields of archi- tecture, design, propaganda, and mass festivals all aimed at ‘building life’ (zhiznestroenie). It spoke vigorously against the autonomous practice of art (in a traditional sense), calling on artists to take an active part in the radical changing of contemporary society. The avant-garde agenda in Russia was preoccupied with aestheticizing political life, organizing mass festivals, and creating new ideological symbols of the Soviet state that would later be suggestively mocked by the various currents of Moscow Conceptualism. The Russian Avant-Garde also contributed to theories of perceiving world- as-text, inventing an ‘unintelligible language’ or ‘universal language’ in a utopian effort to unite all peoples of mankind. 1 Moscow Conceptualism was conceived as a legitimate offshoot of the avant-garde and is sometimes even called ‘The Second Russian Avant- Garde’. It flourished after WWII as an alternative to state censorship from 1960 till roughly 1987, being essentially an ‘unofficial’ or ‘un-exhibitable’ (also ‘unpublishable’) culture. Moscow Conceptualism is usually defined as a final ‘heroic’ project of Russian 20th century transgressive art which suggestively reflected Soviet mythology by criticizing and stёbbing 2 its very

1 See more in: Dennis Ioffe and Frederick White, The Russian Avant-Garde and Radical . An Introductory Reader, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012. 2 On the ironic art of stiob and stiobbing (stёbbing) as a phenomenon see Mark Yoffe, “The Stiob of Ages: Carnivalesque Traditions in Soviet Rock and Related Counterculture”, 74:1–2 (2013), 207–225; Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. The Last Soviet Generation, Princeton University Press, 2005, esp. chapter 7, and Michael Klebanov, “Sergej Kuriokhin: The Performance of Laughter for the Post-Totalitarian Society of Spectacle. Russian Conceptualist Art in Rendezvous”, Russian Literature 74:1–2 (2013), 227–253.

Variations 24 / 2016 aesthetic and iconographic foundations. Moscow Conceptualism was the tricky product of a new era, heralding a demand for greater social freedom, embracing dissident politics and nourishing the idea that the iron curtain should be put away with the help of unorthodox artistic agendas. Exactly as the avant-garde before it, Moscow Conceptualism presumed a total ‘critique of everything’: capitalism and socialism alike. It was establishing new me- dia channels for the world of art, emphasizing, as one of its goals, the com- munication and multiplication of participants, viewers and commentators. Russian communal/studio Conceptualism initially aimed its activity not at gaining any commercial value per se, but rather at artists’ self-education and ‘mutual enlightenment’. It had gradually developed the politics of artis- tic textual commentary reminiscent of an old avant-garde strategy as prac- ticed, for example, by and El Lissitsky. Such main avant-garde strategies were employed by the two major currents of Moscow Conceptualism. The older group of Ilia Kabakov called “Moskovskii Conceptualisticheskii Krug” and the younger one “Kollek­ tivnye Deistvia” founded by Andrei Monastyrsky. 3 The world-famous in- stallations of Kabakov imitate ‘typical Soviet lifestyle’ and disclose the metaphysics of grotesque emptiness and utter ineffability. His other sphere of art – the ‘album painting’ – asserts the vigorous primacy of text over the ‘passive’ image and is more or less always commonly evident in Mos- cow Conceptualist art where text somehow makes the image/performance ‘work’. Monastyrsky’s surrealistic ‘outdoor’ employ many tex- tual aspects as well, and playfully rework the avant-garde’s multimodal and multifocal legacies. It is on that later group and its conceptual roots that my current text is primarily focused. It deals especially with the interrelation be- tween sounds and concealed meanings created by the artists of the Moscow Conceptualist circle which was based, in particular, on continuous commu- nication with some of its principal contributors in the fields of performance and music, most notably with Sergey F. Letov. 4 It is noteworthy that while be- ing a prominent conceptualist artist, Letov is also quite famous as one of the pioneers of free in Russia, along with such prominent personalities as

3 For a useful English introduction to their context, see: Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group. Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes, The University of Chicago Press, 2010. See also such important studies on the multimedial performances of the group with relation to the avant-garde as Ekaterina Degot, “Performing Objects, Narrating Installations: Moscow Conceptualism and the Rediscovery of the Art O b j e c t ”, E-Flux 29 (2011), http://www.e-flux.com/journal/performing-objects-narrating- installations-moscow-conceptualism-and-the-rediscovery-of-the-art-object/ (27. 07. 2016); Yelena Kalinsky, “Drowning in Documents: Action, Documentation, and Factography in Early Work by the Collective Actions Group”, ARTMargins 2:1 (2013), 82–105; Ekaterina Bobrinskaya, “Moscow Conceptualism: Its Aesthetics and History. Conceptualism and Avant-Garde”, in: Boris Groys, Max Hollein, Manuel Fontán del Junco (eds.), Total Enlightenment. in Moscow 1960 – 1990, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008, 50–62. 4 See my interview with him at: http://www.letov.ru/interview.html (27. 07. 2016).

62 Dennis Ioffe Slava Ganelin, Anatoly Vapirov, Vladimir Tarasov, and Vladimir Rezitsky. 5 To date, the conceptualist approach to music and sound culture has been long and actively researched. 6 What is the meaning of conceptualist art, and what is the difference between Russian and Western/International Conceptualism? Speaking in most compendious terms, it should be possible to set the Russian Conceptu- alists apart based on their views on textuality and their use of various forms of text in their writings, paintings, installations, music pieces, and perfor- mances. In this regard, we can also speak of a special kind of a distinctively conceptualist discourse, originally verbal but gradually becoming figura- tive, acquiring the tangible corporeality of a museum/art gallery exhibit. This is the kind of ‘art’ that seems to describe verbal practices indirectly with the means of its cutting-edge visual installation and performance tools. The conceptualist artists of Moscow have often employed the method of infusing some large-scale, gigantic work of art with clearly identifiable and legible fragments of ordinary human speech that appeared to be sym- bolically ‘regenerated’ within the mind of a specially designated suggestive character. This sort of total textuality becomes an inseparable component of the entire system of such intricately intertwined art-in-facts. The techniques of verbal descriptions of certain actions performed by the “Collective Actions” (Kollektivnye Deistvia) group in the mid-80s may seem quite interesting in the context of this ‘text-oriented’ agenda. They divulge a distinct kind of semiosis (or “post-semiosis”, as defined by Andrei Monastyrsky) 7 that should help to understand the objectives of art practiced by “Collective Actions” with its characteristic interaction between various kinds of discourse: verbal, on the one hand, and visual and performative, on the other, including the essentially ‘poetical’ discourse by Monastyrsky himself. Therefore, there are two issues to be examined: art that is intentionally construed as ‘text’, and the artistic practice of verbally describing the per- formances that have been part of the multifaceted activity of “Collective Ac- tions”. Both the witnesses and the participants of those performances can be perceived as active agents of poiesis promoting the comprehension of their

5 See a detailed conversation with Ganelin at: http://www.netslova.ru/ioffe/ganelin.html (27. 07. 2016). 6 See Seth Kim-Cohen, In the Blink of an Ear. Towards a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art, New York: Continuum, 2009; Christoph Metzger, John Cage. Abstract Music, Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag, 2011; Dennis Ioffe, “On semiotic ‘textuality’ of music: the Case of Moscow Conceptualism”, in: Vladimir Feshchenko (ed.), The Living Word. Logos, Movement, Gesture, Moscow: NLO, 2015, 186–209, and Dennis Ioffe, “Problema ekphrasisa i sinestetizma v moskovskom hudozhestvennom konceptualizme”, in: D. V. Tokarev (ed.), Obraz i slovo. Ekphrasis v russkoj i evropejskoj literature, Moscow: NLO, 2013, 210-231. 7 See Dennis Ioffe, “Andrei Monastyrskiiʼs Post-Semiosis in the Tradition of Moscow Conceptualism: Ekphrasis and the Problem of Visual-Ironic Suggestion”, Russian Literature 74:1–2 (2013), 255–273.

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 63 significance to new levels of meaning and signification. Consequently, the verbal narrativization of the objects of conceptual art through the means of descriptive accounts offered by its witnesses and participants becomes the main topic of this discussion. The poiesis of Moscow Conceptualism turns, as a matter of fact, into a kind of gnostic phronesis. Those familiar with Sergey Letov’s philosophy of art know that he al- ways strove to re-appraise Paul the Apostle’s words about ‘the conviction of things not seen’ as a variation of quasi-gnostic phronesis, since “at the beginning God, uncreated, pre-existing Father begot his Nous, Mind, or Logos of word, that is Phronesis the Reason, and from Phronesis descended Sophia the Wisdom and Dynamis the Potency.” 8 It is also necessary to mind the importance of the ‘collective body’ of Moscow Conceptualism with all of its intricate conjunctions and sensual interconnections. No ‘idea’ or signifi- cant performance ever produced by the Moscow Conceptualist circle would have been possible without the unique transpersonal communion of asso- ciates working together in an esoterically close atmosphere. This practice was adopted by the younger generation of the Moscow Conceptualist artists “Inspection Medical Hermeneutics” (Inspektzia Medizinskaia Germenevtika) whose aesthetics can also be traced back to the post-gnostic phronesis, par- ticularly Egyptian. For this matter, they employed the notion of Noma, in- tended to designate “a circle of us-people” who “circumscribe their limits with the aid of jointly developed systems of lingual practices”. 9 Noma can be derived from nome, the term referring to the sequence of parts of the dismembered body of soundless Osiris that were further used to denote the territorial entities of Ancient Egypt, each containing its own respective part of Osiris’s soma. The concept of a communally consolidated ‘collective body’ with its Coptic roots proves essential in this case as well. Practically every performance by the “Collective Actions” group, in- cluding the purely musical events to be discussed below, was always sup- plied with a matching verbal description supplementing the physical or spatial aspect of the performance-in-progress. Description of a performance as a work of art becomes an integral part of the process of its creation that, in its turn, resembles to a certain degree the way a textual narrative is pro- duced. As to the literary influences that inspired “Collective Actions”, they are most likely to belong to the absurdist tradition that extends from the Dadaist theatricality to the Russian OBERIU theatre, albeit not fully realized, and then to the unique performativity of plays by Beckett and Ionesco.

8 See Mikhail Antonovich Kissel, Iz istorii filosofskogo nasledija drevnego Sredizemnomor’ja, Moscow: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1989; see also my aforementioned interview with Letov. 9 Max Fray, “‘N’. Noma”, 3rd par.: http://azbuka.gif.ru/alfabet/n/noma (27. 07. 2016). Throughout, translations from Russian are provided by D. I. except where otherwise noted.

64 Dennis Ioffe The singular strategy behind the conceptualized arrangement of almost every performance by “Collective Actions” emphasized, in the spirit of the evolving literary reception theory, the problem of the eventual re- action of a potential spectator, whether absent or lucky enough to be in the presence of the performing actors. Any performance by “Collective Actions” is unimaginable without a remote, invisible observer whose func- tion it is to supply the proper verbal description when all is over. The char- acteristic logocentric ‘textuality’ of Moscow Conceptualism raises a number of questions regarding the textualization of various traditional forms of art. In particular, it appears that the music of Moscow Conceptualism has been created to a large degree according to the semiotic laws of coded textuality based on a specific mode of interaction between an author and his/her at- tentive recipient. There is an implied connection between Moscow Conceptualism’s ‘mu- sic of sounds’ and radical sound poetry (including its ‘gestural’ variety) 1 0, well represented by the Yeysk Conceptualism of Ry Nikonova and Sergei Seagay. 1 1 While, as Dick Higgins cleverly notes, “[m]usic is usually the presentation or activation of space and time by means of the occurrences of s o u nd”, 1 2 sound poetry has somewhat other objectives and, most impor- tantly, other means. However, the traditions of sound poetry go back to the deepest roots of Russian Avant-Garde, as Sergei Seagay has convincingly demonstrated. 1 3 The same avant-garde praxis of total experimenting brings together poésies sonores and Moscow Conceptualism, which obviously de- scends from the Russian avant-garde as well, especially from Malevich and Tatlin. In the same vein, as Sergei Biryukov points out, Alexander Tufanov studied the functions of phonemes in the 1920s and tried to develop the theory of so-called phonic music. In the course of his phonic experimenting, Tufanov claimed that modern poets can be rightfully “named composers”. 1 4

10 On sound poetry in various Western contexts, see for example: Jacques Donguy, Poésies expérimentales. Zone numérique, Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2007; Giovanni Fontana, La voce in movimento. Vocalità, scritture e strutture intermediali nella sperimentazione poetico-sonora, Milano: Harta performing, 2003; Vincent Barras and Nicholas Zurbrugg (eds.), Poésies sonores, Genève: Contrechamps, 1992; S. P. Anselmo (ed.), Simultanéisme / Simultaneità, Roma: Bulzoni, 1987; Stephen Ruppenthal and Larry Wendt, “Vocable Gestures: A Historical Survey of Sound Poetry”, Art Contemporary 5 (1978), 57–58, 80–104; Larry Wendt, “Vocal Neighborhoods: A Walk through the Post-Sound Poetry Landscape”, Leonardo Music Journal 3 (1993); Henri Chopin, Poésie sonore internationale, ed. Jean-Michel Place, Paris: Trajectoires, 1979, and Futura: Poesia Sonora. Antologia storico-critica della poesia sonora, ed. Arrigo Lora- Totino. Milano: Cramps Records, 1978. 11 See Charlotte Greve, Writing and the Subject. Image-Text Relations in the Early Russian Avant-Garde and Contemporary Russian Visual Poetry, Amsterdam: Pegasus, 2004. 12 Dick Higgins, “A Taxonomy of Sound Poetry”: http://www.ubu.com/papers/higgins_ sound.html (27. 07. 2016). 13 See Sergei Seagay, “Pravil’nyj sposob hlopan’ja dver’ju / The Correct way to Slam a Door”: http://glukhomania.ncca-kaliningrad.ru/pr_sonorus.php3?blang=rus&t=0&p=15 (27. 07. 2016). 14 Alexander Tufanov, K zaumi. Fonicheskaja muzyka i funkcii soglasnyh fonem:

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 65 Unfortunately, according to Biryukov, the recently discovered phonograph cylinders with the recording of Tufanov reciting his poems appear impos- sible to restore. 1 5 A separate intertextual topic in this context is the St Petersburg Con- ceptualist experimenting with sound that involves Sergey Kuryokhin, on the one hand, and Yuri Khanon, on the other. Jointly with John Cage, that world champion of sonorous silence, 1 6 Kuryokhin arranged a performance named “Music of Water: The Water Symphony”. There are detailed accounts of this event by its participants that are worth citing here in full since they have rarely been published to date. Sergei (Africa) Bugaev recounts: “It was a wonderful day. We exited the concert hall on the Nevsky Prospekt. We walked along Griboedov Canal. On the Mir Square we boarded a tram and got off at the next stop. We walked along the canal again, surrounded by water. We entered some Leningrad backyard where we found a stock of medical phials. We took one vessel with us”. 1 7 Alexander Kahn continues:

We were walking down Fontanka, past Kalinkin Bridge and all those dirty backyards with dumps, when Africa spotted with his eagle’s eye a huge bottle in a heap of gar- bage. Not just any of your common three-litre jars but a glass bottle of a rare shape that were still around back in the 50s when the intelligentsia were leaving the city centre for individual flats in the suburbs. As soon as that bottle was found, we decided that it must be put to some good use, which we proceeded to discuss. Cage didn’t take part in the conversation; he walked along calmly, like a contemplating Buddhist. 1 8

Timur Novikov, the great Kulturträger of the St Petersburg art scene, offers his version of the events:

Cage smiled ever so pleasantly. I read a lot about Chan Buddhism that was popularized in Russia by Zavadskaya and similar authors, but of course not due to being influenced by John Cage and Suzuki who instigated European/American infatuation with Zen Buddhism. Those were different traditions, however. I felt the passion towards Chan Buddhism stir in me as soon as I saw that evidently enlightened smile of John Cage. And of course, there was his “Hi” that sounded so nicely, his very pleasant way of reciting the text; although my English was rather poor, there was no need at all to understand what he said. One felt as if there was some exchange of information on the

http://imwerden.de/pdf/tufanov_k_zaumi_2012.pdf (27. 07. 2016), 11. 15 See S. Biryukov, “O Sound­pojezii”, www.chernovik.org/vizual/?rub_id=7&leng=ru (27. 07. 2016). 16 See Michele Porzio, Metafisica del silenzio. John Cage, l’Oriente e la nuova musica.Milano: Auditorium, 1995. 17 Qtd. in “John Cage v Peterburge”: http://www.newacademy.spb.ru/keij/keij.html (27. 07. 2016). On John Cage in Russia, see also N.K. Drozdetskaia, „Idei Johna Cage v Sovetskom undergraunde 70-80-kh godov: Ot contseptualistov i post-modernistov do rockerov i Mitkov“, in: Y. N. Kholopov (ed.), John Cage. K 90-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia compositora, Moscow: Moskovskaia Gosudarstvennaia Conservatorija im Petra Chaikovskogo, 2004, 141–47. 18 Qtd. in “John Cage v Peterburge”.

66 Dennis Ioffe non-verbal level. However, that exchange of information materialized in our perfor- mance that was later called “The Water Symphony”. 1 9

Cage’s Russian theme is concluded by the leading participant of the perfor- mance, Sergey Kuryokhin:

I said that we should quickly arrange some performance, otherwise it will be just an encounter and will never make it into history. I came up with that idea of Russian avant- garde fraternizing with American avant-garde. Two symbols get combined: a square, representing the Russian avant-garde, and water: for some reason I thought it should be Cage’s symbol. Cage, as an actual agent of American avant-garde, is a symbol by himself. So I conjured up some performance: we walked in circles with water, Africa brought some empty vodka bottles, poured water into them. Vodka is a symbol of Rus- sian spirituality. Cage was laughing like a child: he liked it all so much. We walked around the square, sprinkling each other with water. It was Africa who found the square; he was crazy about Malevich at that time. His studio was crammed with black squares. 2 0

Another, somewhat contrasting party to this dialogue between the Moscow and the St Petersburg Conceptualist sound is exemplified by the unique personality of Yuri Khanin-Khanon (whose real name is Yuri Soloviev- Savoyarov). 2 1 Among his most characteristic works that are relevant in this context are: “Vague Pieces of Unclear Origin: Vague piano suite” (1990), “Satisfactory Pieces: Pieces Saties-faisantes” (1994), “24 Exercises in Weak- ness. For those willing to go deep” (1996), “50 Etudes for Collapsed Piano: For collapsed piano” (1997), and “Ossified Preludes” (1998). Starting from the late 2000s, Yuri Khanon has fully committed himself to a “reversive method of work” meaning that “a score is being written forth while another is being written backwards to the point of its complete elimination.” 2 2 It seems that by this way of working the composer intends to eliminate his earlier works completely, including those never published. Of all the works by Khanon, it is a strikingly absurd audio-visual show, “Music of Dogs”, that has received the best press to date. In 1988, it accompanied the premiere of Alexander Sokurov’s filmDays of Eclipse in Moscow. As many critics point out, Khanon does not pursue art per se as his ultimate goal but rather strives to create a kind of doctrine or symbiotic system “that would be rigorously implemented by the means of art he engages in at the moment, be it paint- ing, music, literature or straightaway account of some philosophy”. There-

19 Qtd. in “John Cage v Peterburge”. 20 Qtd. in “John Cage v Peterburge”. 21 See O. Abramenko, “Hanonicheskoe litso Aleksandra Skrjabina”, Chas pik, 21 January 1998, 7–8, and M. Maximov, “Khanin – Sati. Muzyka embrionov”, Smena, 09 May 1991, 5. 22 See O. Makarov, “Interv’ju: Yury Hanon: ‘Ne sovremennaja Ne muzyka’”, Sovremennaja muzyka I, Moscow: Nauchtechlitizdat, 2011, 3–12.

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 67 fore, according to critics, he often refers to his creed as a “canon” rather than a “compo s er ”. 2 3 It is remarkable that Khanon together with his musical editors pro- duced the following characteristic annotation to his first, and seemingly only, record published by one of the major Western labels:

Five Smallest Orgasms, oc. 29 (1986) were written as a direct response to Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. A “Certain Concerto” for piano & orchestra, oc. 31 (1987) was written in the genre of “false concerto”, concerto/deception, where the listener is constantly de- ceived, having his/her expectations crowned with emptiness. The theme of deception is one of the main features of Khanin’s creations. “Middle Symphony”, oc. 40 (1990), with a text by the composer, is a large, quite extraordinary work with a rather unnatu- ral and affected structure. It ends with a canon in which the three singers sing the same text backwards for 81 bars. The text is very abstruse, in fact almost absurd; it becomes necessary to overturn one’s impression of the whole symphony just listened to. 2 4 The preliminary discussion of Moscow Conceptualism’s original sources of musical inspiration can be concluded with a mention of the French mu- sique concrète pioneered by Pierre Schaeffer in the late 1940s as well as the synthetic performance of neo-Dadaist by the art group “Flux- us”. The latter is known for enlisting such prominent avant-garde artists as La Monte Young and Yoko Ono side by side with its founder, the Lithuani- an-born Georges Maciunas. All together, the hitherto discussed art move- ments and currents comprise ad hoc the virtual context that fashioned the ideas of sound experimenting in Moscow Conceptualism that will be re- viewed below. In his 1985 self-published paper “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”, Sergey Letov outlines the basic principles of comprehending the sound conceptualism of this movement. 2 5 In this telling text, Letov re- marks that people who attended the performances by “Collective Actions” as well as the readers of their ‘volumes’ were, for the most part, engaged in visual/verbal arts. As a result, the minds of those taking part in “Collec- tive Actions” as well as those of their audience had been preoccupied with various notions related to the organization of the space of artistic action: ‘risk expanses’, ‘locational displacements’, ‘power foci’, ‘differentiation and un-differentiation zones’, ‘stops’, ‘distances’, and so on. According to Letov, tradition holds that music is a sort of ‘organized combination of sound and silence’. Sound and silence alike are naturally measurable and numerical; however, sound can be measured by four criteria: pitch, volume, timbre, and duration, while silence is only measured by duration. Therefore, the

23 “Yuri Khanon: Biographia”: http://www.people.su/117219 (27. 07. 2016). 24 Qtd. from the CD-brochure included in: Yuri Khanin, Five Smallest Orgasms, Op. 29; A Certain Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 31; Middle Symphony, Op. 40. London: Olympia, 1992. 25 Sergey Letov, “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”: http://www.letov.ru/ conceptualism/audio-performance_KD.html (27. 07. 2016).

68 Dennis Ioffe fundamental order of music, as Letov argues in accord with his Pythago- rean convictions, is computable and numerable as well as ‘pensive’, as he calls it, but also ‘physiological’. 2 6 One of the distinguishing qualities of music, as Letov shrewdly indi- cates, is a specific blend of its immediate perception and the deeply rooted necessity to concentrate on some esoteric, non-verbal level. It is important that music appears to be un-mimetic (that is, somewhat un-semiotic) and not particularly narrative by its very nature. In the early 1980s performances by “Collective Actions”, the audial aspect, according to Letov, represented the most heavily charged and loaded channel of performance communication, and was often concealed from the audience (as in the performance “Score”). It can be concluded, based on his observations, that practically all the “Col- lective Actions” performances around the mid-1980s were essentially audi- al. Composing the space-time continuum of a typical performance involved virtually all the varieties of sound material employed in contemporary mu- sic: the so-called ‘concrete music’ (tape recordings of non-musical sounds), , acoustic chamber music, , rock music, speech phonation, and the ‘zero music’, so to say, of silence. For example, the com- bined duration of phonograms in the so-called Volume III of Monastyrsky’s archive comprises more than 10 hours of continuing recorded sound. 2 7 Among the most interesting techniques used by “Collective Actions” is the incorporation of a spectator’s or listener’s act of phonation (which might mean any discussion or live commentary) into the musical structure of a performance. In this way, a listener will spontaneously turn into a per- former. As Letov reports, the indoor performances by “Collective Actions”, with the exception of “Jupiter”, made a point of provoking the audience into offering suggestive acts of phonation. In the process, the provoked audience would often find the phonation impeded and complicated while the verbal level of phonation was in fact alienated and, in terms of phenomenology, negated. Following Letov, it is possible to notice that in general the structure of those performances closely resembled “sonata form with opposition of tonic and dominant in exposition.” 2 8 In the first phase of a performance, the pho- nogram exposed “the speech phonation of ‘active’ participants, while in the second phase the speech phonation of ‘passive’ participants, i.e. spectators turn[ed] into the fixated phonogram.” 2 9 It seems obvious that the musical form, and more generally, the environment most characteristic for “Collec- tive Actions” performances is musical collage.

26 See Letov, “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”. 27 See Letov, “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”. 28 Letov, “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”. 29 Letov, “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”.

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 69 It can be summarized after Letov, that “Collective Actions” essentially use in their performances four audial codes (noises, ‘concrete sounds’, speech, musical sounds) and four types of human acoustic behaviour (noise/swear- ing/polite speech/whistling). Complex juxtaposition of various codes cre- ates certain semiotic illusions of communication. It is important to note that the performances by “Collective Actions” have always invariably included author commentary based on the use of ‘sacral meta-language’ created, as Letov puts it, in the manner of mathematical, physical or military meta- language. Here are some typical examples of such language: “empty action”, “field of expectation – empty and strained”, “verity of action”, “false event in the field of differentiation”, “emptiness of the real field converges with the empty field of expectation”, “trans-demonstrational element”, “men- tal field”, “visual field”, “line of perception”, “zone of -un differentiation”. 3 0 Letov speaks of “Homology of Similarities” in the performance of merging codes and inventing special language of description intended to create the “illusion of their informal connection.” 3 1 The special kind of commentary, also applicable to anything outside the limits of a performance, seems to serve the same purpose. Along with that, commentary performs a number of other functions, such as provoking the audience to perform an act of speech phonation in the form of their own contribution to the course of events. There are several audial performances by “Collective Actions” that can be quoted as most characteristic of their ‘classic’ period – such as “Score: Audial Perspectives of Verbal Space”, “Music Inside and Outside”, “Zero Music (‘Description of Action’)”, “Shot”, “Image of a Rhombus” and some others. The central role in this regard can be assigned to “Score: Audial Perspectives of Verbal Space.” 3 2 According to the information available, the performance took place in Andrei Monastyrsky’s apartment in 1984. The expositional component of the performance consisted of four black screens of various sizes, secured to the walls with nails braided with white cord so as to form conic shapes. According to Sergey Letov’s description, the spectators were handed eight copies of the text of “Score”, each one being a stack of seven photocopies of the text printed in reverse (white letters on black) and pasted to a piece of cardboard. Then the spectators were asked to review the text of “Score”. At the same time, a slide show was demonstrated and the light was turned off. Therefore, every spectator was handed a torch so as to be able to read the text. As soon as the light was turned off and the spectators started reading the text of “Score”, Monastyrsky who was stand- ing next to the screen and Sergey Romashko sitting in an armchair turned

30 Letov, “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”. 31 Letov, “Audial Performance of ‘Collective Actions’”. 32 See the Russian description at: http://conceptualism.letov.ru/KD-actions-41.html (27. 07. 2016).

70 Dennis Ioffe on a cassette player and started reciting aloud the prepared sequence of punctuation marks (full stops and dashes) while listening to the phono- gram through headphones. During the same 15 minutes Sergey Letov tam- pered with sound modulators, playing with “Musical Dropper”, a looped 90-second minimalistic rhythm pattern. The conceptualist tradition of ‘music of silence’ composed of ‘un-mu- sical events’ such as odd noises, creaking, sneezing and similar sounds that could be heard in the hall where it was performed stands in direct con- nection with the tradition of musique concrète. The latter has been known for actively using such ‘un-musical events’ as working material to produce full-scale prearranged compositions. It was followed, as Andrei Monastyr- sky points out, by the tradition of “music as lecture” or “music as text”. 3 3 A major part of this ‘text music’ appears to be hidden ‘inside’ while its audible part emerges to the ‘outside’, according to Letov, as a kind of dot-and-dash line consisting of full stops and dashes extracted from its punctuation. In “Collective Actions” performances this ‘outside’ segment of ‘text music’ has usually been supplemented with a short speech uttered by Monastyrsky and associated each time with a certain quasi-absurd action. In general terms, this practice pursues the issue of comprehensive aes- thetic perception and reflection articulated through conversation between the spectators. This factor invariably accompanies any conceptual music or ‘music of silence’ as well as ‘music as text’. All in all, as far as we can judge from the description above, the phonogram of “Score” appears to be a completely autonomous musical composition. The principal modulations of ‘music of silence’ in their audial aspect are based on the spectators’ re- marks, creaking of chairs, conversations between organizers and listeners, coughing, and other casual sounds emitted throughout the duration of the phonogram and against the background of enunciated full stops and dashes of “Scor e”. An additional theme was introduced during the recording of the pho- nogram by a certain course of conversations taking place between the per- sons, such as Sorokin and Kabakov, who remained as a matter of fact ‘out- side’ the performance, and those ‘inside’ the performance, i.e. Monastyrsky and Romashko. On the phonogram, it sounds as if they were trading their places. All the essential elements of the performance with its ‘flickering’ electronic sound texture provided by Letov came together in the focal point of background minimalism, the so-called ‘dropper’ whose sound produces the effect of the audio-musical phonogram of “Score” being sufficiently -au tonomous, showcasing the performance as a very process of its recording.

33 Andrei Monastyrsky, “Vmesto muzyki”: http://conceptualism.letov.ru/Andrei- Monastyrski-Vmesto-muzyki.html (27. 07. 2016).

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 71 The Performance “Music Inside and Outside”

According to Sergey Letov, in 1984, in the course of a few months, Monas- tyrsky gradually compiled a phonogram that he considered a musical piece for general listening rather than a performance. 3 4 There were only two con- ditions for the listening: the phonogram was to be heard between 11:00 and 11:30 pm. and only at the actual location of its recording. The tape recorded piece was supposed to consist predominantly of the random noises com- ing from the passing trams. In addition, the recording was to capture some conventional musical instruments sounding at various distances from the tape recorder: of those, the clearest were French horn and oboe played by Sergey Letov himself. The trick is that Letov started playing while the tram was passing and continued for another 60 to 90 seconds after it had passed. In “Music of Centre”, a train would take the place of a tram. Thus the pho- nogram captured what can be called sonic traces of traffic noise transform- ing into a singular kind of musical tone. Besides, the performance “Music Inside and Outside” features a concrete drum, Nicolay Panitkov’s Buddhist ritual conch shell, some hand bells, ringing of alarm clock, a Chinese mouth organ, and, at times, sundry vocalizing. Nevertheless, the presence of all these sounds on the phonogram was to be limited so as not to impose on its main component, the noise of passing trams. The elements of subtle musical ornamentation surfaced only once in a while as a remote echo. This is how, according to Letov and Monastyrsky, the phonogram of “Music Inside and Outside” came into being. Apparent- ly, it aimed to turn visual attention of an attendant listener to the passing trams, making him/her wait for them to pass, eagerly follow their travel etc. This situation, as the organizers and participants point out, produced interesting juxtapositions and concurrences of ‘phonogram’ trams with the real ones passing by while the phonogram is being listened to.

The Performance “Shot”

One of the chief organizers of the performance “Shot”, 3 5 Georgy Kiesewal- ter, escorted a group of spectators from Moscow to its site, Kievogorskoye Field, traveling by suburban train and then by bus. To reach the field, one had to walk for 15 minutes from the bus stop. After Kiesewalter got off the bus he turned on a tape recorder so that the spectators could hear the phonogram on their way to the field. The phonogram featured alternating

34 See the Russian description at: http://conceptualism.letov.ru/KD-actions-31.html (27. 07. 2016). 35 See the Russian description at: http://conceptualism.letov.ru/KD-actions-32.html (27. 07. 2016).

72 Dennis Ioffe sounds of a whistle (a mouthpiece of a flute) and a custom-made woodwind instrument made of a stem of giant pipe-shrub that produced low-pitched sounds. The sound texture of the phonogram reminded one of a roll-call between a steamboat and a suburban train. Eventually the spectators were led to the field where a violet-coloured curtain, flapping in the wind, was installed to provide nominal separation between the location of spectators and the ploughed area where the performance was supposed to take place. Between the curtain and the ploughed land there was a narrow strip over- grown with grass where Kiesewalter placed his turned-out tape recorder and switched the cassette. The phonogram on the other side of the cassette contained 45 minutes of an electric bell ringing sharply at various durations and intervals. The phonogram was concluded by a five-minute recording of several birds singing quite loudly and all at the same time. Having placed his turned-off tape recorder in front of the audience (on the other side of the curtain), Kiesewalter went to the ploughed field and settled next to Letov who was lying in a trench, unseen, some 60 meters to the right and away from the audience. Then Monastyrsky, having left his place among the spectators, entered the field and installed some plastic tubes standing upright and five mysterious red sacks filled with grain and tied to the upper edges of long poles. Then, as the account goes, Monastyr- sky approached the pre-dug trench where Sergey Letov was lying prior to the arrival of the audience. Both trenches in fact flanked the limited area of the field where the performance took place. Monastyrsky blew a whistle and waited until Letov replied with a whistle 15 seconds later. During all this time Letov’s presence was hidden from the audience since his response was covered by Kiesewalter who held an oboe to his lips and pretended to blow it while the actual sound was produced by Letov. After that Monas- tyrsky climbed down into a trench himself, disappearing from the sight of the audience. After the visual part of the performance was over, its participants pro- ceeded to play the musical piece called “The Sound Triangle” on the empty field for the next 45 minutes. Two vertices of the “triangle” were represented by Letov and Monastyrsky who lay unseen in their trenches on both sides of the audience, while the third one was occupied by the tape recorder playing the bell-ring phonogram in front of it. The tape recorder solo of the five- minute birdsong recording concluded the piece.

The Performance “Zero Music (‘Description of Action’)”

At the start of the performance, 3 6 Nicolay Panitkov who was standing at the edge of a snowfield with his back to a forest had two cords tied to his waist

36 See the Russian description at: http://conceptualism.letov.ru/KD-actions-34.html

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 73 and stretching to his left and to his right for a length of 75 meters each. Then Sergey Romashko and Monastyrsky started moving across the field on Pan- itkov’s right and left hand respectively, getting in and out of his sight simul- taneously. They did so for 15 minutes. The coordinated movement produced a continuous effect on Panitkov’s peripheral vision and borderline visual perception, reminiscent of a swinging pendulum. According to Monastyr­ sky, Panitkov’s task during the performance was to look straight toward the far edge of the field without turning his head or eyes, and to recount his impressions of experiencing the ‘empty white space’ in front of him to the tape recorder hanging on his chest. At the end of the 15 minute period, Monastyrsky gave a special sig- nal with his whistle after which he and Romashko quietly withdrew from Panitkov’s sight towards the forest while gradually uncoiling their cords to their full length (100 meters each). Having put on white robes they started moving in semicircles across the snowfield in front of Panitkov, traded their places, and then meaningfully exited his field of vision again. The phono- gram, according to Letov’s website, was based on the recorded sound of rhythmical knocking (palm on chest) occasionally overlaid with a swelling, receding and buzzing sound of a single low-pitched tone of a Chinese reso- nant mouth organ. This part of the phonogram continued for four minutes. Then, after a five-second pause, a significantly louder buzz began, produced by an electric razor held close to the microphone. After 30 seconds, it be- came overlaid with the continuous loud ringing of an electric doorbell that continued for another minute after the buzzing stopped.

The Performance “Image of a Rhombus”

According to the summary of the performance, 3 7 the members of the au- dience arrived at the edge of the field where they could hear background noise coming from the tape recorder in the hands of Sergey Romashko who was sitting on a chair 100 meters away with his back to the audience. Two minutes after the spectators took their places, Nicolay Panitkov emerged from the forest on their left hand with a large duffel bag. He approached Romashko, pulled a pure white robe out of the bag, and wrapped it around Romashko’s shoulders. Then he paced forward while keeping the same dis- tance from the audience and arrayed a row of 50 cm tall, simplified hare silhouettes made of white cardboard on the ground. The next row, closer to the audience and somewhat shorter, he built out of four 2.5-meter-long aluminum poles driven into the ground, with purple ribbons tied to their

(27. 07. 2016). 37 See the Russian description at: http://conceptualism.letov.ru/KD-actions-30.html (27. 07. 2016).

74 Dennis Ioffe tops. Then two rows of smouldering dry leaves followed: Panitkov set them on fire while placing them on the ground. The following row, even closer to the audience, consisted of 20 cm long aluminum pegs. Thus Panitkov, as the performance went on, gradually moved himself nearer to the audience. The penultimate row was a trace of mysterious white powder spread on the ground. Finally, a low rope barrier, about 10 meters long, was set 5 meters away from the audience. Having completed all the rows, Panitkov came up to the audience and handed out envelopes with cut-out white paper silhou- ettes of simplified hares. At the same time, right after the first row of ‘hares’ was installed, An- drei Monastyrsky emerged from the forest on the right hand and was pre- sent in the background, behind the rows, while they were constructed. He spread in the centre of the field, behind the row of ‘hares’, in front of the audience and 130 meters away from it, a square piece of purple cloth lined with white and filled it with trash found in the field (rocks, glass shards, sticks, dry grass etc.) As we read in the event’s description, when Panitkov started handing out envelopes, Monastyrsky tied the cloth into a bundle, slung it on his back and went away from the audience. For some time, those present on the field were able to observe a precariously built rhombus with vertices represented by Sergey Romashko sitting on his chair and contin- uing to elicit some sounds out of the tape recorder (West), the outermost ‘hare’ (East), the receding figure of Monastyrsky (North), and the audience (South).

Summarizing remarks

It might be easy to observe that the entire audio-musical activity of Moscow Conceptualism (with Sergey Letov as a leading expert in its centre) natu- rally belongs to the discussion on the avant-garde ‘music of the absurd’. 3 8 It is remarkable that the very origin of the term ‘absurd’, as Vladimir Fesh- chenko pointed out, is partially related to the topic of music. It derives from the combination of two Latin words, absonus (cacophonic) and surdus (deaf). According to other attempts of reconstruction, the Latin absurdus descends from the Greek ap-odos, meaning ‘ungainly’ or ‘inharmonious’. Therefore, ‘absurd’ served originally as a kind of trans-aesthetic category while re- lating to the particular sphere of music and acoustics and bearing the se- mantics of “discordant, incoherent, incongruous or even simply inaudible s ou nd”. 3 9 Feshchenko notes that only later ab-surdus acquired the meaning

38 See Stefan-Brook Grant, Samuel Beckett’s Radio Plays. Music of the Absurd, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Oslo, Department of British and American Studies: http://www.samuel-beckett.net/titleStef.html (27. 07. 2016). 39 Vladimir Feshchenko, “Literatura absurda i muzyka absurda: paradoksy na granicah

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 75 of “relating to an object or a person that can be referred to as surdus”, or else “dropped out of harmony between the properties of the world and their perception by humans.” 4 0 The researcher asserts that with time, the purely musical roots of this etymology gradually lost their relevance. Along with this, the development of modern music and the theory of musical ideas in the 20th century revived the historical notions about ‘absurd sounds’. When connecting the Russian Avant-Garde with Russian Conceptual- ism, it is worth recalling, as Feshchenko does, that a treatise by Mikhail Druskin titled Sounding Matter appears to be openly calling for an investi- gation, no less by means of laboratory analysis, of the unimaginable ‘sub- stance of sound’. Apparently, Druskin wanted to extract the unique essence of sound from the entire mass of natural as well as man-made matter by analyzing it in the way of ‘sheer perception’. The Russian scholar postulated the following rules:

a) sound is weightless, intangible and invisible: in fact, it is immaterial (it is incredibly audible even in its absence, hence “deafening silence”); b) by its temporal nature, sound is infinitely objectless (sound is not an object but a process, being energeia rather than ergon). The flow of sound is not a combination of specifically demarcated demagnetized objects but a fluid process of transforming the cortex of matter itself. This is because there is no discord of isolated moments of sounding in sound as it is. Sound submerges in time, now disappearing and now emerging, now waxing and now waning. 4 1

The discussion on the theory of musical matter of abstraction was among the most seminal in 1920s Russia. 4 2 It can be inferred that being weightless, immaterial and objectless sums up the qualities of sound per se that evident- ly appealed not only to the Chinari Association of the second wave of the first Russian Avant-Garde, but also to the Moscow Conceptualist artists of “Collective Actions”. Feshchenko notes in his paper on Chinari music that of all the elements of human perception music seems particularly suited to Russian Avant-Garde artists’ urge to ‘de-objectivise reality’ with the means of some unique sonority, as in Alexander Vvedensky: “We capture with our eye / Just a bit in one moment / And only one sound / Our poor hearing can grasp.” 4 3 Feshchenko justly states that hearing can serve as a very benefi-

jazykovogo soznanija”, in: Kornelia Ichin (ed.), Kharms-Avangard, The University of Belgrade Press, 2006, 124–142, 127. 40 Feshchenko, “Literatura absurda”, 127. 41 Feshchenko, “Literatura absurda”, 127f. 42 See B. Asafiev, “Process oformlenia zvuchashhego veschhestva”, in: I. Glebov (ed.), De Musica, Petrograd: Gosudarstvennaia Academicheskaia Filharmonia, 1923, 144–165, 149: http://www.bibl.artcenter.ru/books/85/ (27. 07. 2016). 43 See Vladimir Feshchenko, “Chinari i muzyka”, Russkaja literatura 4 (2005), 83–102, 85: http://www.d-harms.ru/library/chinary-i-muzika.html (27. 07. 2016).

76 Dennis Ioffe cial conduit leading to desired knowledge and superseding other organs of sense by far, be it vision, taste, smell or touch. In consideration of the above, we can conclude that the sonic aspect of the historical origins of Moscow Conceptualism has been and still re- mains one of the cardinal elements of its multidimensional and multi- medial activity. The verbal constituent of many of its performances must be examined in close connection with the sound component designed as an inseparable part of the conceptualist aesthetics in the making. The (anti)music of Moscow Conceptualism can be legitimately reckoned among the cognate major avant-garde acts of the 20th century, along the lines of the French heroic musique concrète and its electroacoustic, acousmatic sound (which had no apparent originating autonomous creative act), John Cage, , sound poetry, and the multidisciplinary movement of Simultanism. 4 4 First and foremost, however, it is to be placed among the early experiments of the historic Russian Avant-Garde, especially Alexander Tufanov, and later, Mikhail Druskin and the nearly unexplored Chinari- style ‘music of the absurd’.

Dennis Ioffe (PhD University of Amsterdam) is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at Ghent University’s Department of Languages and Cultures and a Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Slavic Languages and Cultures. Since January 2016 he serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of a leading European Slavic journal Russian Literature (Elsevier Science BV). His main research field is the European Avant-Garde of the ‘long twentieth century’. He has published widely on various topics focusing on the Modernist and Post- Modernist intersections between art, literature, and politics, and between culture and activisms.

Abstract

The essay narrates and analyzes some of the major sonoric events related to the early history of Moscow Conceptualism. It proceeds from the early days of the movement associated with the names of Ilia Kabakov and Andrei Monastyrsky to the later events that included some radical musical sound- performances led by Sergey Letov. The text also draws on several related subjects such as sound poetry, John Cage’s historical visit to St Petersburg where he met, among others, Sergey Kuriokhin, and musical contributions by the less known Russian conceptualist composer Yuri Khanon.

44 This synesthetic term is partly dependent on pictorial art and in particular on Eugène Chevreul, whose influential book on colour theory De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs was originally published in Paris as early as 1839.

The Birth of Moscow Conceptualism from the Musical Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 77