Anna Martynenko

Performance "Bars", 2018

in collaboration with Karina Scherbakova
curator Katya Bochavar
For Chaliapin AIAT – Artistic Interdisciplinary Anti-Theater
Chaliapin Memorial Apartment, Saint-Petersburg

The voice reflects our individuality and is a tool for us to recognize each other. The power of voice becomes part of our personality in early childhood. The voice can sound lonely or merge into a choir of bees. The power of the individual voice contrasts the collective one and the ability to hear one's own or someone else's voice while creating something new together.

At the beginning, each performer takes a wooden bar and highlights a singular sound or phrase. The power of the voice is materialized through the bar. Performers start walking in the space and once they meet each other, they find a common sound, which transforms the initial phrase. One carefully listens to the other, and this becomes a moment of immediate communication. Will that result in understanding? Will that lead to the emergence of something new? That is a recurrent question of each performance. Finally, the bars installed by performers in the interiors of the museum merge into the space. This is an opportunity to enter into total communication by abandoning individuality and connect with the world.