KOLLEKTIVNYE DEYSTVIYA (COLLECTIVE ACTIONS). THE DESCRIPTIONS OF ALL THE ACTIONS, Photo and Video
JOURNEYS TO THE COUNTRYSIDE. VOLUME ELEVEN
124. Decoration-2010
Decoration-2010
(The Action is a transformation of the unrealized Slogan-2010 for a clearing located to the south-east of the Kievogorsky field).
On the same tree on the flood-plain of the river Yauza where a peacock-shaped picture frame with the character of “Nirvana” was hung during the action The Crossing-2, was hung a second similar picture frame (of a different color) and into which was inserted a photograph of the “red wrapping” from A.M.’s action Journey to the West. After this, the frame was wrapped with red rope (with the exception of a detail in the form of “the peacock’s head”) and above the wrapping on the tree was affixed a the photograph “Werner Herzog before a tape recorder playing Kinski screaming during the filming of the movie Fitzcarraldo” – a frame from the video Werner Herzog on Klaus Kinski.
Then the participants of the action moved to the Yauza and A. Malyshkin threw the end of a thin white string wound up on a spool from the other shore. At the same time as V. Zakharov began to unwind the string from the spool – across the river – a dvd-player installed on a small shelf on a nearby tree was turned on to play the video Werner Herzog on Klaus Kinski – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai4ZDUNycec .
Before the turning-on of the player and the beginning of the unwinding of the rope, two photo-collages in glazed frames (10 x 15 cm) were hung on trees. On a tree on the other shore (where Malyshkin stood with the spool) was hung a collage based on a photograph by G. Kizevalter depicting the place on the river Klyazma where we lowered the balloon from the 1977 CA action Balloon into the water. (The photo itself was from May 2010.) On this photo was glued an image of the balloon on the water (photo by A. Abramov, 1977) and the figures of V. Zakharov and Yu. Leiderman bending over the open hood of a car (the figures of V.Z. and Yu.L. were taken from a photograph from the action Tractor-Pizdets where they stand bending over a laptop playing the videos of advertisement for the milling machine DM-121 for the removal of tree stumps and the hole-borer DM-112).
On the shore of the Yauza, where the entire group of participants had gathered, on the tree on which the dvd-player was attached, a second collage – the same scene with the figures of V.Z. and Yu.L. above the car hood glued into a photograph by S. Haensgen of a street in Zurich (photo from May 2010).
After this, when all the rope had been unwound (500 meters) and the dvd-player was put away, on the two trees on which the photo-collages had hung, were hung instead two fragments from the same frame of the film Fitzcarraldo: on the shore where the participants were – the figure of Klaus Kinski (Fitzcarraldo); on the other shore (where Malyshkin was) – an image of the ship being pulled up the mountain. These images (4x6 cm in glazed frames) and the unwound string beneath the tree were left on the place of action.
Zakharov and Leiderman were invited to choose among the two collages to keep as factography from the action; Leiderman chose the collage with Balloon, Zakharov – the collage with the street in Zurich.
[Note. As was the case in Tractor-Pizdets, this action had a two-part structure. The action itself, its meaning lies in the wrapping of the peacock frame in the forest with the red rope and with the insertion into the frame of the “red wrapping” from the SEH; the second part with the unwinding of the string across the river, etc., despite its seeming staginess and “action-ness,” served the function of a kind of “sack of symbolic rubbish,” the function of “distraction” and “false event” relative to the action itself – “The Second Red Wrapping” (the first was the wrapping from Journey to the West in the SEH). If in this action, the “distracting sack of rubbish” was organized AFTER the action itself, then in Tractor-Pizdets (where the meaning of the action consisted in the raising of the yellow tractor high into the tree), a similar symbolic “rubbish sack” was present PRIOR TO the action: the passage of Yu. Albert across the field behind the pulling of the tractor and the reading of the list of “Mu Yuns” from the corresponding collage (cf. the action description). In both the “rubbish sacks” from these two actions is present the element of pulling a thin white string (left in both cases in the form of “macaroni” on the ground), as well as other analogous symbolic elements – the collages, the video-playing devices, etc.].
Moscow, Losinyi Ostrov, along the Yauza
May 23, 2010
A. Monastyrski, S. Haensgen, A. Malyshkin, Yu. Leiderman, V. Zakharov, E. Elagina, I. Makarevich, S. Romashko, M. Sumnina, D. Novgorodova, M. Konstantinova, Yu. Ovchinnikova, Vl. Malyshkina, G. Titov, M. Leykin
translated by Y. Kalinsky
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