MUHU St.Peterburis

Muhu Kunstitalu mitmekordne kunstiresident kogus 2019 aasta suvel infot ja loomematerjali, loomaks suuremahulist ruumi-ja heliinstallatsiooni Peterburi Raudteemuuseumi Venemaa raudteeajaloole pühendatud näitusele.

Palju eestlased on saabunud Peterburi Balti vaksali kaudu, kuid vähesed teavad et sealsamas raudteejaamas asub Venemaa väärikaim ning rikkailikuma ekspositsioonikoguga raudteemuuseum.

just sellesse hiigelsuurde ja kaasaegsesse saaali on Muhu Kunstitalu resident loonud Muhule ja Eestile pühendatud teose.

ALEXANDER MOROZOV

RAILROAD OPERA

Railroad Opera Artist: Alexander Morozov Country: Russia City: Saint Petersburg Created in 2019 Presented: 28/09–3/11/2019 Project description:

“But when people don’t keep memories, they are miraculously kept by the very earth that has embraced the unknown martyrs. Up to Pinyug we traveled by a local train... An ordinary train, a familiar economy sleeping car... But the rails – they were singing. Instead of the familiar skirring and screeching sounds, we listened to harmonious quiet singing. Minor and major chords sounded transparent, clear and harmonious... But they were also timid in a way, as if looking for their place in space... Very quietly, but sometimes anxiously and unexpectedly a full-bodied chord suddenly appeared ... solemn as if introducing something. From the text by Elena Repina. The mechanics of railway communication generates images and sounds, the nature of which is not always obvious. Their sudden appearance and reproduction refer to personal memories and tragic images of history, making us think that the earth itself keeps the memories of perished people and destinies. The melancholic music of rails, the image of the “Stolypin carriage” that was used to transport prisoners, the hollow sounds of deslolated houses scattered across the big country – these are the sounds that the artist Alexander Morozov brought together to compose a multimedia opera for a railway museum. His purpose is to draw the audience’s ears to the memory of the earth, preserved and reproduced by the largest Russian railway in the world: The work is based on a childhood memory - I clearly remember the railway turn at Dzhankoy, when the rails started singing - solemnly and melancholically. If you google “singing rails” you’ll find a lot of evidence of this phenomenon. The focus of the project is a personal history and tragedy of an “unimportant” person who becomes a thrall of the state machine that doesn’t value a single human life and turns a person into a means of achieving its “great purposes”. “The Stolypin” railway carriage witnessed the transportation of political prisoners, forced relocations and deportations of entire peoples in the Soviet times. The carriage drenched in personal stories of people torn from their native land and thrown by thousands of kilometers from home by a twist of political will, gives away the memories of past events. The sounds recorded around the deserted farms and villages are combined into a single audiovisual composition - the sound landscape woven by the memory of the place. The local historical “place” is recreated in the interiors of the car which thus becomes a resonator and speaker of memory. There is an effect of the transfer as an echo of the present in relation to the past. Using resonance and the magnetic field generated by the speakers, the sound wave travels through materials - benches and carriage lining - causing them to resonate. AM

The project is created with the participation of the Pro Arte Foundation and the Gulag History Museum. The author thanks the Freedom Museum in Tallinn and the Saaremaa History Museum in Kuressaare for the materials provided and personally to Tiu Rebani and Karl Nagel. Тhe project uses field recordings and phonograms with the memoir of the deportees: Izidinova Sevili Refatovna, Yandiev Maksharip Makhmudovich, Kodzoev Issa Ayubovich, Dopchun-Ool Kara-Ool Tyulyushevich, Mashnickas Pranas Teofilio and fairy tales by Estonian writers Aino Kallas “The Wolf’s Bride” and Juhan Jaik “The Werewolf”.