Live-cinema audiovisual performance for video, flute, two voices and a vinyl disk. Created following an expedition to the Taimyr peninsula in Arctic Russia during autumn 2014, organized by the Laboratory of geo-cultural studies at the Arctic Institute in Yakutsk. Collaborating with artist Nikolai Smirnov, audio and video works explored local geoculture, mythology, and space-time concepts in Dudinka and nomad camps near the gas industry village Tukhart.
Video is performed live, formed by collision of subjective author experience manifested through affective material preparation and documentary/symbolic performance shootings. Key thematic points include movement through void, icing, time as spatial measure, silence, and arctic eros.
Video consists of two streams: direct documentary footage presented linearly (video 8), and symbolic performance shots presented randomly (digital files). Streams superimpose and alternate based on performer’s audio cues. Final image converts through audio to “undistinguishable state of total greyish white like arctic landscape.”
Musician Sasha Elina performs to video scores, with mandatory preview of the single-copy book “Eternal birth” required beforehand. Performance concludes with Alla Pugacheva‘s vinyl recording “Shaman,” followed by complete silence and darkness, mirroring the opening when a poem translated into Nenets language plays in darkness.