The Circus features the artwork

Simple Songs (2021)

Installation: sculptural group (polystyrene foam, plastic, silicone, concrete), four-channel audio (30′00″), libretto. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists

supported by the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation

The three-author art group presents its media installation project, inviting the audience to participate in the game and, at the same time, to listen to contemporary opera. “During the pandemic, we encountered something total. This was happening simultaneously in many spaces: humming the membranes of social media, flooding the smell of chlorine in entryways, and sticking to the cellular level, bypassing consciousness. If metaphors are the best available way to find an approach to reality, which ones could we use to describe this shared experience?”

Part of the communication within this installation takes place in the space of music, where false statements are impossible; the rest takes place in the space of language and forms, where the consciousness needs to separate meaning from noise and recognize manipulation. The libretto that underlies the work is created in the genre of documentary poetry and is composed of quotations from private and public messages, as well as verbs used by the president in addresses to the people; verbs produced by the virus in relation to the cell; and verbs describing the daily physical and emotional labor of women. The structure of this eclectic score references compositional techniques from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque and musical minimalism, and engages the technique of artistic melodeclamation.

Within the installation, musical patterns take sculptural form, which immerses visitors in a type of listening that is close to meditative or religious practices. The sculptures involved in the installation have a pleasant surface to the touch, on which guests can sit while listening to the opera, can lie, sway and crawl on it.

Maria Morina is an interdisciplinary artist working with documentary text, video and photography. She took part in exhibitions at the Le Radar gallery (Bayou, France, 2014), the Visual Culture Center (Kiev, 2015), in the Rencontres d'Arles festivals (Arles, France, 2018), Rencontres Internationales (Grand Palais, Paris, 2020), Garage Museum, Moscow, Russia (2021), etc. She has directed the films Just Don't Press Stop (2017) and Youth of Nizhny Tagil (2011-2019). She is co-author of the cross-media project Grozny: Nine Cities (2009–2018). Finalist of The Aftermath Project grant (USA). Winner of the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles (France) and the Prix Bayeux-Calvados Awards (France). Lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Marina Karpova is a sound specialist and independent sound researcher. She teaches musical theoretical disciplines and lectures on music and sound. She is engaged in field recordings, independently makes DIY devices for sound recording (hydrophones, contact microphones and other devices), conducts sound walks, plays the cello, piano and recorder, creates sound installations, writes music in a code and a traditional way, produces projects and laboratories related to sound and music in St. Petersburg, music and sound design for plays, performances and video works. Lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Katerina Sokolovskaya is a sculptor and curator. She works with themes of space perception and non-violent coexistence using a variety of media, including installation, sculpture, performance and video. She graduated from the master's program "Curatorial studies" of the St. Petersburg State University (Smolny College), and the Stieglitz St. Petersburg State Academy of Arts and Industry, and studied at the Eugene Geppert Academy of Arts and Design in Wroclaw, Poland. She took part in exhibitions: 2nd Curatorial Forum, St. Petersburg, Russia; OpenOut Festival in Tromso, Norway (2019); Garage Museum, Moscow, Russia (2021, 2017). Supervised the Agile gallery project, 8th Art-Prospect festival; project "Natural Circulation". She is author of lectures and programs on sculpture, teaches at the HSE School of Design. Lives and works in Moscow.