The Red Wagon: About The Music |
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The actual testing of the 'suitability' of the 'Wagon' was conducted only after it was erected in the high, eight-meter hall with overhead light in the Kunsthalle of Dusseldorf for which it was intended and to where it was delivered unassembled from Mittenville. And here, when it had been assembled one day before the opening of the exhibit, it turned out that it didn't 'work', it didn't want to 'work'. The passage of the viewer with the anticipated stop inside that was so beautiful and well conceived and described in the proposal, catastrophically didn't occur. The viewer ascended the platform, entered inside through the open door of the train car, everything was going according to plan, but he didn't intend to remain inside the train car, looking at the illuminated landscape on the wall and especially to sit down on the bench and WAIT. And without this delay, without this stop, the installation lost all its meaning. Still not understanding the main, constructive reason for my failure, I saw it in the poor choice of 'music in the traincar' and I was absolutely right about that. This music consisted of a collection on tape of songs viewer ascended the platform, entered inside through the open door of the train car, everything was going according to plan, but he didn't intend to remain inside the train car, looking at the illuminated landscape on the wall and especially to sit down on the bench and WAIT. And without this delay, without this stop, the installation lost all its meaning. But beside music there was yet one more profound, fatal miscalculation connected with the passage of the viewer through the installation which I couldn't 'grasp' or recognize at all. I sat inside the train-car endlessly I increased and decreased the lights under the 'painting', I turned the sound up and down and didn't know what to do. The installation was failing completely, and the correct solution just wouldn't come. And here I would like completely definitely, with large printed letters, so-called 'answering to history', to attest to that mystical (I am not afraid of this word) role that was played in this case by Volodya Tarasov, my old friend and great musician. There have been a few such situations when his presence at difficult moments has radically saved everything, it has served as a powerful catalyst, put everything in its place. In the case of the 'Red Wagon' the following occurred. Volodya had with him, I think by coincidence, a cassette on which his play was recorded, more precisely, one of the components of his musical work called 'Dramtheatre'. This was a cycle of Soviet songs of the 1930's and 1940's recorded from old records with the wheezing, scratching of the needle, etc. that was appropriate for the level of technical reproduction at that time. But what a remarkable thing: all of these songs of happiness, love and joy which sounded so false and offended our ears at the time against the background of the existing horrible reality that surrounded us, today sound absolutely genuine, with a bewitching power and fascination. It is impossible to understand what the secret is here. But as if this weren't enough... Having sat inside the train car for a while in a certain pensiveness and dissipation, Volodya somehow unexpectedly told me to close and lock the front door of the car through which viewers could enter from the facade via the platform. Why he said this, how this idea came to him, I neither asked nor could he explain to me later. (I had the chance to be convinced of his unbelievable, incomprehensible ability to enter almost instantaneously into the main conception of other artists, of his friends, but that is a separate topic.) And this suggestion put everything in its place once and for all. The installation 'began to work' like a well-oiled mechanism, and from that moment on, it created the necessary impression, that which was embedded in its conception. I will try to explain. The first erroneous assumption which was embedded in the project consisted of the fact that having seen the 'facade' of the installation, the viewer immediately would begin to ascend the platform in order to go inside. But, as the situation revealed, in reality the viewer hadn't intended to do this at all. The thing is, that the 'Red Wagon,' situated in the space of the Kunsthalle, represented a kind of sculpture and the normal reaction of the viewer, even if he had approached the 'sculpture' from the facade (this is how it was envisaged in Kunsthalle), was not a desire to ascend the platform, but rather to walk around the installation from the side to see it from all sides. This is actually how all the viewers moved. But as soon as they wound up 'on the side' of the car, looking at the eight paintings hanging on the walls, this is exactly when the music from inside the car reached them. According to the law of moving around a sculpture, the viewer moved on farther, to the edge of the car, all the while the sound was getting louder. Finally, having turned the corner, he discovered the back wall of the car, and in it an open door and a staircase via which you could get inside. The sounds were emanating from this door, and according to the laws of curiosity familiar to everyone, the viewer ascends and looks in to see what is going on there. Inside the car it is almost dark. To the left of the entrance is a long illuminated painting the size of the entire wall. And this entire space was filled with the sounds of old, sentimental melodies full of soulful warmth. And it is only now that the viewer sits down on the bench, sits for a long time, and in some sort of strange oblivion, gets up with difficulty to exit (this was evidenced by many who were there). But I want to repeat that this effect works only in combination with the action of 'accidental spying' which the viewer considers to be his unexpected luck, not suspecting that it was all set up this way. (Furthermore, that 'entrance from the back' carries with it another image: isn't it typical for all Soviet constructions to have the main entrance closed forever and access inside it through a side or back door?) All that has been said above works now in a unified complex. At the beginning, before winding up inside the car, the viewer sees the installation from the outside, getting the image of a strange, delirious and awkward structure, a model of official ideological propaganda. But inside the car he winds up in a different atmosphere. The darkness submerges him in recollections, the melodies resound like voices of a faraway past, there is a beautiful dream before him - a city of the future: dirigibles hanging over buildings, passengers on parachutes descending to their homes ... On top of the image of the Soviet train car standing still without wheels is imposed its utopian past, and this is the entire salt, the whole effect of the installation. But only in combination with the actual 'visualness' of the 'Red Wagon' and of the wonderful melodies resounding from within and inside of it, like in a music box, does that idea arise which complicates the original conception, an idea that is in essence revelatory in nature, critical: there was something then in that hell, even if it was only in our recollections! There was, really was something genuinely happy: Lofty dreams, hopes and love ... |