Escape Program - Projects

"Quartett", videoinstallation, Workshop of "Art-Moscow",
Central House of Artists, Moscow
DV / 4 min. 30 sec.

The "Quartett" project touches upon the issue of interaction of cultures, the possibility of adequate communication between the West and the East. The cornerstone of the globalistic myth is the belief in the possibility of fusion of the mankind in some total communication. However this myth with all its allure and attractiveness should be strongly criticized.

No doubt we see in the Others first of all ourselves. That's why culture, despite of the common opinion doesn't act as a mediator in communication, but is rather an obstacle.

Understanding is possible exceptionally through the individual super-effort, which the viewer has to make.

Only a person, who is able to catch the difference between the execution process that he is watching and the sound he is listening to, can apprehend this work adequately, because, to the authors' opinion, it is in this gap that the art does exist.
As for the other spectators, they will always have their opportunity merely to listen to good music.

Press:

Quartett is a metaphor of the collective creative work of ESCAPE.
On the screen you can see four musicians (three men and a woman) playing Beethoven's Quartette (Op.18 No 4), and the background phonogram is Shestakovich's Quartette (No 8).
The installation itself represented a dark box with a screen and four chairs for spectators. From the outside the wall was painted crimson, and one half of it was a bit darker than the other. On their border there was a text - a letter, written by one member of the group to another about the mutual misunderstanding.
The plastic gap between "the heard and the seemed" has been phenomenally intoned. Fiddle-bows of the musicians, flying and freezing in the air - are those clouds through which Leibnits--Delez make the light of meaningness dance in the darkness of meaninglessness.
To find it, the spectator and listener sitting in the chair should possess sympathy, that is, advertence. An old-fashioned term at present.

"Untimely results of the Workshops of " Art-Moscow ", Sergei Khachaturov, "Vremya Novostey", 05.05.03.

Firstly, it is a finished project. Secondly, its contents is much deeper than it seemed from the description. A short, elegant etude, sad and witty; a story about life and the fatuity of human efforts.
It's important that the ESCAPE's work is of an international nature. It is that what we'd like to praise, - a massive and a deep project. As for me, I'm sick and tired of seeking national identity; of the art, that wants to express its "Russianness". The days of such search are dead and gone; today we need works that are relevant to the international contents.

"Actual Consensus", Ekaterina Dyogot, "Art", May-June 2003.

…I feel, for a while now that we have to talk.

What will it do, you ask?

Your' right, I thought about it too.

Lately I have a relentlessly persisting feeling that we completely don't understand each other. Life of the group is already lasting four years, but the gap dividing us only grows wider. A fool that I am, I had hoped, our coexistence and collaborative work are evidence of friendship! You do agree with me so often. I effortlessly convince you of any decision and of any of my ideas. But apparently I am convincing myself, not you, of the unity that exists between us. You don't hear me, and you don't understand me. Yes, who can understand the Other? We live in a New Monstrous Babylon where the thought is drowned out by the constant din of tongues.

I begin to suspect why you are always in agreement with me in everything. The case is not in your indifference; it is simply that in my words you can only hear your own thoughts. By that you are condemning yourself to eternal solitude.

The word "Nemetz" comes from the word dumb, but it whould be more correct hear to speak not of dumbness but of deafness. Do master all the languages, but in the words of others we will, all the same, only hear ourselves. As if when observing a concert of Beethoven we heared Shostakovich.

I am a pathetic man; I do not think that which I comprehend, and I do not hear that which is spoken.

And, it is possible for someone to say that we were inseparable. Yes, inseparable in body and place but not in spirit. Our spirits are constantly moving away from each other in constant and senseless flight.